Does the movement of the planets and stars influence your behaviour and your destiny? Other than making you giggle when astrologers talk about “Uranus rising”, I mean. Story-o-puzzler This Starry Midnight We Make [official site] gives the power to shape the sky and change the world.
Starry Midnight is the latest Japanese game being localised and published by Carpe Fulgur, the folks who brought Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale westward. They plan to release it later this month, but for now it has a demo you can try.
Is it odd that we report on the localisation work of one specific company? Regardless, the fallout from their last couple of pieces of work – Fortune Summoners, Chantelise, and Recettear – seem to make up for any oddness in localisation reporting. The news that Carpe Fulgur are now converting Trails in the Sky SC into our Anglo-Internet language is wholesome news. The odd things is, though, this is the second chapter of the JRPG, and the first chapter is soon to arrive on PC without CF’s involvement.
We tasked young master Caldwell with exploring the dungeons of Fortune Summoners: Secret of the Elemental Stone, the latest translated Japanese indie title from Recettear Anglifiers Carpe Fulgur. He returned with these words.
As the son of a shopkeeper in real life I know for a fact that helping out in the storeroom is not a magical experience. So Recettear, while jovial in spirit and generally compelling, didn’t appeal to me in the same way as it did others. In the storerooms of the non-digital world there are lots of cardboard boxes to tear apart and smelly bins to stand on in an effort to crush rubbish and make space. Once, there was a fist-sized hole torn in the wall by an errant RPG of a completely different nature. It was dreadful and there was rubble in the 10p mix-ups. But that’s Northern Ireland for you, and another story altogether. Read the rest of this entry »
COS WE HAV LIKE A MILLION TINGS 2 PLAY N POST ABOUT RAEDER K?
But: it is well worth observing Fortune Summoners – the latest release from Recettear and Chantelise Westernisers Carpe Fulgur – and Analogue: A Hate Story – the latest from Digital: A Love Story and Don’t Take It Personally dev Christine Love – both went on sale this week. Both are games that at least part of the Hivemind is very interested in, and we will be presenting some manner of opinion about them as soon as we can. We have not forgotten them. It’s just that we’ve been paid $3 million each by Eactisoft to only ever write about their releases and ignore all that indie stuff.
Just a quick one, as I’m supposed to be in the middle of cooking a curry and if my girlfriend catches me posting instead of chopping onions she’ll… WhatwasthatohgodI’mgonnadie.
Okay. Okay. It was only a passing seagull. Got to be speedy here. Side-scrolling RPG Fortune Summoners, the next translated Japanese indie game from Carpe Fulgur, now has an English-language demo. That’s here, at a svelte cost of 66MB. And its release date and price are newly confirmed as January 17th, 2012 and 25 USD/20 EUR/£16. Right, I need to slice some mushrooms before I get sliced up myself. Have fun!
Recettear merchants Carpe Fulgur recently released their second translated Japanese indie title, Chantelise, to the English-speaking world. The all-action dungeon-runner has been a little more divisive than its shopkeeping-centric predecessor, but it’s definitely picked up fans. Seems like a good time to chat to Carpe Fulgur’s Andrew Dice about the reception to the game, the debate over its difficulty, the argument around whether old Japanese gaming traditions such as painful low-health noises and repetition should be revisited, what the Japanese indie scene is like compared to its mainstream, and what to expect from project number 3, Fortune Summoners… Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve spent a few hours nuzzling up to Chantelise, the next Westernised translation/do-over of a Japanese indie title from noble Recettear chaps Carpe Fulgur. Because I appear to be pretty terrible at the game, a full Wot I Think is probably some days off. Meantime though, here’s some early impressions ahead of the release on Friday.
It strongly evokes Recettear while being absolutely nothing like it. Obviously much of that has to do with the love it/hate it/be a grown up and not be too fussed either way art style, but even beyond that a confluence of tone (via Carpe Fulgur’s extensive and breezily charismatic rewrite of the dialogue), references (many items bear similar if not the same names) and interface design paints this as a clear companion piece. Read the rest of this entry »
