One of my favourite gaming events each year is BitSummit. Held in Kyoto, it sees developers from all over Japan - and indeed, the world - descend upon the former capital to showcase what they’re working on. This year saw the return of a physical show, and I spent two full days playing games on the show floor. Even so, there was too much for one person to tackle, so what follows is a selection of the games that most jumped out at me, with apologies to the projects I didn’t get to. Oh, and I should also note that I’m not including games that have already been released - upcoming titles only.
Cursed to Golf
Developer: Chuhai Labs | Platforms: PC, Consoles | Release Date: August 18, 2022
This one only just squeaks in, as it’s due to be released on August 18. Coming from a small team at Kyoto-based Chuhai Labs - a brand of Vitei Backroom - it sees the unlikely pairing of the roguelike genre and golf. The twist, however, is that the player is in golf purgatory and must get through 18 increasingly difficult courses in order to escape. You only have a limited number of shots to beat each hole, but there are numerous ways to supercharge your run to the cup, with power-up cards that can be spent to take a mulligan or change the ball’s course in mid-air, as well as the ability to put backspin on the ball in the air to finesse your shot.
Unlike many roguelikes, the levels in Cursed to Golf aren’t procedural - each has been handcrafted for optimal golfing challenge - but the fact that there are 70 overall means that each run will be largely different from the last. With a number of options on the path through the game’s four biomes, as well as having to best utilise power-up cards as you acquire them along the way, there’s a tonne that will make each playthrough feel unique. Lovely pixel art, too.
Cassette Beasts
Developer: Bytten Studio | Platforms: PC, Switch, Xbox | Release Date: TBA
BitSummit was the first hands-on for Cassette Beasts, a game heavily inspired by Pokemon, but with monster collecting and battling gameplay seen through an analogue lens, and a dash of Persona in its character interactions. What does this mean? Well, you capture monsters out in the wild, but they’re cassettes, and instead of sending them out to battle for you, you pop the cassette into your tape deck and transform into said monster. From there, the play button lets you choose a move (which are represented by stickers on the cassette, and can be peeled off and replaced), stop lets you switch cassettes, pause is used to choose an item, fast forward is flee and record lets you try and capture the monster you’re fighting.
It’s a cute overlay, and you’re always fighting alongside a partner, which then ties into what could be Cassette Beasts’ biggest point of difference - the ability to fuse your two monsters into one. This creates a brand new hybrid that has all the moves and abilities of the constituent parts, but charges up for its attacks twice as fast. Given that there are 120 beasts to collect, that adds up to more than 14,000 combinations, each of which will have its own procedurally generated sprite, not to mention the possibility of finding truly busted loadouts.
Cassette Beasts also has a different overall structure from Pokemon. Instead of journeying through a particular region, moving from town to town, Cassette Beasts has one large and somewhat open island setting. This is where your character washes up at the start of the game, and like the other inhabitants of the island, is stuck. It’s a large location, according to the devs, and while some paths are locked off until players learn new abilities, such as how to break rocks or dash to get through gusting wind, I was told that there are almost always other ways around. Exploration is going to be a big part of the experience, then, and will mean different players will take different paths through the game.
Each of the various characters you’re introduced to in the world will have their own story to follow too, and as you quest with them you’ll level up your bond and unlock the ability to fuse during battle. Hopefully Cassette Beasts will deliver on interesting characters that you want to get to know, as well as giving the island the air of a mystery waiting to be solved. I’ve already seen hints of the latter, coming across a truly otherworldly entity in the demo, where the screen suddenly has VCR-style scanlines and I was confronting something that simply didn’t fit with the world around it.
Last Time I Saw You
Developer: Maboroshi Artworks | Platforms: PC | Release Date: TBA
Imagine if Night in the Woods was set in a rural(-ish) late 80s Japanese setting. That should give you a reasonable starting point for Last Time I Saw You, an absolutely gorgeous adventure game that impresses with its attention to detail and lovingly crafted visuals. While I only played a small slice of its opening; exploring a few locations in its somewhat idealised but authentic-feeling recreation of a Japanese town, it certainly left me curious about where the story could potentially go, particularly given the many characters and items there are to interact with, not to mention the overall story set-up, in which lead character Ayumi finds himself dreaming of a mysterious girl who may have put a curse on his town.
Built by a 4-5 person team who have been working on it on the side, the start of Last Time I Saw You is fully fleshed out - and the entire script has been written - but the team needs funding to actually build out the full game. You can check out the demo on Steam to get an idea of the promise that this one holds.
Tokyo Underground Killer
Developer: Phoenix Game Productions | Platforms: PC | Release Date: 2023
This first person action game is all clean neon visuals, samurai sword-based combat and punching enemies so hard they explode in a shower of blood. As Kobayashi, the “Shinjuku Vampire,” it’s a lot of fun dashing about Tokyo Underground Killer’s stylised vision of one of the world’s great metropolises, and blood itself informs a lot of the design. Collect enough and you can unleash a powerful one-shot special attack (i.e. “punching enemies so hard they explode,” among others). Overfill the meter, meanwhile, and you’ll get time-limited agility perks that ensure that the blood vials you’ve collected don’t go to waste.
The katana combat works well, allowing you to both slice and dice, and to turn a block into a spinning attack to clear a number of enemies in one fell swing. A dash move helps give the gameplay greater kinetic energy, while you can also pick up an array of guns. These have limited ammo to power through before Kobayashi literally throws it away, hopefully clocking an enemy in the head. Unfortunately, aiming with your gun replaces your ability to block with the sword, so there’s some friction there that I think needs to be resolved as development continues.
The in-game art is stylish, but one of Tokyo Underground Killer’s greatest strengths is its manga-style cutscenes, which are beautifully realised. During my playthrough I was really starting to get a sense of a dark, messed up world through the dialogue too, so I’m looking forward to seeing where the team take it.
Soup Raiders
Developer: Team KwaKwa | Platforms: PC, Switch | Release Date: TBA
Have you ever dreamed of sailing the seven seas during the age of adventure? Well, Soup Raiders may be just the game for you, albeit with a few minor adjustments. For one, the game’s pirates, adventurers and curious onlookers alike are all anthropomorphic animals. For two, it’s not so much seven seas as one bowl of soup. Why is this world contained within a bowl of soup? I have no idea.
In any case, the first thing that jumps out about Soup Raiders is its charming graphical style using 2D sprites in a 3D world. The characters look great moving around the world, while the limited animation used in cutscenes help give the game a tonne of personality. The demo introduces lead character Peanut, whose family members are being held prisoner across the game’s ten main islands. First to be rescued is his bombastic older sister, Dorothy, via a series of real-time combat encounters against seagulls, bulldogs and finally, The Red Bearon (a bear, naturally).
Peanut and his two party members, the fast-attacking cat White Fur and the lumbering, cannon-wielding crocodile Krokoss, stay on one side of a gridded battle arena, while the enemies can move about on the other side. Real-time movement means you can get out of the way of telegraphed attacks (harder for Krokoss, who takes up four squares and moves slowly, but also hits the hardest), while offensive moves recharge after being used. Players can swap between their squad at will, even pulling off combo moves as they do so.