How Playism Exposes Japan's Hidden PC Gems

Over the last several years, the independent scene has brought about some of the biggest changes PC gaming has ever seen. We've watched creative, unique games arise from all over the world and find an audience through digital distribution services like Steam, Good Old Games, and Desura. However, the games of Japan, which has its own healthy community of indies -- often called "doujin games" -- are still relatively isolated. One company, a small online store called Playism, wants to change that.

Doujin games like Recettear: an Item Shop's Tale and Cherry Tree High Comedy Club have begun to trickle onto Steam, but Playism -- an online store founded last year by localization company Active Gaming Media -- is one of the very rare services devoting significant resources to translating games to English and bringing them to a western audience. Many of its imported games are free to play, some are pay-what-you-want (similar to the Humble Indie Bundles) and most have no DRM. Playism provides a doorway into what western consumers have been missing -- and it's a lot more than the dating sims that have characterized Japanese PC gaming in the eyes of many outside of Japan.

Eastern Flavor

Relative to recent indie sensations like FTL: Faster Than Light, Hotline Miami, and Mark of the Ninja, the doujin market feels like a different beast. One developer that Playism deals with -- Nigoro (slogan: "The game runs are full of happiness that no one still knows!") has a little-known catalog of Flash games with little to no English translation. They are interesting to say the least, even if they don't do much to break the stereotype of strange, vaguely sexual subject matter. Rose & Camellia, for example, is a franchise of fighting games where the gameplay largely consists of players slapping high-class women in the face, kind of like Punch-Out!! meets Dynasty. Another is called Mekuri Master, where players run down school hallways flipping as many girls' skirts as possible and face challenges like female teachers and gang members.



Playism Content Manager Josh Weatherford says that the subject matter or style of doujin games hasn't been an obstacle for their exposure at all, citing the success of Nicalis' Cave Story as an example. "I personally think the reason [for the lack of exposure] is that there have been a lot of developers without the ability to reach overseas markets on their own," said Weatherford.

Before Spelunky

However, Playism's biggest success with western audiences thus far is based on something far less taboo than schoolgirl harassment: Nigoro's La-Mulana, a 2005 exploration-based action platformer with visual allusions to Indiana Jones and gameplay nods to Castlevania and Metroid. Beta versions are cited as one of the main inspirations behind Spelunky. Yet it wasn't until an enhanced PC version came out on Playism in July that La-Mulana gained mainstream attention, and since then it's shown up on Good Old Games and received a lot of support on Steam Greenlight.



Many of these games can clearly stand on their own when given the chance -- the problem that Playism tackles is giving it to them. According to Nigiro head Takumi Naramura, many doujin developers haven't even considered worldwide distribution. Even those that do face another problem. "Although I have prepared an infrastructure on a personal level to create games and transmit them into the world, the language barrier remains a thick wall," said Cave Story creator Daisuke Amaya.

Innovative Standouts

Another developer, Mindware, currently has a game on Playism called Super Chain Crusher -- a shoot em' up seemingly built for dual- or tri-screen displays. With a native internal resolution of 3,200x800 pixels, the goal of SCC is to blow up enemies with chain explosions too long to be contained on just one screen. Mindware hopes it can stand out on Playism's lean storefront. "Each company seems to handle jillions of games," said Mindware's president, who calls himself MickyAlbert in Desura's developer community. "In particular, our game currently being handled, SCC, has peculiarity bordering on the extreme, so we hope for a distributor that can release it without covering this up."



Games that Playism plans to localize in the future include the library of developer Shindenken. Its sole game on Playism right now is I'm Gonna Be God of The Forest, where the idea is to raise plants and animals to fight an army of machines, but Shindenken's Japanese websitecontains a potential goldmine of untranslated games. "Their titles are mostly original works and usually have some very unique ideas," Weatherford said. Playism has also taken aim at a few games made in RPG Maker.

Games and Beyond

Playism has even considered testing the western appetite for visual novels -- one of the most popular PC genres in Japan, but cites the large volume of text to translate as an obvious obstacle. "Part of the problem lies in finding the ideal title to start with," Weatherford said. "Personally I would really love to localize 5pb's Steins;Gate as I believe that is one of the more original ones to be released recently." Steins;Gate has spawned an anime series and movie; the former is already available to watch in English.



Since Playism launched in English last year, it's gotten localization requests from gamers through channels like their blog along with various forums. Advanced Gaming Media plans to build a new iteration of Playism with a direct-request system as one of the ideas, but there's still no word on when that might happen.

For now, though, it's off to an excellent start. "Dong," doujin developer of top-down shoot 'em up Nanosmiles, once ran a blog on his own doujin localization effort called EngRish Games before supporting Playism. "Japan's doujin games have a strong tendency to be shared only within specific circles, originally announced at Comiket [an annual Tokyo convention for indie media], or announced only in [message boards] like 2chan," he said. "As a result, it's pretty difficult to garner attention unless someone picks one up and introduces it to others." That's just what Playism is doing, and it's a great service to isolated Japanese indie developers and curious western gamers alike.