📰 2023 August Zine Issue and Wrap-Up!
2023年 8月 25日We’re back from our summer break with more cool games and developers to talk about! Here’s the インディー通信 Indie Tsushin 2023 August zine issue hot off the press. Join us in celebrating these indie and doujin games from Japan!
The zine is viewable in browser on itch, and available for download in PDF, ePub, and MOBI formats on itch and Ko-Fi. We also have digital postcards and the Japanese interview editions (インタビュー特集) to download. It is PWYW so everyone can enjoy it! We really hope that you will check it out!
And without further ado, let’s see what’s inside!
2023 August インディー通信 Indie Tsushin Zine Issue
👑 Pickup! Tokyo Game Dungeon 3
Twenty interesting games from Tokyo Game Dungeon 3 on July 30!
🎮 7DAYS HEROES
Daikon talks about 7DAYS HEROES, an action-platformer by studioBBQ about psychic kids and the power of friendship!
🎮 和階堂真の事件簿 (Makoto Wakaido’s Case Files)
Guest writer Squimmy writes about 和階堂真の事件簿 (Makoto Wakaido’s Case Files), a trilogy of whodunnit games by Hakaba Bunko that reflect the rich history of the Japanese mystery genre!
🎮 Ninja Sneaking VS
Had a lot of fun playing Ninja Sneaking VS, an asymmetrical multiplayer stealth game by WINGLAY where you lay traps for your friends and try to sneak towards the goal before time runs out!
🎤 Interview with chart
We had the pleasure of speaking with chart about translating Toby Fox’s Secret Base interviews and handling the English localization of the fantastically surreal adventure game, Enjoy the Diner by Oississui!
🎤 Interview with Akira Abe
We had the pleasure of speaking with Akira Abe of studioBBQ about creating a sense of camaraderie in the zombie action game, 7DAYS HEROES!
🎤 Interview with Sho Hiryu
We got to speak with Sho Hiryu about making party games like the asymmetrical stealth game, Ninja Sneaking VS!
🎤 Interview with Narufumi Iwasaki
We had the opportunity to speak with Narufumi Iwasaki about making narrative games and organizing indie game events like Indie Game Moku Moku Kai and Tokyo and Yokohama Game Dungeons!
Other Announcements
🎪 Nice Gear Games will be at Yokohama Game Dungeon!
We’ll be at Yokohama Game Dungeon this Sunday, August 27th! If you in the area, be sure to stop by the Nice Gear Games booth and say hi! We have Indie Tsushin postcards to hand out, and you can challenge us to a round of Nice Disc! We’ll also be taking turns checking out the other games at the event and posting about it, so be sure to follow us on Mastodon!
ICYMI
📰 2023 June-July issue
Check out the 2023 June-July issue and its games if you haven’t yet! And be sure to look through our full catalog for more great stuff!
📮 Postcards and Interview Editions
As mentioned above, we made postcards from the covers of our previous issues. If you can’t make it to Japan to pick up physical copies, you can now make your own since I uploaded both PDF and PNG digital postcards to every month’s itch page! Print them out, use them as your desktop wallpaper, have fun!
I also uploaded the special interview issues (インタビュー特集) to each issue’s itch page. These are cut-down versions of the full issue that only have the Japanese interviews. I made these to reduce printing costs for events, but just in case you wanted to share these issues with your Japanese-speaking friends, here you go!
The postcards and special interview issue files have also been added to the collection bundles, so if you bought those, they should appear on your Downloads page!
🎉 Indiepocalypse Presents: Indie Tsushin
Our special issue that Andrew of Indiepocalypse commissioned from us broke even, so now it’s been passed over to us! To celebrate, I added some community copies, and there are still some left! Be sure to grab a copy and see how Indie Tsushin got started!
🍸 Happy Hour!
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and tune in every Thursday from 9PM UTC+9 for Happy Hour, a bilingual show introducing some indie games!
And now, a word from our sponsors
Just kidding! インディー通信 Indie Tsushin is ad-free, does not (and will never!) run sponsored content, and is mostly made by two people in their spare time. We write the articles, buy the games out of pocket, conduct and translate the interviews, lay out and edit the website and zines, pay for hosting and recording equipment, and so on. We do all this because we are gigantic nerds and hope that more people can play and appreciate Japanese indie games and their developers. We would gladly do it even if we never made a single yen from this.
BUT! If you enjoyed the zine, please consider buying our zines! Any amount would be more than enough, and would go a long way towards boosting our morale and keeping us going. Not only that, it lets us pay guest writers to appear in the zine! If you can’t afford to donate, don’t even worry about it! Indie Tsushin will always be available to read for free and will never go behind a paywall. You can help us a ton just by sharing our articles and videos, or rating and reviewing our zines on itch.io. Thank you so much for all of your kind support!
We also have a Ko-Fi where you can make a one-time donation or sign up for our ¥300/month tier.
🙏 Thanks for reading!
That’s all for now, but be sure to check the インディー通信 Indie Tsushin blog for the latest articles, follow our Steam curator account, subscribe to the RSS feed, and sign up for our monthly e-mail digest so you don’t miss anything! Hope you enjoy the issue and games!