Neru Game Hands-On Impressions: Nap If You Dare

Posted 13:58 EST on 21MAR2014 by: tim walker in hands-on » android, babarageo, bitsummit, flash, iOS, neru game, pc

Everybody needs a good night’s sleep, but what happens when your choice of venues is limited, and maybe even life-threatening? Would you forsake snoozing at a construction site to avoid possible death by wrecking ball? Would you feel all right catching a few Zs with a shady cat hanging around? These are some of the intriguing questions raised by Neru Game (literally, “Sleep Game”), a free-to-play flash game from Japanese indie developer Babarageo.

Neru Game starts you off in your bedroom, tells you your current Stamina (100) and Risk of Danger (0%), and gives you two options to choose from: Sleep or Don’t Sleep. Choose to sleep, and you’ll increase your Stamina (it maxes out at 150) and decrease your Drowsiness (an unseen stat that eventually forces you to sleep!); choose to pass on sleeping, and you’ll lose Stamina and gain Drowsiness. As long as you don’t run out of Stamina completely, you’ll be able to move on to the next day and the next locale.

The next location might not be your cozy, risk-free bedroom though (aside from your starting point, location advancement is somewhat randomized). You could find yourself in a meeting at work (moderate Risk), on board a train (low Risk), at a construction site (high Risk), or even behind the wheel of your car (very high Risk). Your challenge is to assess the risk involved in sleeping in each location while keeping a close eye on your Stamina as well.

     

The concept behind the game is simple, yet maddeningly addictive. Since one wrong move means instant death (even if your Stamina is full, the game will be over instantly if you sleep in the wrong place), you obviously don’t want to sleep in an area where the Risk of Danger is at 70% or 80%. But what about in the middle of a convenience store, where the risk of death (presumably by trampling) is at a mere 20%? You might choose to skip sleeping there now, only to find yourself thrust into 3 high-risk scenarios in a row afterwards, ultimately forcing you to sleep while underwater or in the middle of being robbed. On the other hand, you might choose to snooze during that low-risk board meeting and still find you’ve met your maker (stapled to death, perhaps?). These hard choices force you to weigh each click carefully, and will ultimately keep you coming back for more.

The variety of the situations you’re thrust into will also keep you playing. Though the game starts off with some relatively mundane areas and situations, survive long enough and you’ll find yourself in the middle of a battlefield, staring down a ghost, and out on a date (the latter carries a pretty high risk factor!). All of these stages are rendered in simple but charming black and white graphics that reminded me of early adventure titles, such as Roberta Williams’ Mystery House.

Although Neru Game is completely in Japanese, it’s pretty easy to pick up and play. Just remember that the percentage near the top-left part of the screen is your Risk of Danger for the current stage, the next number is your character’s Level (this may affect something behind the scenes, but I’ve yet to notice exactly what it does), and the last one is your current Stamina. The button on the left commands your character to Sleep, the one on the right commands him to Not Sleep, and the one that appears after a successful nap lets you move onto the next stage. Hints are sometimes given in white text on the left (“It would be best not to sleep here.”), along with critical warnings (“You need to sleep, or you’ll die.”). Hopefully this gem will be localized soon so that all of its humor is conveyed properly.

     

Neru Game is great for laughs, but is also surprisingly deep for a game that offers you only two choices. It can be played for free online by going here, and Babarageo announced at BitSummit that it is headed for iOS and Android as well.

BitSummit: Ascend to a Higher State of Concentration with Poppoloco

Posted 18:03 EST on 07MAR2014 by: indie navi news staff in news, previews » bitsummit, gemdrop, poppoloco

Gemdrop head Yuichiro Kitao wants you to wreck your iPad — or, at least to cover it in sweat.

That’s the idea behind his company’s panic-inducing “real-time action puzzle” title Poppoloco, a game where you need to ascend to a zen-like state of mind to prevent your poor locomotive from being destroyed by a pursuing monster. Think endless runner, but your protagonist is also solving a Rubik’s cube.

The rules are simple: use your finger to trace a line over connected blocks sharing the same color. Do this quickly enough, and your locomotive portrayed at the top of the screen will scream along to the next station, evading its pursuer. Keep the train moving long enough, and you’ll be able to catch your breath (and wipe off your screen) at the next station.

Connect too few blocks, and your locomotive will slow to a crawl. No need to guess what’ll happen then. Fortunately, players don’t need to rely on the luck of the draw. By tapping a block, players can cycle through the color palette, making the block match its neighbor. It’s a risk, since time is always of the essence, but bigger combos mean more steam for your locomotive.

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Gemdrop claims its frantic puzzler is already programmed and good to go for release to iOS, Android, and Windows 8 (including English text!), so hopefully we’ll see this title soon. Keep those fingers limber!

News and images source: Famitsu App

Moon: Remix RPG Adventure Designer To Debut New iOS Game At BitSummit

Posted 15:54 EST on 25FEB2014 by: tim walker in news » bitsummit, hirofumi taniguchi, kazuyuki kurashima, million onion hotel, moon remix rpg adventure, yoshiro kimura

Game designer Yoshiro Kimura, best known for his work on cult classic Moon: Remix RPG Adventure for the original PlayStation, has announced on his company’s website that he will be showing a new game at this year’s BitSummit Indie Game Festival. Entitled Million Onion Hotel, the game will feature character designs by Kazuyuki Kurashima (Little King’s Story) and music by Hirofumi Taniguchi (Chulip).

Japanese news site 4Gamer.net has provided a summary of the game’s backstory:

Kimura is planning to release the game on iOS later this year. “Even though this is very tiny work…I am very glad to introduce my new strange Characters and fellows to the world,” he writes about the game on Onion Games website (which happens to be fully in English). “Because this is my poem, this is my imagination 100%.”

Yoshiro Kimura originally got his start in the game industry by working at Square (now Square Enix) on games in the Romancing Saga series. He departed Square several years later with his comrades to form Love-de-Lic, where he worked on Moon and a couple of other quirky titles. Million Onion Hotel appears to be his first venture into mobile gaming.

BitSummit MMXIV will be held March 7th-9th in Kyoto, Japan. Notable guests for this year’s event include Masaya Matsuura (PaRappa the Rapper), Tetsuya Mizuguchi (Space Channel 5, Rez), and Manami Matsumae (Street Fighter II).

(Image Source: Onion Games)