PLAYISM contributes an article to our website.
PLAYISM localizes ingenious PC games from all over the world to Japanese and distributes them as download service.
If you read Action Game Side, you’re probably already aware that we have joined forces with NIGORO. (If you haven’t read the latest issue yet, go out and buy it now!)
We are distributing the PC Remake of LA-MULANA by NIGORO both in Japan and abroad, and the game has received high critical acclaim in all regions, quickly becoming the number 1 best-selling game on PLAYISM.
As you may know, PLAYISM mainly assists in the localization (translation), sales and promotion of video and computer games.
To be honest, we didn’t really have to do much in NIGORO’s case.
For one thing, the localization of LA-MULANA had already been done. And there was the fan translation as well, of course.
And NIGORO was already pretty well-known overseas thanks to not only LA-MULANA, but “Rose & Camellia” and “Mekuri Master” as well.
Furthermore, the friendly people at NIGORO speak English too, so when it came to selling the game, all they needed to do was implement a sales function on the LA-MULANA site and the spread to the West would pretty much take care of itself.
(Not to mention the fact that this wouldn’t involve any additional fees)
Of course there are several Americans on the PLAYISM team, so by having them take care of all correspondence, the development process was made easier as it was much faster and safer to have our team handling the testing and PR of the localized version.
However, this was pretty much the only merit for NIGORO, so they basically entrusted us a project where “nothing was impossible.”
So why did PLAYISM and NIGORO team up?
That’s because we have something in common.
Our desire to “bring Japanese Indie Games to the rest of the World.”
This is the very reason we decided to partner up.
They basically told us that we could do with LA-MULANA what we wanted, as long as we used it to bring Japanese Indie Games to a global audience (and made absolutely sure that we did).
LA-MULANA is now available on overseas PC game distribution sites such as GOG, Gamer’s Gate and, starting from today, even on DESURA.
We’re also planning a release on STEAM, so please Greenlight us!
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=93001822
This is a major step towards bringing Japanese Indie Games to a wider global market.
Especially in the case of GOG, LA-MULANA is apparently the first Japanese Indie Game to be released on the service.
We’re expecting more and more Japanese Indie Game creators to appear in the future.
But this also requires the creators to actively decide to make their appearance.
We can’t just keep saying that the entirety of the Japanese Indie Game industry consists only of “Cave Story,” can we?
I’m happy to hear about your plan for the japanese indie games out there. I love Cave story and I recently bought La-Mulana, I’m sure there are many other good games out there and I want to play them too ^^. I can’t read japanese but I love it when there’s an option to enable original voice. Keep up the good work.
I hope you make it on Steam. You deserve the success!
Do you have any other projects in the works?
Thank you for your ambition to share Japan’s indie scene with the rest of the world. We’ve already seen it grow at least a little thanks to yourselves and other similar groups like Carpe Fulgur.