The 7th anniversary of LA-MULANA

As we posted on 1st of April, the most popular game among our works is “Rose & Camellia”.
LA-MULANA could not reach the famousness even though how much effort we put into LA-MULANA’s promotion, and the title make us realize how difficult public relations is.

“So, you can take advantage of “Rose & Camellia” for LA-MULANA’s promotion.” PLAYISM-man said at the party of BitSummit.
“Sounds good.” I said while drunk.

It was a bit troublesome though, we did make this for celebrating the 7th anniversary of LA-MULANA.

Rose & Camellia & LA-MULANA

You should know how to play it.

Visit the United States

I have to do everything what I can do before publishing La-Mulana on Steam, because it is the last and the biggest opportunity. But, there are things that are just out of my control. In particular, to sell La-Mulana on Steam is meaningless if it is not sold in huge numbers in overseas, so we must promote it in overseas. However, we are in financial difficulties. We know it is a golden opportunity, but it’s impossible to get out of Japan and do advertising campaign overseas. Wait a second, will we regret not to do that even if we get into debt? But…

Since foreign journalists who are attending at Bit Summit are originally interested in Japanese indie games, so we have to make other people aware of La-Mulana. Then, I have got the biggest offer ever in the biggest opportunity.

I am going to GDC2013, and I will give a speech at the conference. As indie game developers, or rather as Japanese, I will be the second person who gives a solo speech. The first person is Mr. Amaya who is known as the developer of Cave Story.

About my speech, I wonder what I should say in the same way as the speech I did in Taiwan because we haven’t developed high quality games that we can be proud of. Well, it would be successful if I make the audience laugh. Instead, I am going to do everything such as interview and promotion. I have got support of PLAYISM, Bit Summit and so on for the visit to the U.S.

Wanna peep at IGF which is held next to the conference. Wanna talk with foreign indie game developers. Wanna meet La-Mulana enthusiasts if there is a chance.

Things are getting bigger and bigger after La-Mulana was Greenlit, but in contrast, it is still quiet in Japan. But, I am pretty sure that it is a climax of La-Mulana project and NIGORO’s activity until now. Don’t miss it!

About LA-MULANA and the future of Japanese Indie Games.

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?

Greenlight!

We know there are many voices that you want to release La-Mulana at Steam.
We got to be able to say “OK, please check it out.”

For selling the games at Steam, we must send the games to Steam, and apply to Steam for selling them.
But we can’t apply for it for a long time because Steam were making a new system.

That system is GreenLight. It is a system that people decide the game that they want Steam to sell by vote.
Everybody want to buy La-Mulana at Steam, be sure to vote.

If you have an account of Steam, you can press a thumb button to Yes.
It seems that a lot of people visits La-Mulana page at Steam, but Calculated ratings is 3%.

I wonder when it will be 100%. It will take a long time to be 100%. Then, we are waiting for it while we are making new game.

NIGORO website renewal

Japanese version has already been made public. We finished English version because we released La-Mulana for PC to overseas.

Until now, we have given only game manuals in English, but we barely translated all pages.”Lonely House Moving” and “Rose and Camellia 2” were translated into English. They were only Japanese version.

It is difficult to make new Flash games because we started the sale of games. We will carry the all news besides La-Mulana’s news at here. Come and check them out from now.