'Events like this really help to promote indie developers,' said Triangle Services' Toshiaki Fujino, a veteran of the Japanese indie scene. That's unusual in Japan, a country where console games dominate. While the show still focuses heavily on PlayStation exclusives and famed console game designers such as Tetsuya Mizuguchi, the presence of PC games is increasing. One well-lit area housed Oculus Rift demos, and in another, attendees used a pair of dance pads to keep up with the beat of roguelike rhythm game Crypt of the NecroDancer.īitSummit has shined a bright light on Japanese indies these past three years.

There were a crop of quality titles from Japanese developers, such as La Mulana 2 and Downwell, and from international teams, such as 17-Bit's procedural space shooter Galak-Z and Assault Android Cactus, a fun bullet-hellish throwback to classic Treasure games. The 'this' he's referring to is BitSummit, the indie game festival created by former Electronic Gaming Monthly editor James Mielke.Ī big, enthusiastic crowd, large enough that it almost became a challenge to pass through some of the gaming areas, packed the event floor for the two-day celebration of all things indie.

A couple of years ago, this wouldn't have been a thing.' 'But people are starting to realize, 'hey we can sell these games, there is a massive PC market in the rest of the world.' So you're starting to see people come together and put stuff together.

It's always been the consoles, and now mobile is huge. 'It's just never been a big mass market thing here. It just never really has been, except for the weird erotic sex games and stuff like that,' said Jake Kazdal of Osaka/Seattle-based 17-Bit. 'Truthfully, PC gaming in Japan just isn't really a thing. And for the first time, it looked as if the PC might have a future within the landscape of Japanese game development. Developers from inside and outside Japan came together with fans, international media and large companies such as Sony, Microsoft and Steam, to show off some of the best Japan's indie scene had to offer. BitSummit has inarguably helped reinvigorate the indie game scene in Japan.Ī successful introduction in 2013 begat a larger event in 2014, and the third BitSummit, held at Kyoto's Miyako Messe this past weekend, was even bigger still.

Japanese steam games