Operation Backlog Completion 2025

Spiritual Successors to Wild Arms and Shadow Hearts Announced for Double Kickstarter

 Video games  3 Responses »  Tagged with: , , , , ,
Aug 262022
 

I keep hoping for a new Wild Arms announcement. I keep hoping for a Shadow Hearts revival, too.

But in the absence of those two things, spiritual successors have been announced.

Yes, one for each.

WILD BUNCH Productions, founded by Wild Arms creators, has announced Armed Fantasia: To the Ends of the Wilderness, a large-scale JRPG inspired by Wild Arms.

At the same time, YUKIKAZE, founded by Shadow Hearts creators, has announced gothic horror JRPG Penny Blood, inspired by Shadow Hearts.

The two will hold a joint Kickstarter for these games, with a combined funding goal of $750,000 for PC releases. The campaign will begin on August 29.

Overviews of the two games, along with information about how the joint Kickstarter will work, are detailed here by Gematsu. An interview with the two development teams also sheds further light on them.

What stands out to me the most is that these two games are fully embracing their inspirations. Armed Fantasia looks like Wild Arms, and Penny Blood looks like Shadow Hearts.

(According to the interview, the Armed Fantasia characters being called Pathfinders is even just a different translation of the same Japanese word that was translated as Drifters in Wild Arms.)

Armed Fantasia is aiming to have a “gigantic” world map, with the aim being a world map “so big that there isn’t a word to express how big it is.” That makes me a little nervous, both because this is a crowdfunded project and because having your goal just be to have the biggest map possible doesn’t feel to me like the best priority. However, it also sounds like there’s a chance that it’ll be a traditional JRPG world map, which would make me very happy.

Moving on to Penny Blood, while it looks like a Shadow Hearts successor through and through (it’s not visible in any of the screenshots, but the interview describes a “Psycho Sigil” that sounds like the new version of the Judgement Ring), it stands out from its predecessors by involving murder investigations. According to the interview, sub-quests will feature “fingerprinting, voiceprint profiling, mental profiling such as Rorschach tests, and other pioneering methods of criminal profiling.”

One concern I had initially is that the funding goal seems low for this sort of project, but it sounds like the Kickstarter is intended to be used to demonstrate interest and get a publisher on board. With as ambitious as these games look, I hope they succeed.

So a Wild Arms spiritual successor and a Shadow Hearts spiritual successor that’s also a detective game; I haven’t been this excited for a Kickstarter in quite a while! Check out the articles I linked above to learn more about the games, and then join me in waiting for the Armed Fantasia and Penny Blood Kickstarter campaign to go live!

What are your thoughts on Armed Fantasia and Penny Blood?

The Nine Sols Demo is Out and Seems Promising!

 Video games  No Responses »  Tagged with: ,
Apr 042022
 

Last week we talked about Nine Sols, the upcoming Taopunk action platformer from Red Candle Games, and how a demo was supposed to come out.

Well, the demo is out now on Steam, so I tried it out over the weekend.

I was surprised by how quickly I became interested in its story and characters. The demo seems to be the start of the game, with Yi living alongside a human child before a sinister ceremony causes him to embark on his mission.

Combat has a few different elements that took a bit of getting used to, but once I practiced with it, I liked it. In addition to your basic attack, you can deflect enemy attacks to build up energy and then unleash it in a special attack.

That attack is much more effective than simply hacking at enemies, which led to a rhythm of deflecting strikes and then attacking.

There are certain spots where you can rest, restoring your health and healing items and acting as a checkpoint. It doesn’t seem as though you’ll level up stats in that way, though. Instead, there are unlockable nodes on a skill tree to provide you with upgrades and benefits.

The demo lasts up through the first boss fight, but a second, more challenging boss is also accessible from the main menu afterwards.

I enjoyed the Nine Sols demo a lot, so I’m looking forward to the main game. The only concern I have is that combat could start to feel repetitive (especially long boss fights), but overall I liked what I saw in the demo and am interested in how it will progress.

I’ll probably back the Nine Sols crowdfunding campaign now, so be sure to take a look at the Nine Sols demo to see what you think.

Action Platformer Nine Sols is the Next Game from Red Candle Games

 Video games  5 Responses »  Tagged with: ,
Mar 302022
 

We’ve talked a few times about Red Candle Games, as they developed the excellent horror game Detention, as well as Devotion, which I finally got to play last year.

But their next game, Nine Sols, is something significantly different.

Nine Sols was first announced last December after being teased earlier in the year, and Red Candle Games recently started a crowdfunding campaign for it.

(They’re handling the campaign personally, which I wonder if is a response to the disaster that was Devotion’s delisting. I’ve seen a few sites say it’s being funded through Kickstarter, but either those writers are using “Kickstarter” in a generic sense or I missed something.)

While Detention was a 2D side-scrolling horror game and Devotion was a first-person horror game, Nine Sols is a 2D action platformer set in a “Taopunk” world, with gameplay inspired by Sekiro, Hollow Knight, and Katana Zero.

You’ll play as Yi, a forgotten hero on a quest for revenge against the 9 Sols that rule over the land. It features an interconnected world made up of multiple regions, a leveling system with skills and upgrades to unlock, and deflection-based combat, among other details explained on the crowdfunding page.

It looks pretty good, and normally I would have said I’d absolutely back their next game, but I’m a little unsure since it’s so different from their previous games, especially since I haven’t played any of the listed inspirations (yet). However, GamesRadar reported that a demo is coming next week, so if so, I’ll be sure to check that out.

Anyway, the crowdfunding campaign is doing quite well, as they already made it well past their initial goal and are working toward the first stretch goal.

If you’re interested in Nine Sols, be sure to check out the crowdfunding page. How do you think this intriguing departure will compare to their past games?

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