Matt S. is the Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of DDNet. He's been writing about games for over 20 years, including a book, but is perhaps best-known for being the high priest of the Church of Hatsune Miku.
This month we discuss a massive wave of censorship that is affecting the entire games industry and even forcing us to re-write chunks of our own game, The Last Waltz. Then we go on to discuss older games – particularly JRPGs – and some of the mechanics that we’re glad have been left behind. As much as we love the…
Last year, a humble Ukranian developer released Light de Deux, a sweet little romance visual novel about ballet dancers that I absolutely loved. The dance theme got to me, of course, but it was also well-written, well-drawn, and the characters inspired me so much I arranged with the developer to…
I love it when a lost project is dusted off and finished.…
When it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And in the case of…
This month we discuss a massive wave of censorship that is affecting the entire games industry and even forcing us to re-write chunks of our own game, The Last Waltz. Then we go on to discuss older games – particularly JRPGs – and some of the mechanics that we’re glad…
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Last year, a humble Ukranian developer released Light de Deux, a sweet little romance visual novel about ballet dancers that I absolutely loved. The dance theme got to me, of course, but it was also well-written, well-drawn, and the characters inspired me so much I arranged with the developer to…
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I love it when a lost project is dusted off and finished. It happens, rarely, and often it is attached to a project that was either so far ahead of its time that the money overlooked it, or was a real passion project of some artist who ran out of…
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When it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And in the case of Hideo Kojima games, they’re never broke. Konami’s new Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater is a very different kind of project to the Silent Hill 2 or Resident Evil remakes that really turned heads in recent years. This…
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Of all the examples of comfort food gaming that are out there, I’d have to say that Story of Seasons is my comfiest and tastiest. Right back as far as the Game Boy – when the series was still Harvest Moon (remembering that the “Harvest Moon” titles that get released…
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I’d only ever played The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky via the PSP version, and then via Anbernic handhelds, where I would putter around with it for a short time before inevitably finding something else to play. I came to the Trails series much later (with Cold Steel),…
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While I’ve never been much of a FPS fan, and even the mighty Doom and Quake I’ve respected but had little patience to play myself, Heretic and Hexen are the exceptions to the rule. It’s amazing what a simple change in setting can do. Despite being only minimally different to…
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Iwakura Aria caught my attention for several reasons: It’s a MAGES visual novel, and as a big-time fan of Steins;Gate and the rest of that series, I’ll play anything MAGES attaches its name to. Secondly, the project was being compared to The House in Fata Morgana, Raging Loop and Umineko,…
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Mado Monogatari is the JPRG property that gave the world the Puyos – the cute little blobs that form the basis of the Puyo Puyo series. We don’t get many of the Mado Monogatari titles out west, though (as far as I know the only one is actually Sorcery Saga…
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One of the things about J. R. R. Tolkien’s vision of Middle-Earth that people often overlook is that he was seeking to create an entire history, right down to forgotten lore and evolving cultures, languages, storytelling traditions, and legends. We often forget that to instead fixate on the fantasy adventure…
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