📰 2023 February Zine Issue and Wrap-Up!
2023年 2月 24日It is the last Friday of the month, which means it is time for the インディー通信 Indie Tsushin 2023 February zine issue!
The zine is viewable in browser on itch, and available for download in PDF, ePub, and MOBI formats on itch and Ko-Fi. We also have digital postcards and the Japanese interview editions (インタビュー特集) to download. It is PWYW so everyone can enjoy it! We really hope that you will check it out!
I have to confess that this month was quite tough for me health-wise. I do apologize for the slightly thinner issue this time around and for the long drought during the first half of February! I am so grateful to Daikon for stepping up and writing quite a few of the articles this month. I am working on getting my health back, so I hope that the updates are a bit more stable in March!
Anyway, here’s what’s inside:
2023 February インディー通信 Indie Tsushin Zine Issue
👑 Pickup! Tokyo Game Dungeon 2
Twenty games we really liked from Tokyo Game Dungeon 2!
🎮 闇鍋人狼 (Yaminabe Jinro)
Game profile of 闇鍋人狼 (Yaminabe Jinro), a mobile social deduction game by uracon!
🎮 UCHU MEGA FIGHT
Game profile of UCHU MEGA FIGHT, a fighting game made in PICO-8 by uchuzine!
🎮 Violet Wisteria
Game profile of Violet Wisteria, a retro-styled side-scrolling platformer by KaniPro Games!
🎤 Interview with uracon
We spoke with uracon about Yaminabe Jinro and their other works!
🎤 Interview with uchuzine
We spoke with uchuzine about making UCHU MEGA FIGHT in PICO-8!
🎤 Interview with KaniPro Games
We spoke with KaniPro Games about making Violet Wisteria and their deep love of retro games!
🎤 Interview with Farfama
We spoke with Farfama about making city::ephemera, the INFINITE TEARS collective, and more!
Announcements
☃️ 2023 Winter Collection
I’ve bundled together the 2022 December, 2023 January, and 2023 February issues into one collection of zines that you can buy on itch for a minimum of $10! I’m trying to raise some funds to commission writers to contribute to the zine in future. This is still very much in the planning stages, but it is something I really hope to bring to fruition sometime this year! If you want to see Indie Tsushin grow, please consider getting the 2023 Winter Collection, or sharing it with people that you think would be interested in reading about Japanese indie games!
🍀 March events
Spring means lots of cool stuff to look forward to, like the Tokyo Indie Games Summit on March 4th! Daikon and I will be walking around and playing a bunch of games there. Follow us on Mastodon to see our live-toots about it!
ICYMI
🎪 Steam Next Fest Special
We streamed a two-part special feature of Happy Hour covering some of the demos we played during the 2023 February Steam Next Fest!
📰 2023 January issue
Check out the 2023 January issue and its games if you haven’t yet! And be sure to look through our full catalog for more great stuff!
🍸 Happy Hour!
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and tune in every Thursday from 9PM UTC+9 for Happy Hour, a bilingual show introducing some indie games!
And now, a word from our sponsors
Just kidding! インディー通信 Indie Tsushin is ad-free, does not (and will never!) run sponsored content, and is mostly made by two people in their spare time. We write the articles, buy the games out of pocket, conduct and translate the interviews, lay out and edit the website and zines, pay for hosting and recording equipment, and so on. We do all this because we are gigantic nerds and hope that more people can play and appreciate Japanese indie games and their developers. We would gladly do it even if we never made a single yen from this.
BUT! If you enjoyed the zine, please consider buying our zines! Any amount would be more than enough, and would go a long way towards boosting our morale and keeping us going. Not only that, it lets us pay guest writers to appear in the zine! If you can’t afford to donate, don’t even worry about it! Indie Tsushin will always be available to read for free and will never go behind a paywall. You can help us a ton just by sharing our articles and videos, or rating and reviewing our zines on itch.io. Thank you so much for all of your kind support!
We also have a Ko-Fi where you can make a one-time donation or sign up for our ¥300/month tier.
🙏 Thanks for reading!
That’s all for now, but be sure to check the インディー通信 Indie Tsushin blog for the latest articles, follow our Steam curator account, subscribe to the RSS feed, and sign up for our monthly e-mail digest so you don’t miss anything! Hope you enjoy the issue and games!
