📰 2023 September Zine Issue and Wrap-Up!

Written by Renkon

It’s been a roller coaster of a month for us here at Nice Gear Games, both good and bad. We’re hoping you’ve been staying safe and well! To help you ease into October, we come bearing インディー通信 Indie Tsushin 2023 September 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!

We’ve also released the 2023 June-July, August, and September issues as the 2023 Summer Collection on itch!

The 2023 Summer Collection contains no bonus content, but is a way to support the site for a minimum of $10 and get all three issues in one convenient itch page. It’s also currently in a bundle with the 2023 Winter Collection and the 2023 Spring Collection, where you can get all nine issues for 25% off! If you want to see Indie Tsushin grow, please consider getting the 2023 Summer Collection, or sharing it with people you think would be interested in reading about Japanese indie games!

And without further ado, let’s see what’s inside!

2023 September インディー通信 Indie Tsushin Zine Issue

👑 Pickup! Yokohama Game Dungeon

We checked out twenty interesting games from Yokohama Game Dungeon on August 27!

🎮 Madorica Real Estate 2: The Mystery of the New Property

We looked at Madorica Real Estate 2: The Mystery of the New Property, a puzzle game from GIFT TEN INDUSTRY that blends analog and digital elements to create a unique escape room game experience in your home!

🎮 北海道4,500km (Hokkaido 4,500km)

We rode the rails in 北海道4,500km (Hokkaido 4,500km), a train-riding simulator by Tempoku where you spend the summer of 1967 riding all 4,500km of Hokkaido’s railway lines!

🎮 INFINOS Series

Daikon wrote about the INFINOS Series of retro-styled horizontal shooting games by Picorinne Soft!

🎮 脳みそジャーニー (Brain Journey)

Daikon wrote about 脳みそジャーニー (Brain Journey), an adorably gruesome exploration adventure game by megamittz about finding your missing brain!

🎮 BELLUMAROT

Guest writer GSK wrote about BELLUMAROT, a card game with extensive puzzle-game roots made by veteran puzzler Yanaboh!

🎤 Interview with Takashi Hamada

We had the opportunity to speak with Takashi Hamada of GIFT TEN INDUSTRY about making hybrid analog-digital video games like the puzzle-stuffed mystery game, Madorica Real Estate 2!

🎤 Interview with RYO of Picorinne Soft

We were honored to be able to speak with RYO of Picorinne Soft about making arcade-style shooting games like the INFINOS Series!

🎤 Interview with megamittz

We had the chance to speak with megamittz, the creative duo behind the upcoming horror-comedy adventure RPG, Brain Journey!

🎤 Interview with Yanaboh

We got to speak with Yanaboh about playing and loving puzzle games of all stripes, and making the competitive action puzzle game BELLUMAROT!

Other Announcements

🎪 Nice Gear Games will be at Zentame!

We’ll be at Zentame on October 21-22! If you happen to be in Gifu (possibly to check out the Yumeiro Yuram tournament?), be sure to stop by the Nice Gear Games booth and say hi! We have Indie Tsushin postcards to hand out, and you can challenge us to a round of Nice Disc! We’ll also be taking turns checking out the other games at the event and posting about it, so be sure to follow us on Mastodon!

ICYMI

📰 2023 August issue

Check out the 2023 August 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!

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