Lazy summers. Low-key evenings. Quiet breaks. Games have long existed to be best at these times, reveling not in excitement and epic consequences but in the smaller things. It’s a few minutes here to customize your home, some optimization or upkeep as you make small but steady progress. And never has a system been as good at this sort of low-stakes play as the Nintendo 3DS.
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Ever Oasis‘ release timing is ideal for what it’s trying to do: be, much as its name implies, a respite from the hot, dry days of summer. To be a tale about rallying and working together to keep on living and fight away the darkness that pervades our world. To bring refreshment through familiarity and sustenance, seeking not to wow you with style and taste but to quench a more primal, nostalgic thirst.
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Zoo Keeper is a great puzzle game that was released in the West! Um, on some platforms. This 3DS installment remained confined to Japan, and that’s a shame because it’s a lot of fun and could have done a lot for owners of the handheld back in 2011. Watch!
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Not long ago, we went over the Harvest Moon series. It is somewhat complicated to cover, seeing how the Bokujou Monogatari line ended up splitting into Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons outside of Japan. But that is only one reason. The other is because of Rune Factory, a spin-off that ended up founding its own line of games.
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When it comes to nonogram games, there’s one name you can’t escape. It is Jupiter Corporation, the developer behind games like Mario’s Picross, Mario’s Super Picross, Picross DS, Club Nintendo Picross, Picross e, Pokemon Picross, My Nintendo Picross: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and now Pictlogica Final Fantasy. The studio is no stranger to themed puzzles, to be sure. It has even taken time to implement elements from the original series into the games, with Pokemon Picross allowing you to take a team of Pokemon you have unlocked into battle with you and make use of their abilities. With Pictlogica Final Fantasy, they do it again. Except this time, it makes the game feel a bit like an RPG.
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The Story of Seasons series has reached quite a hallmark in regions outside of Japan this year. It has celebrated its 20th birthday! With the Bokujou Monogatari split happening in 2014, with Marvelous deciding to have XSEED work on localizations of future entries while Natsume retained the “Harvest Moon” name and began using it on a line of original games, it may be difficult to follow the course of the series. We’re here to help you figure out which farming simulations might be right for you.
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Puzzle & Dragons X was our 2016 import game of the year, and with good reason: it expands upon the foundation set by Puzzle & Dragons Z and creates a wider, more immersive world in which to match some colored orbs! Check out our video for a good look at the game.
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We’ve already gone over the freedom RPG Maker Fes can give a creator. The variable system allows players to build dating sim elements into their games. People can put together a large world with detailed events. But what if someone wants to make a game where every character can change classes? That’s possible too. You are able to set things up in such a way that your characters can determine their starting class, as well as eventually advance to a more adept version of that class later on in the game.
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RPG Maker Fes is a versatile piece of software. While there are some limitations, such as an inability to create custom sprites for use in your games, there are other ways in which the game completely opens itself up so you can play around. For example, it is incredibly easy to build relationships into the game. Whether you want to make an RPG with dating sim elements or put together a visual novel, it is absolutely possible.
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