Peret em Heru For the Prisoners
Here’s a short review for a fun little game. Peret em Heru: for the prisoners (or Shūjin e no Pert-em-Hru 囚人へのペル・エム・フル) is an independent game released on May 31, 1998. It was developed on RPG Maker 98 Dante II by Makoto Yaotani, under the pseudonym Makoto Serise, with music composed by Kei Mizuho. According to Wikipedia, it won the Platinum Award for the August rendition of the “Internet Contest Park”, held by ASCII on a monthly basis from July 1998 to June 2002.
On September 26, 2014, the fan translation group Memories of Fear released an English translation for the game. You can download both on their website.
Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1 - for people of culture
Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth1 is one of those weird Japanese games. It has a dating sim interface, ludicrous worldbuilding, anime-style underage cute girls, some scenes of pure fan service and a turn-based battle system. If you’re on this type of thing, continue on reading, if not, you’ve been warned.
The game was originally released on the PlayStation Vita in October 2013, and later on PCs in January 2015. It’s a remake of Hyperdimension Neptunia, a PlayStation 3 exclusive from 2010. While previously developed by Idea Factory and Compile Heart, Neptunia’s remakes were created by Felistella. From what I’ve found, Re;Birth1’s story is somewhat different from the original, with only a few central plot points preserved. It also incorporates mechanics from its sequels, making it a nice starting point for new players.
Cthulhu Saves the World - a fun little adventure
Who would have imagined that mixing 16-bit JRPG mechanics and aesthetics, self-referential humor, fourth wall breaking and a Great Old One from Lovecraftian horror would be a recipe for success? Robert Boyd and William Stiernberg, founders of Zeboyd Games, thought it was a great concept and the result is Cthulhu Saves the World, a more modern take on JRPGs that doesn’t take itself seriously.
The game was originally released as a digital title for the Xbox 360 in December 2010. Not long after, the developers ran a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to port it to PC and to add some cut content. The campaign was very successful, and the enhanced port was released on Steam in July 2011. It is called Cthulhu Saves the World: Super Hyper Enhanced Championship Edition Alpha Diamond DX Plus Alpha FES HD Premium Enhanced Game of the Year Collector’s Edition. The new content and improvements also came to the Xbox 360 through an update.
The Witcher — a bit of a letdown
In hindsight, it’s easy to think about 2007 as one of gaming’s greatest years, thanks to titles like Bioshock, Assassin’s Creed, Mass Effect, Portal, Mario Galaxy, Uncharted, Halo 3 and many others. It was a rough year for developers, who had to fight for the consumers’ attention. Amidst all these great releases, CD Projekt Red, at the time an unknown Polish company that only worked on translating games, released their very first title, The Witcher. Nowadays the franchise is widely known even by the general public, but for a lot of people this game was their first contact with the series.
The Witcher is an RPG originally released in October 2007, exclusively for PCs. It was inspired by The Witcher novels written by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski. With “inspired” I meant that the game isn’t a straight adaptation of the books, but functions as a sequel to their story.