One of the things about making your way through the indie game section of the Tokyo Game Show is that some of the games you play come from developers who haven't yet found a publishing partner and are unable to take their game worldwide as a result. One such developer at this year's show was Glaciwaker Entertainment, a Taiwan-based developer who had two interesting games at their station. Both of these games have already soft-launched in a few regions but haven't yet made the jump to a wider launch.
The first game I tried is called Slime Legend. It's a cross between a social RPG and a TRPG game. You play as a slime creature who can capture or copy its enemies to use their powers or add them to its army. Battles are turn-based and take place on a relatively small grid, so combats resolve quite quickly. Defeated enemies will drop items, some of which can be fed to the slime. When you've fed it a certain amount, you can spend some resources to split the slime, generating a new monster based on a variety of factors. It's free to play, of course, but the premise is cool and the gameplay seems fairly strategic. Glaciwaker seems eager to bring this one to the West.
Their other game is called Smith Story. It's a tapping game that for the most part plays as you would expect. Tap to defeat enemies and gather resources, spend the resources on things to help you tap with greater efficiency, and so on. It has a few distinguishing points, though. The main one is that the stuff dropped by enemies can be combined to create new objects, which you would expect from a story about a smith. It's pretty good fun if you're into this sort of thing, and the art is particularly well-done. Unfortunately, Glaciwaker seems to think that Western gamers don't like that style of anime art and don't seem particularly bullish about the game releasing outside of Asia as a result.
In any case, both games are seeking a publisher for whatever plans the future may bring. Perhaps the developer is right about Smith Story not being able to stand out in the West, but I'd think that was more due to its genre than its art. Slime Legend seems like it could go over well, but the whole free-to-play strategy genre is a very competitive one. Regardless of what happens, I enjoyed checking out these two games with big ambitions. They're both fully translated and free to play, so if you happen to have a Taiwanese App Store account, you can check them out right now yourself. We'll bring you word if we hear anything about a wider release for either.
TGS 2017: Hands-On with Glaciwaker Entertainment's 'Smith Story' and 'Slime Legend' posted first on http://ift.tt/2k0LiGW
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