October 2, 2023|

Filed under: Announcement, Event Report, Featured, Impressions

Tokyo Game Show 2023 Previews #2 – Indies Roundup

We attended Tokyo Game Show 2023 and got to play many upcoming and exciting titles of all sizes! In this article, Brando shares his impressions on 10 interesting indie games he tried out on the show floor. If you’re interested in our AAA game previews, those are covered here.

All release dates and platforms listed are current as of September 24, 2023.

Give Me Toilet Paper!

Put your Joy-Con in a roll of toilet paper and help out a man in big trouble.

Out now on Nintendo Switch
Official site: https://www.nintendo.com/store/products/give-me-toilet-paper-switch/

This is an action game where you insert a Joy-Con into a physical roll of toilet paper and roll it back and forth on a board to control an in-game roll of toilet paper. Navigate the TP down vertical levels, avoiding spikes and hazards to deliver it to the poor man stranded on the toilet below.

Goofy, but the controls are surprisingly precise and intuitive! I wonder how long the booth staff spent testing different rolls of toilet paper and different cardboards to find the perfect combination, that magical friction coefficient that synchronizes my brain with the toilet paper in perfect harmony.

Good, clean, Nintendo Labo-esque fun.

Saeko: Giantess Dating Sim

You opened your eyes to find a giant girl looking down at you…

Currently in development for PC
Official site: https://saekogame.com/

SAEKO: Giantess Dating Sim is a point-and-click visual novel depicting a thrilling life with a giant, cruel, and yet attractive girl.

In the demo, you awaken as one of a few tiny people in a dark, dirty drawer. You interact with the people and objects around you, like scraping off flakes from a ration bar (huge at your scale) for food. The people of the drawer all have parameters in the UI which presumably will need to be managed in the full game, but weren’t significant in the demo.

Then, the floor begins to rumble from footsteps of the drawer’s master: a giant college student named Saeko. In this section of the demo, Saeko talks to you, and you have to respond to her questions in real time. Answer too slow or upset her, and you’ll meet with a terrible fate.

The game’s overall aesthetic is superb. All of the rough pixelated art, the animations, and the dark music really complement each other. The demo was harsh and provocative, and left me wanting to know what happens next between Saeko and the denizens of the drawer.

Refind Self

Games can really show someone’s personality, don’t you think? By way of a simple exploration-based adventure, this data-science game analyzes your actions to estimate your personality.

Releases November 2023 for PC, Android, iOS
Official site: https://playism.com/en/game/refindself/

A contemplative adventure “game”. You play as an android, standing at the grave of the Doctor who created you. There is story to uncover, but as the game’s webpage says, “Go wherever you feel like, converse, investigate, play minigames… Simply play as you please. There are no game overs, and there’s no right or wrong way to progress.”

Whatever you do, at the end of your adventure a results screen will show the outcome of your personality analysis. The game summarizes results into over 20 personalities like “Collector”, “Gambler”, and “Philosopher”, so some of the charm might be replaying to try and get different results, or comparing your results with others.

(Below demo screenshots are in Japanese, but the game will also be released in English / Simplified Chinese / Traditional Chinese / Korean)

It’s an interesting concept that brings to mind other questions. How different is one’s “in-game” personality from their real life personality? Are the test results accurate if I know beforehand that every choice I make is being monitored?

During the demo, there was a timer in the corner of the screen counting down milliseconds until the end, so I felt pressure to go around and see as much of the game as possible. Unsurprisingly, the results screen categorized me as a “Runner”, an “active type who can achieve goals quickly and places importance on results.” I always thought I was more of a “stop and smell the roses” kind of gamer, so I’m looking forward to what the full version has to say when I can play it more relaxed!

Mr. Elevator

A puzzle solving game with an elevator motif, currently in the early stages of development.

Releases Spring 2024 (estimated) for Nintendo Switch and Steam
Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2387470/MR_ELEVATOR/

Enter a surreal world of elevators and color in this first-person puzzle game from the creators of Madorica Real Estate. The developers say it was influenced by 2000s-era Flash “escape the room” games. Development started with the artwork, and they’re now implementing the game around that.

The artwork is striking, but how does it play? This game was probably the earliest in development out of all the ones I tried at the show. The demo was functional, but many things haven’t been implemented yet, so the developers stood next to the screen with directions handwritten on paper, to hold up at key moments for the player. Really makes you appreciate all the work that goes into a well-designed tutorial.

I took an elevator to different multicolored floors, looking around hallways with abstract shapes and geometrically improbable rooms. There are notes and items hidden around, and the player can hold each in their left or right hands. Between using items, knocking on doors, and interacting with objects, the player has a lot of actions they can perform at any time. I couldn’t solve all of the puzzles without some hints from the developers, but there’s still lots of tuning to be done before final release. I’m excited to see how it turns out!

EDEN.schemata();

A multi-ending sci-fi mystery adventure game, featuring headless corpses, a sealed laboratory, a limbless android suspect/heroine, and an amnesiac protagonist.

Releases in 2024 on PC
Official site: https://playism.com/en/game/eden-schemata/

A point and click murder mystery with gorgeous art and animations. According to the official site, “The beginning sounds like any orthodox adventure game, but the more you play, the more you’ll learn about the truth, and the game’s UI and game design changes as you progress, until you reach one of multiple endings.” The TGS demo was the “orthodox” beginning of this game.

You wake up with no memory next to a headless corpse referred to as “the Professor”, and Eve—an android and the apparent killer. Point and click to collect clues and keywords, use them to find contradictions Ace Attorney style, and uncover what really happened.

You’re only given limited time to investigate before the sentry robot in the room judges Eve to be guilty, and this is where things got slightly unorthodox. The game is designed so that you fail a couple times before being able to deduct your way to the truth — the first time you fail is the first time you’re told of the keyword mechanic you can use to object to what’s been said in the dialogue window, and you get other hints for later failures as well.

You can then restart the investigation segment, armed with new knowledge. This means there’s a bit of repetition as you re-obtain keywords from the last round, but there’s enough forward momentum kept to keep you hooked and thinking about how you’ll spend your limited time next round.

Scene Investigators

A deductive reasoning game for fans of the “true crime” genre.

Releases in early Q4 2023, on PC first
Official site: https://www.eqstudios.com/sceneinvestigators
Steam demo: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1159830/Scene_Investigators/

A detective game tailored to fans of the true crime genre, escape room puzzles, and anyone who loves solving cases for themself.

The demo (available now on Steam) drops you into a crime scene and says, “have at it.” You walk around a 3D apartment and figure out what happened using intuition and clues — notes stuck to the refrigerator, messages scrawled in a birthday card, etc.

There is no handholding or hints. Pen and paper was prepared at the booth so that players could jot down notes. It’s a very pure detective experience, and seems very well done from the demo. An easy recommendation to fans of games like Return of the Obra Dinn and The Case of the Golden Idol.

100animalease

An action-adventure game where you work together with 100 animals to escape from a mysterious facility.

Already available on Steam, Nintendo Switch, iOS and Android
English Nintendo Store page, Steam page

Don’t let the cheap presentation or sad piano music fool you! This is a really funny and cute adventure game that was created in just 100 days. The animals all have their own peculiarities, and you need to befriend them in order to escape from the facility. Some will join you right away, but others first want food, or some other problem solved before they lend you their abilities.

The game has really funny writing, and the rough edges add to the comedy. Unfortunately, the English translation does have some awkwardness. According to solo developer sewohayami, he did most of it himself, with the help of machine translation. Source Gaming interviewed them after the demo, so please look forward to that being posted soon!

Even with some unnatural English, the charm shines through. There are a ton of animal jokes and puns thrown in. As you recruit more and more animals, the line of them following you gets longer and longer, to comical proportions. The requests from the animals keep you guessing, and the silly dialogue will put a smile on your face. An all-around fun and heartwarming experience.

Aojuji Hospital: Tokyo Eidolic Anatomy Division

Experience a chilling Japanese horror novel adventure set in 1999, where the realms of anatomy, folklore, urban legends, time-leap, and mystery intertwine.

Releasing in 2024 for PC (Steam) and Nintendo Switch
Official site: https://en.hyperreal.jp/game/aojuji-hospital-tokyo-eidolic-anatomy-division/

A number of horrific incidents have been occurring, caused by “eidolons”, the embodiment of urban legends. As a member of the mysterious “Aojuji Hospital” organization, you’ll investigate strange reports, witness bizarre events, and perform some paranormal autopsies in this visual novel game.

In the demo, the player investigates reports of a haunted construction site, encounters hostile Kamaitachi, then dissects one for further investigation back at their organization’s lab. It’s mostly point and click gameplay, and there was one section where you draw lines across a corpse to make incisions.

After playing, we interviewed the game’s director, Kotaro Dendaira. The tone of the demo was relatively lighthearted, but it sounds like the full game will be darker with more horror elements. The interview will be posted on Source Gaming soon!

JET Cola

Shake, shake, shake the bottle! Explode the Coke, aim for outer space, JetCola!

Releases ??? for ??????????
Official site: https://tamakotronica.itch.io/jet-cola

This is another silly game with an unusual physical controller — a plastic “JET Cola” bottle — which is a great fit for arcades and physical events like this.

You shake the bottle as much as possible within a set amount of time, then the cola within blasts the bottle up into space. If it goes far enough, you get another chance to shake up some bonus charge. There’s a high score leaderboard. That’s about it.

I tried it once and managed to get my bottle all the way to Jupiter. I wanted to try again, but there was a line of other people thirsty to play, so maybe next time. Talking to the developer, they did mention that this game could work on the Switch via Joy-Cons, but there aren’t any plans for a more substantial release at this point.

SCHiM

SCHiM is a game about jumping through shadows in a challenging and lively environment, touch the light and it’s over!

Currently in development for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, PC, Mac, Linux
Official site: https://schimgame.com/

In SCHiM, you are a cute little shadow creature who can only exist in other shadows. Rotate the camera to manipulate the shadows of objects, and jump across them to reach your goal in this puzzle platformer game.

The concept is charming, but I don’t think the game’s intro was executed as well as it could be, in the short 15 minute demo I played. You press one button to jump, and another to interact with the object whose shadow you’re in, like changing the color of a traffic light. Shoulder buttons rotate the camera in 90-degree increments (snapping to maintain the isometric viewpoint), and holding right trigger shows where your current goal is.

The game’s intro showed me how to do these things, and tested me with a bit of puzzling, but then entered a long sequence where I used none of them. It’s not a cutscene, but essentially a hallway showing a boy growing up, graduating, and entering the workforce. I realized this section was setting the story, but it’s several minutes long and the only goal is moving down and to the right, no puzzling. After the controls are explained, everything is communicated non-verbally, so maybe that’s where confusion came from.

Once you get into the proper game though, things pick up. The city is colorful and bustling, and it’s fun to experiment with objects to see what you can do and where you can go. Puzzles require this. You can’t predict which direction the jogger in the park will turn next, or when the next car will enter a road from offscreen, but the process is delightful. If you mess up and land outside of a shadow, you do get one extra jump to try and make it back to safety before getting reset to a previous shadow you were in.