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introducing Battle Action Fantasy, a tag for shounen anime lovers

arimia

Lots of us grew up with shounen anime and manga, whether it was something like Yu-Gi-Oh! or Pokรฉmon or Naruto. For some of us, these continue to inspire our stories and we want to make games that evoke the feeling that you’re reading a story straight out of Shounen Jump. For that, we’ve created a new tag- #Battle Action Fantasy.

โ†’ who

This tag initiative was spearheaded by myself, Arimia, alongside 4noki and Pumpkin Spike with help from papaya.

โ†’ why

We created this tag because we wanted a better descriptor for chuuni shounen-esque games that are reminiscent of battle shounens specifically.

This tag is for anyone making a story-driven game that’s inspired by shounen anime & manga. If your story feels like it could’ve been serialized in Shounen Jump, then this tag is for you!

โ†’ how

We got this term from ใƒใƒˆใƒซใƒปใ‚ขใ‚ฏใ‚ทใƒงใƒณ (Battle Action), a category used in Japan for a lot of action-oriented shounen manga. By adding “fantasy” to it, it makes it more clear that these are strictly fantasy-oriented works rather than something like a beat-em-up.

โ†’ misc.

We understand the term can be a bit vague- what about chuuni works or other works that can somewhat fall under this? At the end of the day, we want this tag to be for anyone making fantasy games who’ve been inspired by action shounen anime & manga.

Some examples of battle action fantasy games include most JRPGs, Fate/Stay Night, and more. Your game may be a more comedic take on shounen tropes or something darker and more sinister. The ultimate answer on if your story will fit this tag: would it make sense to be serialized in Shounen Jump?

โ†’ how to join

The tag is #Battle Action Fantasy on itch.io. If you’ve made any shounen-inspired action fantasy game, please add the tag to your games!

To encourage new games using this tag, myself, Pumpkin Spike and 4noki will be cohosting a game jam for shounen-esque visual novels in the month of June!

If you have any questions about this tag or the jam, feel free to reach out to me on Twitter or Discord.

โ€” Arimia

Articles

what to know before hiring a marketer for your game

arimia

Marketing is hard, but you don’t need me to tell you that. If you’ve attempted any kind of long-term project, whether it be a Kickstarter, a commercial game, or just a big undertaking, you’ve probably said this line:

I need a marketer.

every developer ever

I said that very line 5 years ago when I was making my very first commercial visual novel, That Which Binds Us. But when I said this, I didn’t really understand what I was saying.

We all need to do marketing for our projects if we’re making them for any reason that’s not just “I want to have fun”. But, the thing about marketing is that it’s a broad category encompassing several different fields…

Saying “I need a marketer” is equivalent to saying “I need an artist”. Pretty much anyone is going to tell you to be more specific! Do you need a background artist, a character artist, a concept designer, a GUI designer, something else? Just like there’s multiple fields of expertise in artists, there’s multiple areas of marketing.

So today, let’s get a better understanding of what these different marketing fields are.

Continue reading “what to know before hiring a marketer for your game” →
Articles

Volatility of Social Media

arimia

There’s three things you can bet on in life- death, taxes, and social media sites fading into obscurity one after the other. Eventually, every social media site will have its sundown. People said MySpace would always be the biggest platform and that AOL would be the standard.

Things change. World events happen. Billionaires get greedy.

To preface this, I was already writing this article in regards to account termination on social media platforms, effectively shutting off that line of communication for you. But with Twitter teetering ever closer to the brink of collapse each day, I’ve changed this up a bit.

Continue reading “Volatility of Social Media” →
Articles

How to Make Your itch.io Page Stand Out

arimia

I’ve published quite a few projects to itch.io and played hundreds more from the site. Over the years, the amount of games on the site has tripled- but, just like how the site has grown, the amount of customization developers have has grown.

So then, why do so many developers make bare minimal changes to their itch.io pages? There’s so many games vying for player’s attention, so why do they do the bare minimum to get their attention? Today I want to look at various ways to spruce up your itch.io page.

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Articles

Tagging Visual Novels on itch.io

arimia

Today I thought I’d write up a little case study on tagging games on itch.io with some examples, namely Crimson Waves on the Emerald Sea.

CWES is a Victorian-esque vampire visual novel that has always been an odd spot for me to market. CWES has a gay romance, but only between one of the protags and his adult counterpart and isn’t the focus; it’s a fully linear visual novel with no choices; it’s got hints of mystery, drama, and action, but at 2~ hours long it isn’t fully any of those; etc. It has received all positive reviews on Steam & itch.io but getting people to try it has been a challenge to say the least!

Compared to my previous games, CWES’ engagement on itch.io has been abysmal- but we’re not going to fully dissect that here today. Instead, we’re here to look at store pages!

Continue reading “Tagging Visual Novels on itch.io” →