arimia - my various projects and thoughts

I’ve been on a small writing hiatus the past few months, given our extremely successful physical game Kickstarter over at Élan and continuing to work on Canvas Menagerie. While I’ve been “away”, more indie devs have swarmed the scene, both new and old, making grander projects than before.

Some of these projects have slipped into the undercurrents of the Internet, swept away into obscurity, while some have barely managed to stay afloat. I hate seeing that, I really do.

These ideas have been simmering in my head for a while but I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to dedicate full articles to each topic with the breath of knowledge I’d like to give each of them. So instead, I’ll be going over different topics in bite-sized chunks, namely Kickstarters, branding, and having a critical eye.

Continue reading →

Articles

Stop Tweeting Like This

February 28, 2023March 1, 2023 arimia

Yeah so here’s my real article for February.

Time and time again, I’ll open up Twitter (already a bad move) and look through my feed- when I want to look for new visual novel projects, I look through Lemon’s feed, as she retweets stuff for visual novel developers.

Every so often, I’ll see something along these lines…

Or maybe something like this…

*no, I’m not holding a Kickstarter for Canvas Menagerie*

Or possibly even something like this…

To me, all of these tweets serve the same purpose—

Nothing.

Continue reading →

Articles

Tuesday Morning’s Newsletter Sucks

February 19, 2023February 19, 2023 arimia

Tuesday Morning has one of the most generic corporate newsletters I’ve ever had the displeasure of signing up for. However, Tuesday Morning is a more unique company than something like Olive Garden emailing you about endless pasta bowls coming back. Today I’d like to deviate from my normal articles and look into your brand and shaping your channels around it…

Continue reading →

Blog

introducing Battle Action Fantasy, a tag for shounen anime lovers

January 28, 2023May 21, 2023 arimia

Lots of us grew up with shounen anime and manga, whether it was something like Yu-Gi-Oh! or Pokémon or Naruto which in turn inspire our own stories. 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.

→ who

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

→ why

We created this tag because we wanted a better descriptor for chuuni shounen & seinen-esque games that are reminiscent of battle shounens specifically. Games that would be included:

have a focus on action and fight scenes
contain any tropes inspired from shounen and/or seinen manga
are set in some kind of fantasy world, sci-fi included

These games can include female leads, queer characters, and more. Games without action scenes or fantasy elements would not fit this tag.

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

→ how

We got this term from バトル・アクション (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.

→ 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. It can even be intended for non-male audiences, such as stories like Queen’s Quality. The ultimate answer on if your story will fit this tag: would it make sense to be serialized in Shounen Jump?

→ 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! The jam is still a few months away but you can find some more information about it on itch.io.

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

— Arimia

Articles

what to know before hiring a marketer for your game

January 13, 2023January 13, 2023 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 →