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Nyu Media, Playism and other doujin game publishers have teamed up to hold a “Japanese Indie Festival” discount sale on Steam that will run until August 17th. The sale is being held to celebrate the Comic Market 86 event in Japan.

The cool thing about the sale is that nearly every game can be picked up for less than $5. The only ones over $5 are World End Economica: Episode 1 and Astebreed (above). Everything else ranges from $1.01 to $4.99.

Some of the highlights are: Croixleur for $3.99, La-Mulana for $2.99, Vanguard Princess for $2.49 and Cherry Tree High Comedy Club for $2.71. Those are some pretty steep cuts, considering some of these games normally cost as much as $14.99.

The post Steam Sale Has A Bunch Of Japanese Indie Games On Discount For Dirt Cheap appeared first on Siliconera.

Croixleur Sigma, a hack-and-slash action game by doujin developer Souvenir Circ., will be available on Steam and other PC distributors on April 30th. The game is an enhanced version of the original Croixleur, which is already available on PC.

Here’s a list of features that you’ll find in Croixleur Sigma, from Nyu Media:

• Play as either Lucrezia Visconti or sca Storaro and battle your way up the tower through hordes of oncoming monsters to learn the secrets behind the Adjuvant Trial!
• 20 Weapons to collect, each with a unique special move! Pick the load-out that suits your fighting
• Simple but satisfying combo system, including Move Canceling, Attack Nullifying, Invincible Dashing, and Rigid Body States!
• Take on the Adjuvant Trial in Story Mode with separate stories and multiple endings for both
• Test your mettle and hone your skills in Time Attack Mode, Survival Mode, and Challenge Mode!
• Local 2 player co-op: take on the monster hordes with a friend in in Dramatic Battle mode!
• Full Japanese voice over
• 42 achievements, online leaderboards, and Steam Trading Cards!

Croixleur Sigma will run at 60FPS. You can view a trailer for the game above. You can read our playtest of the original Croixleur here.

The post Croixleur Sigma Coming To PC On April 30th With Improvements appeared first on Siliconera.

Doujin game publisher Nyu Media have announced their slate of games, which will begin releasing this winter through spring 2014. Below is a list of what you can expect to see.

Yatagarasu: Attack on Cataclysm:

Slated for release in early 2014, with new characters and features, as well as in-game commentary during fights by James Chen, UltraDavid, & Maximilian.

Croixleur: Steam Edition:

New story, weapons, challenge mode, cutscenes and voiceovers in Steam Edition.

Gigantic Army:

A “Love letter” to Assault Suits Valken/Cybernator. Trailer above.

Supercharged Robot Vulkaiser:

A throwback to ‘70s mecha anime shows. Japanese trailer above.

Armed Seven:

2D side-scrolling shooter with 12 weapons, five stages and four difficulty levels.

Below is a quick infographic of all the above mentioned games. Click on it to enlarge.

The post Nyu Media’s Slate Of Doujin Games Has Fighters, Shooters And Beat-em-ups appeared first on Siliconera.

Rice Digital in the U.K. are running a sale on their digital store, where a bunch of indie games have been discounted by 50% for the duration of this weekend.

This includes games like Yatagarasu (£3.99), Cherry Tree High Comedy Club (£2.49), Croixleur (£1.75), Fairy Bloom Freesia (£2.49), Eryi’s Action (£1.99), the Exceed shoot-em-ups (£1.99 each) and more.

You can access the store here.

The post Yatagarasu, Cherry Tree High, Croixleur And Other Indie Games On Sale In U.K appeared first on Siliconera.

Lucrezia, a prodigy from Aristocrat’s Academy Besieris is set to win an ancient trial to ensure that her faction gains power. Standing before her is Franzesca, the best student from Knight Academy Scelta. These two warriors will have to compete over each other to ensure that their faction is victorious and they are finally able to take a bath together again. Lucrezia especially can’t bring herself to forget Franzesca’s, pure white skin. This is the setup for Croixleur.

In Croixleur, you will have to defeat all of the enemies in a given floor before you are allowed to progress further into the tower. The further you go, the stronger the enemies become and the final level houses a final boss that is fairly intimidating. This is pretty much what you will do in Croixleur’s simple story mode.

Croixleur may be a simple game, but it's refined to a degree that makes combat satisfying. Lucrezia’s main method of attacking is her 3-hit combo with her sword of choice, which is done by tapping the attack button repeatedly. However, simply repeating the combo will lead to a quick death as the combo involves a good deal of recovery time. Thankfully, Lucrezia can cancel her attack animation into either a dash or a special attack, which can lead her to safety or to deal that extra bit of damage to just dispatch an enemy.

In addition to move cancelling, Croixleur also provides several defensive options when Lucrezia is in a bind. Dashing provides a way out when being ganged up by multiple monsters and on top of that, provides a short amount of invincibility.  It is an efficient evasive manoeuvre but its usage is dictated by the MP bar. Empty the MP bar and Lucrezia will be a sitting duck for a couple of seconds while the bar recharges.

Another method of avoiding damage is significantly more difficult, but is essential for survival in the higher difficulties. By timing an attack just as an enemy’s attack is hitting Lucrezia, the attacks will clash and cancel the corresponding damage. Clashes can be useful for mobs as they only attack in a single pattern, but can be more difficult to pull off on special monsters.

So if Croixleur is just a game about defeating everything that moves, wouldn’t that make it pretty easy and repetitive? In reality, Croixleur is far from being easy aside from the first few floors. After fooling you into a false sense of security in the first few floors, the enemies get stronger, faster and deadlier in the later levels. Avoiding damage is essential as health recovery items are only dropped by special enemies which are sparse and are difficult to dispatch.
In addition to the difficulty, Croixleur also imposes a time limit of 15 minutes to arrive at the bottom of the tower or it’s game over. A 15 minute time limit is actually not that strict, but it does add up to the tension to shave those precious seconds off before being treated to a game over screen. In case you are able to complete the game in less than 10 minutes, you will be treated to an alternate ending.

My only real complaint about Croixleur can be summarised by its lack of variety in enemy and landscape designs. Lucrezia will only fight on one arena throughout story mode and the only way to distinguish progress through different depths is by the colour of the arena. Enemy grunts are also given the palette swap treatment, giving a total of 7 unique enemy models with 3 of them being palette swapped multiple times. This is more likely a budget issue, considering Croixleur is a doujin game.

All-in-all, Croixleur provides a very entertaining, yet short burst of fun. It may not be the stylish-action game that it wants to be, but it provides more than enough action to keep you on your toes. It’s a bit too short for its own good, but trying for a no damage or speed run in story mode for the best time will give you a extra hours of enjoyment. Croixleur costs $4.99 or £3.49 via Rice Digital on PC.

Food for thought:

1. Weapons are unlocked by playing through story mode. Different weapons unfortunately only provide different aesthetics as Lucrezia’s attack animation is still the same no matter which weapon you use.

2. You can only hold a maximum number of 5 bombs. Each enemy defeated will drop coins. Collect 100 of these to replenish your bomb supply.

3. There are also time attack and endless mode to accompany the story mode. It is best to attempt these modes after a story mode playthrough to ensure that you have enough weapons to take on hordes of enemies.

4. Lucrezia levels up once she defeats enough enemies, but I couldn’t find a correlation between levelling and her stats.

The post Croixleur: A Short But Sweet Action Game appeared first on Siliconera.

Croixleur, Nyu Media’s next doujin title, will be released on January 24th. Today, Nyu Media announced a price for the game—$4.99.

As previously reported, Croixleur is an action game set in a tower where you progress from floor-to-floor by defeating enemies. It allows for advanced techniques like move cancelling, invincibility frames and more, and you can read about it here.

Croixleur will be released for PC via Desura, Gamersgate and other avenues. The game also has a page on the Steam Greenlight program for upvoting.

The post Croixleur, Nyu Media’s Action Doujin Title, Will Cost $4.99 appeared first on Siliconera.

Nyu Media’s next doujin game is Croixleur, a dungeon action game with RPG elements. Croixluer is developed by a Japanese indie developer named souvenir circ. and lets you choose from three modes—Story, Score Attack and Endless.

In Story mode, you battle through a tower, defeating all the monsters on a floor to progress onto the next. Depending on your performance, you can unlock multiple story routes and endings. Meanwhile, Score Attack lets you battle waves of monsters to earn as many points as you can within a three-minute time limit. Finally, Endless mode is an endurance run with no time limit at all, and you need to survive for as long as you can.

Something that stands out about Croixleur is that it lets you play around with advanced techniques like move cancelling, invincibility frames during dashes, and so on. You can read more about the intricacies of the game here.

A demo for Croixleur is available for sampling, which you can find here. The full game will be released on January 24th for PC via Gamersgate, Desura and other PC services.

The post Nyu Media’s Next Doujin Game Has Move Cancelling And Invincibility Frames appeared first on Siliconera.

Doujin publisher, Nyu Media, have announced their second wave of doujin titles scheduled for release in the near future. Here’s an infographic they sent out, to give one a quick glimpse the line-up:

(click to enlarge)

Here’s the full list of all five games, along with a summary (quoted verbatim) and footage for each game, sourced from various avenues on the net:

Eryi’s Action (Xtal Sword)

• Prepared to be trolled!
• A charming 2D platformer with addictively frustratingly gameplay!
• You will die a LOT, but you WILL keep going back for more!
Japanese homepage: https://xtalsword.com/html/eryi.html

Kamui (Siter Skain)

• Widely acclaimed as one of the best shoot 'em up games ever!
• Classic 2D STG with a lock-on mechanic and gameplay that uses depth-of-field!
• The final chapter of “The Tale of Alltynex” which covers all 3 Siter Skain games.
Japanese homepage: https://siterskain.com/kamui/index.html

RefleX (Siter Skain)

• An advanced 2D STG with an exciting reflection gameplay mechanic!
• Take on Earth's government forces, then defend the Earth against an alien invasion!
• The second chapter of The Tale of Alltynex.
Japanese homepage: https://siterskain.com/reflex/index.html

ALLTYNEX Second (Siter Skain)

• Battle through the defenses of a rogue AI to retake the Earth for mankind!
• Full polygon, 2.5D shoot em ‘em up with lock-on and melée mechanics!
• The first chapter of The Tale of Alltynex.
Japanese homepage: https://siterskain.com/as/index.html

Croixleur (souvenir circ.)

• High speed 3D action adventure with RPG elements!
• Fight your way through dungeon floors of enemies to reach the deepest level!
• Collect XP and money to level up and buy new weapons and skills!
Japanese homepage: https://lost-identity.jp/souvenir

All five titles will be released this fall through winter across major PC digital distribution platforms, Nyu Media say. Demos for each game will be released ahead of the release of the full version.

The post Nyu Media’s Second Wave Of Doujin Games Include Siter Skain Titles appeared first on Siliconera.