Just a quick one, as I’m supposed to be in the middle of cooking a curry and if my girlfriend catches me posting instead of chopping onions she’ll… WhatwasthatohgodI’mgonnadie.

Okay. Okay. It was only a passing seagull. Got to be speedy here. Side-scrolling RPG Fortune Summoners, the next translated Japanese indie game from Carpe Fulgur, now has an English-language demo. That’s here, at a svelte cost of 66MB. And its release date and price are newly confirmed as January 17th, 2012 and 25 USD/20 EUR/£16. Right, I need to slice some mushrooms before I get sliced up myself. Have fun!

Recettear merchants Carpe Fulgur recently released their second translated Japanese indie title, Chantelise, to the English-speaking world. The all-action dungeon-runner has been a little more divisive than its shopkeeping-centric predecessor, but it’s definitely picked up fans. Seems like a good time to chat to Carpe Fulgur’s Andrew Dice about the reception to the game, the debate over its difficulty, the argument around whether old Japanese gaming traditions such as painful low-health noises and repetition should be revisited, what the Japanese indie scene is like compared to its mainstream, and what to expect from project number 3, Fortune Summoners…>
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I’ve spent a few hours nuzzling up to Chantelise, the next Westernised translation/do-over of a Japanese indie title from noble Recettear chaps Carpe Fulgur. Because I appear to be pretty terrible at the game, a full Wot I Think is probably some days off. Meantime though, here’s some early impressions ahead of the release on Friday.>

It strongly evokes Recettear while being absolutely nothing like it. Obviously much of that has to do with the love it/hate it/be a grown up and not be too fussed either way art style, but even beyond that a confluence of tone (via Carpe Fulgur’s extensive and breezily charismatic rewrite of the dialogue), references (many items bear similar if not the same names) and interface design paints this as a clear companion piece.
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All of a sudden, we’re just days away from the next release from the merchants of Recettear. Chantelise: A Tale Of Two Sisters is, as is Carpe Fulgur’s M.O., a diligently-translated Western do-over of a Japanese indie title – in this case a dungeon crawler. Which means ACTION rather than COMMERCE.

Chantelise will finally be released later this week- the 29th, specifically. You can warm yourself up with a demo right now, however.
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