Atlus’ Jack Frost & Jack-o’-Lantern Side-Scroller Is Real, And Available For Free On PC

Atlus recently showed off a side-scroller game featuring Jack Frost and Jack-o’-Lantern as a made-up game, but it’s been revealed as Shin Megami Tensei: Synchronicity Prologue, and it is available now for free.

image: http://www.siliconera.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/SS02_thumb.jpg

Shin Megami Tensei: Synchronicity Prologue was made by ledybug, the development team by Krobon, who is known to be an avid fan of the Shin Megami Tensei series.

Atlus says to not think of the game as something directly related to Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey Redux, but rather, something that tells us what was going on in the background during the U.N. Schwarzwelt Investigational Team’s activities.

image: http://www.siliconera.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/SS04_thumb.jpg

image: http://www.siliconera.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/SS05_thumb.jpg

The game is available to download here, and will be up for grabs until December 24, 2017. You can get a closer look at the game in our previous report.

Read more at http://www.siliconera.com/2017/10/16/atlus-jack-frost-jack-o-lantern-side-scroller-real-available-free-pc/#YDgGJfc30eLeHSY5.99

How to market your indie game on reddit like a pro using my proven 5-step template.

How to market your indie game on reddit like a pro using my proven 5-step template.

1. Around one year before release, use something like this: "Hey Reddit, after lurking and reading posts on /r/gamedev, I just learned to code and am working on <MY INDIE GAME>!"

2. On release day, use something like this: "Hey Reddit, I've been working on <MY INDIE GAME> for the past year and now it's finally out!"

3. Around a month after release, you probably won't get the traction that you're looking for (either because of bad marketing, bad product, bad luck, or all three). So, post something like this: "Hey Reddit, <MY INDIE GAME> failed. So here's a whole post talking about what I learned from failing!"

4. Soon after your previous post, if your game gets any kind of traction at all, use something like this: "Hey Reddit, after my last post hit the front page, <MY INDIE GAME> finally went viral! Thanks Reddit!"

5. A few months after that, you might need to use something like this: "Hey Reddit, I spoke too soon. I got too excited and quit my day job, but <MY INDIE GAME> only went viral for one day on /r/gamedev. It didn't translate into any actual sales because I just realized that other game developers aren't actually going to buy my game. Now I'm about to be homeless. Thanks Reddit!"

[Game Character Design & Scenario Writing] - Yoko Taro, The SEA Summit 2017

Q: How does Yoko Taro go about designing game characters?
A: There are 7 steps in sequence from the start to the end:

1) Budget - It is important to clarify this as it affects the scaling of story and content
2) Period - Any accurate or rough timeline given to create content, can affect number of characters and amount of interactions
3) Market - What is wanted from the market you're targeting? Platforms? Genres?
4) Balance - Gender, percentage of Males vs. Females. Number of characters, 3-5 is a good number he usually start or work with
5) Fans - If the game is a sequel, what do the fans want? You may go against their wishes and try something new
6) The Game - Gameplay Specifications, Motion Cost for your characters to integrate as content in the game
7) The Drama - World View & Characteristics, characters interact with other characters and environment

Sometimes along the way, timeline becomes constrained and things such as 1 character per level can shift content balance. Carefully split scenarios to capture sufficient content for individual characters.

For students learning character design, it is really important to know about the budget because when a real budget really occurs, creators often try too hard to merge multiple characters into 1 character (in Japan).

Q: Why does Yoko Taro always work with a dark story?
A: It was not a conscious decision at all. I think this is because I believe [Reality is just as dark]. This is proven from 2 traits...

Trait 01: Video Games are an imitation of the real world. For example, in classic Space Invaders with low quality graphics: Humans are able to perceive the black screen as "space" because there are alien sprites invading defending bases.

Trait 02: People (mostly) seek to kill in games. In a game where you kill enemies, there is no realistic possibility of a pleasant world filled with hope. Game tropes like killing 100 enemies/bosses with the main character ending up being a hero, kissed by a "princess", are the unrealistic stories (to Yoko Taro).

"Humans are smeared by their own desires, never able to run away from competition or enmities", this notion apply in many games (especially fun and popular ones).

There are a lot of wars happening right now. Competition and rivalry becomes part of a world view to the audience. Rivalry becomes about creating winners and losers. Games that depict this, I feel, can connect with others. Games are essentially parallel to the real world.

Q: How did NieR:Automata come to life?
A: [Platinum Games is the Genesis of it]

1) Platinum Games approaches Square Enix first
2) Square Enix sounds out NieR's production (Yosuke Saito, Executive Producer pitches to do another NieR game)
3) Square Enix approaches Yoko Taro. Rights of NieR is with S.E... (jokingly), I think S.E. took pity of me and gave me an opportunity for a poor to earn money (yet again)
4) Yoko Taro tries to understand and imagine in the direction and expectations of Platinum Games (since the best of developers are there)
5) Yoko Taro analyzes between Sci-Fi or Battle Adventure sort of themes. He thought perhaps Fantasy is a good pitch to Platinum
6) Yoko found out that Platinum developers actually respect the themes of the previous NieR IPs (to not change it too much)
7) Yoko always misunderstood that Hideki Kamiya was the centre of the whole company. (jokingly, he thought the company was like the Mad Max game)
8) He also realizes that Platinum is not an office with top-down hierarchy, they even take opinions and suggestions from newbies in the office
9) The RPG element is revived as Platinum wants to maintain the consistent RPG factor from past NieR titles: Gestalt and Replicant

Q: What sort of trial & error does Yoko Taro use during game writing?
A: [IMAGINE] is the core

This is by no means a short answer, I think some creators may not truly understand imagination. To me, it's something near to making something interesting out of something that no one would commonly think it's interesting.

There is also [You]. Who you are is critical to your imagination.

1) You are the center of your own world
2) To express yourself is to control what others think of you
3) Throwing a rock to someone's heart will ripple your environment
4) Ripples created actually differ from person to person based on perspectives
5) However, people hope to connect by sharing similar perspectives

[No matter how interesting an idea can be, always doubt it]

(Shows kitten picture)
- Without captions, this mostly look cute to people, even though not everyone
- With "This kitten is abandoned and abused" captions, people have the power to immediately change their perspectives when they are given different labels

It is important to analyze why people would have initial perspectives and then change their minds later from other factors.

[If you are seeking for uniqueness, you need to know the standards]

It is also good to understand that a creator can not have control to how everyone feel with just 1 story. It is important to know the customers you are servicing to. Are they a massive crowd or a niche audience?

Creators often insist on purely doing what they want but market research ends up being the most important as it depicts common connections of different perspectives. It is never about how you understand your own story.

How To Email Youtuber to Play Your Game

I couldn't believe it.

I cold emailed a single YouTuber yesterday with over 200,000 subscribers and got an almost instant reply.

You can too (hopefully) with these six tips...

1. Personalize the crap out of your email. Bonus points if you lead with humor or don't actually pitch them on your game right away. If you're going to pitch right away, try to lead off with something like, "I noticed that you enjoyed [insert game name here]. We were deeply inspired by that game in the creation of ours. You might like ours as well!" - Take a few seconds to browse the channel and learn a bit about the YouTuber, then tailor the email specifically to them. You can also develop a more authentic relationship by not pitching them right away, and being more genuine with your initial email (such as asking them a question that you're curious about).

2. Make it easy for them. Don't make them dig for basic information about the game. This is a given, but include screenshots, a link to the trailer, and a brief one-line summary in the body of the email. Then, attach a press kit. Remember, if they want to cover your game they'll need to create a custom thumbnail for it--make it as easy on them as possible. If the game's not already out, make sure to specify a release date and whether or not they'll need to wait for a specific date and time before releasing it.

3. Have patience. YouTubers have crazy schedules, and they get pitched multiple times a day. If the YouTuber doesn't reply, it's perfectly fine to send a follow-up after a week or so to check in, but don't spam their inbox. Remember that there are significantly more indie games being released than there are YouTubers willing to play them.

4. Come up with a sexy subject line and leading sentence. Make the first line count. If the first line doesn't convey enough value, the YouTuber will delete the email. The best advice is to use the road less traveled and try techniques that haven't been used before. Most YouTubers have seen generic pitches a gazillion times--don't be like everyone else.

5. Make sure your email is relevant. Most emails get ignored because the YouTuber probably has no interest in covering a game of that genre and/or caliber. Early in my career, I worked with a YouTuber with over 4 million subscribers. It didn't translate to game sales because the targeting was wrong. It's all about knowing the audience--this is kind of common sense, but make sure that the YouTuber has a track record of playing games that is similar in genre to your game.

6. Have flawless spelling and grammar. If your email looks like it was written by a 10-year-old, the YouTuber isn't going to be very convinced. Most of these horribly-written emails get tossed straight into the bin. Proofread your stuff. It's okay to have a typo here and there. I mean, I make small mistakes all the time.

Productivity Protips: How To Accomplish More Throughout Your Day

Let’s tackle distractions. These are easily one of the biggest factors in a loss of productivity. What can you do to get rid of these distractions? Firstly, turn off most notifications. Modern technology is all about giving us important info as soon as it’s relevant. You just can’t have enough of it and you’ll keep looking for more, such as social media, your email, news notifications, and such. These lull your senses into thinking that they deserve immediate attention; this goes back to the importance versus urgent discussion from the previous article. If these notifications are actually important to you, just turn off the audible and visual prompts then check on them during your break times, and be done for the day. This will save you a lot of time since you can see more at a glance rather than slowly being fed little bits of information.

Next, don’t overburden yourself. You might have hundreds of things to do, but the key to doing them all is to focus on a few specific things on a daily basis and complete those. Yes, this will leave the other tasks hanging but multi-tasking means less focus and very little progress for any of the tasks. If you try to multitask, one thing leads to another and another and at the endof the day, nothing has really been accomplished, or even worse, more work was added than done. Narrow down your daily focus to only a few goals at a time and get those accomplished.

Sometimes the best solution is to simply ignore some things. “Ignore” is a rather nasty word, but if you don’t learn to slow down the effects of distractions on your work, your important tasks won’t be receiving the attention that they deserve. Learn to postpone doing things that don’t need to be done immediately in favor of your important tasks. As long as you aren’t unhealthily stacking up your schedule before deadlines, this procedure won’t really change the end result since the tasks will be finished either way.

Important Takeaways: Distractions are easily one of the biggest factors in ruining your productivity. Some common distractions include notifications or the chain of work that comes from multitasking. For notifications, just turn them off then check on them all at once during designated breaks or free time elsewhere. If you try to multitask, you won’t end up getting much done due to a lack of focus, and in the worst cases, you’ll create more work for yourself than you started with.

Just focus on a few tasks on a daily basis and slowly build up a bunch of check marks rather than checking off everything at once. Sometimes, you should simply be ignoring things that can be postponed for a later date. As long as you evenly distribute your schedule, what gets done now and what gets done later doesn’t matter since it’ll all be done anyways. Everything doesn’t need to happen in an instant, so just pace yourself and save your sanity.

This sounds like one hell of a Steam sale

It occurs to me that naming your game Everything is the equivalent of a college band calling itself “Free Beer.”

This of course doesn’t mean everything, it means Everything, David O’Reilly’s simulation of, well, everything. It’s very hard to explain in one sentence. The game is now available on Steam, where Everything now costs $11.99.

Yet in a cruel twist, buying Everything doesn’t get you everything in Everything. The original soundtrack is $5.59 sold separately, $15.82 bundled.

The good news is, it doesn’t take long to download Everything. It’s only 2 GB.

I’m imagining the chats today with Steam customer support.

Rep: How may I help you?
Customer: I made a purchase and didn’t receive what I bought.
Rep: What did you buy?
Customer: Everything.
Rep: So what’s the problem?
Customer: What’s the problem? I’m playing as a goddamn seagull or something! Where’s my key for Ghost Recon: Wildlands?!

Well, its rather hard to explain in such a short sentences of article, so just read a full review at Polygon 

RPS KNIGHTS - an RPG stylish Rock Paper Scissor Game

Do you like playing Rock Paper Scissor? How about if we add an rpg theme style to it? and... we give another challenge by giving units, the more unit you have the more powerful you are! and last but not least, can you survive a 100 wave? There! you get RPS Knight!

Yeah, this light mobile android games is as cool as the game's name. it has good pixel classic graphic and a solid theme. there are 3 heroes we can choose from as the game's mechanic said, Knight (Rock) - Spearmen (Scissor) - Magician (Paper). and each one can defeat and be defeated by each other.

if you can defeat the enemy, you reserve one unit, that unit will be moved to the back of the army, and the next unit will battle the next enemy, and so on until one of the army doesnt have unit anymore. oh yeah, you will get a draw if you and the enemy have the same unit battling each other, and the result will be lose to all side.

There 2 modes in the game, Campaign and Challenge mode. The fun is when you beat some wave, the wave will be longer, where you cant see the back row of enemy unit and we have to think strategically to defeat the enemy while maintaining our units. Its a solid minigame with style, with a solid gameplay, theme, art, and music, but thats all. after you get how to play it and you can beat the enemies easily, after some time you will get bored. Waiting for their next update for now.

To conclude my references, here how i play the game on my device.

.Great Games Reference