「RISINGSUPERBLOG」

2025 marks my third BitSummit, and it was a good one! After living in Japan for nearly three years, this time I was running into so many people that I knew randomly around the event. At first when I get to these events, I tend to feel a huge wave of impostor syndrome. This one was no different, but thankfully with friends and peers around, I was able to get out of it and enjoy the show. Sadly, I neglected to take many pictures of the venue, so you’ll just have to enjoy this image of me with Hideki Kamiya. I ran into him randomly at the beginning of the first day, and if he hadn’t been on his way to a thing, I would have loved to have had a chance to talk to him more. Alas! Also, I lost over 10kg recently! Flatter me, please!

During this year’s BitSummit, I played around fifteen games. Five of them really stood out to me in a powerful way, so I’ve put together some small write-ups on them for you all! Consider this a small list of games I think you ought to keep an eye on. I would have liked to have fallen in love with more tiny games at the show, but it wasn’t in the cards. Maybe next year I’ll have to spend more time sleuthing out the one-person booths!

Majogami

Publisher: Inti Creates
Developer: Inti Creates
Anticipated Release Date: October 30th, 2025
Screenshots used sourced from publisher

Starting off strong, we have Majogami. The game was only just revealed earlier this month as Inti Creates’ big 30th anniversary game project. After seeing the super polished character design and hella’ flashy trailer, this went right to the top of my BitSummit list. After a brief impostor syndrome-induced panic attack at seeing all the amazing games on display, I beelined right to Majogami and it did not disappoint.

Fundamentally, the game is a straightforward 2D action game. Protagonist Shiroha has all the basic stuff you’d expect, with the one big gimmick being a lock-on/slash system called “Setsuna” that can zip you across the screen to your target. While regular sword slashes are mostly enough to do the business, enemies and obstacles are often set up so that you can perform rapid successive Setsuna slashes to cut through the stages at high speed. Shiroha feels really snappy in terms of her base controls, and Setsuna is a great extension of her abilities. She’s definitely got the juice, so I just hope Setsuna stays fresh enough to maintain its vibe across the whole game. These Setsuna moves can also be done horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, and also charged up to perform successive ones in various directions. Certain enemies need to be attacked with specific directional Setsuna strikes to exploit their weaknesses, which is a nice wrinkle.

Sheepishly, I have to admit that during the demo I didn’t fully grasp this directional Setsuna system properly. Bearing in mind I only played for around ten minutes, this is almost certainly just a me issue, but even by the end I wasn’t able to perform these reliably. Are you supposed to use your position relative to an enemy to know which one you’ll throw out when you hit the button? Tilt the stick? I’m not sure! Again though, I probably just need more time with the game.

Rounding out the demo was a multi-phase against another witch character, and while I’m still pretty rough at the game and it was a demo level, I found it to be very enjoyable. There were clear uses for your Setsuna slashes as you used it to sever horrifically big fingers off of her spider body, plenty of opportunities for thoughtful offensive approaches without too much waiting around for phases to move on, and even a screen-filling piece of cut-in art that led into her strongest attack. Inti Creates is generally pretty good at bosses, so it’s no big surprise, but after absolutely steamrolling various bosses in Donkey Kong Bananza on the train ride over to Bitsummit, it felt nice to fight something that put up a bit more of a fight.

Keeping up on the praise, the game’s art is a huge high point to me. The game’s characters look gorgeous and super well polished, using a mix of sprite animation and 2D rigged animation for the characters. I believe this is a first for Inti Creates, who normally only use more traditional sprite animation. The backgrounds were a nice mix of simple 3D with strong 2D assets, which they’ve dabbled with for the Gunvolt titles, but never to this degree. It’s quite remarkable that their first foray in this particular look has delivered such strong results, and the game’s particles, and effects really look sharp as well. Truth be told, I don’t pay enough to WordPress to be allowed to post videos, so you’ll just have to watch a trailer to see for yourself! Character design is similarly powerful, with the main cast designed by Natsume Yuji, who also had the role for the Bloodstained titles. I’m an absolute sucker for their design work, and this fun take on witches really nails my tastes quite well. I mean look at this outfit. What a fun design.

It’s of course way too early for me to make any big call on this game’s overall quality, but what I played was extremely promising and for my tastes was much more enjoyable than earlier Inti Create action games like Dragon Marked for Death and the Gunvolt series. All I know is that there was certainly enough on offer for me to be confident that I’ll be lining up on day one for some high speed witch action.

Check out Majogami on Steam!

Dreams of Another

Publisher: Q-Games
Developer: Q-Games
Anticipated Release Date: October 10th, 2025
Screenshots used sourced from publisher

Probably best known for the Pixeljunk series (although I wonder if I’m exposing my age by saying such a thing in this day and age) Q-Games is back at it again, but this with a third person shooter where you wield a sub machine gun and grenades. In true Q-Games fashion though, the game is artsy as hell. Instead of shooting at soldiers or monsters, you and your pyjama-clad protagonist use your weaponry on the cloudy looking environment in order to pull it together and reveal the world around you. There we go, that’s the Q-Games charm we know and love.

In the brief demo stage I played, you use your armaments to find a few characters who direct you along the story’s path in a small town square area. The game was very cute all around, characters and dialogue included, but it was a rather simple affair punctuated with a moving target that needed shooting at the end. While I really liked the demo (probably in-part due to the sheer artistry of it), I do feel that the scenario I played was very much on the simple side in a way that makes me wonder about the bulk of the experience. Is the whole game just talking to characters and getting pointed in a direction mixed in with shooting at the environment to find a path? Admittedly, most shooter games are basically that with a bit more target shooting mixed in, so maybe I’m expecting too much, but it was a very simple scenario either way.

The game thankfully felt pretty solid to play, and as I’m sure you’ve noticed in the screenshots, it looks hella’ good. Staff on hand explained to me that the game uses a point cloud system to assemble the environment as you shoot it, and I really have to give it to ‘em on the specific artistic execution of the idea. Despite the game obviously being a very modern game, I felt like there was almost a low-fidelity retro look to the world once you’ve shot it and the particles have assembled. This made for a spectacular contrast with the particles in their disassembled state, when they bear a dreamy bubble-like appearance. This particular aspect is really the whole backbone of the game’s aesthetic, and I truly feel they nailed it. As a final note, I played the game on a TV, but there is a VR mode available for PSVR2 (as far as I can tell, the VR mode is currently console exclusive despite the game also launching on Steam). A big VR fan/acquaintance of mine told me at the show that he actually preferred the flat version to the VR version, but take it as hearsay for now. I’m keen to take it for a spin myself when the game launches.

Check out Dreams of Another on Steam!

Piggy One Super Spark

Publisher: room6
Developer: hako life
Anticipated Release Date: 2025
Screenshots used sourced from publisher

As a longtime fan of artist/animator hanabushi, the announcement that his Kung-Fu Piggy One art series was being adapted into a game was seriously huge to me. I’ve bought his various art books and even stayed up into the early morning a few years ago to watch Zutomayo’s famous Study Me music video debut the characters in animated cameo form. His works inspire me a lot, and I’m always keen to see what’s new with the Kung-Fu Piggy One Characters in particular. I had never thought it would have been in the form of a game! Piggy One Super Spark drops the “Kung-Fu” bit from the title, as it leaps from his pages into a new 2D indie platformer format. Though the game is a bit on the simple side, it’s still a lovely little platformer with a hell of an art director behind it.

Before we get to that, I have a critique for the publisher; the booth! It was cute, but quite frankly annoying. If you have enough money to buy a standalone booth space at an event, please have more than two setups on hand for your 10+ minute demo! The small crowd snaked around the edges of the booth, and the one staffer on site did not have a strong grasp of how to coordinate a crowd. One cute element was that the booth opted to have the game presented on CRTs, which looked excellent, but as my assigned TV had speakers built in, I suppose they decided that I didn’t get a pair of headphones like my neighbor. Hearing the game’s music was challenging in such a noisy environment, so that was a shame. I’ll leave some booth shots at the bottom of this section so you can have a look.

The demo opened with a short Japanese-only intro cutscene where Super Spark KFPO’s dual protagonists Xiamy and Yuez find a mysterious baby and need to do… something with it. The demo’s font made it a bit hard to read the kanji on the CRT, so I don’t really know what they were doing, but no big deal. Again, cute booth idea, but the devil’s in the details!

Once I understood the story properly, I was quickly plopped into a platforming level. The characters can move, jump and do a directional air dash alongside engaging with a few area specific gimmicks (like directional launchers and telekinetically movable physics objects). Their capabilities felt minimal, but they had juuust enough to make for a fun time. The level design in the demo was sadly nothing you haven’t seen before in dozens of physics-based 2D platformers. Although I had fun, I couldn’t fully escape the thought that without my personal attachment to hanabushi’s work, the game would perhaps seem somewhat unremarkable. I do at least think that the level of artistic execution in Super Spark is quite above average. A small saving grace, but a real positive nonetheless. The trailer does promise a few elaborate high-speed setpieces that I have no doubt they’ll be able to deliver on, but the meat of the game does seem like it’ll largely be a test of the level designer’s chops making platforming stages that can stand out in a comically overcrowded genre.

Despite the annoying booth experience, I liked the demo a fair bit. I’m excited to play the whole game whenever it releases, and I really hope the Kung-Fu Piggy One train never ends. Anime adaptation next? PLEASE???

Check out Piggy One Super Spark on Steam!

Skate Story

Publisher: Devolver Digital
Developer: Sam Eng
Anticipated Release Date: 2025
Screenshots used sourced from publisher

Ever wish you could play a Tony Hawk game where you play as a creature made of glass and have to skateboard through awful demonic obstacles as you hurtle through objectives? Boy does developer Sam Eng have the game for you.

Skate Story is an intensely moody game. The music is loud, sound effects are impactful, and the world is both strikingly beautiful and horribly abrasive. Though I can’t deny the unbeatable gameplay purity of free roam exploration and score seeking in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater titles, Skate Story provides a completely alternate but similarly compelling take on how skateboard games could be. Stages in the demo consisted mostly of short, sub one minute dashes through an environment, which would quickly segue into the next with no menu or downtime in between. A crash or wipeout sees your character explosively shatter into shards as the camera topples to the ground, momentum intact, all without stopping the music. Despite the game seemingly having no real stakes in the section I played, the mood really makes for a pulse-pounding experience right from the get-go.

Although this certainly isn’t the first title to try something really inventive with the sport, I don’t think I’ve ever played a game committed to skateboarding and a high level artistic vision quite like this. Evading spikes and speeding through obstacles with the movement limitations inherent to a somewhat accurate skateboarding experience is instantly compelling, as is using tricks to collect points and engage in simple combat against enemies (though there was only one enemy in the demo, which was the moon. Yeah, THAT moon.) I only wish I had more than a fifteen minute session with the game!

Honestly, not much more to say on this one. You’ve got a lot of tricks, some stuff controlled so intuitively that I could figure it out for myself (flicking down then up on the stick triggers a Manual, as it should) It’s a very concise and elegant game that does a good job showing you exactly what it’s about in as little as a single image. If you have any affection for skateboarding, don’t miss Skate Story.

Check out Skate Story on Steam!

Million Depth

Publisher: Playism
Developer: Cyber Space Biotope
Anticipated Release Date: 2025
Screenshots used sourced from publisher

Last, but certainly not least, is Million Depth. Of all the games I played at Bitsummit, this was the only one that I had never heard about that I liked enough to want to write a blurb about. Million Depth is a combat-centric roguelike where main character Moma dives from her spacecraft into a million-floor cave/dungeon/thing on the long-ruined planet Earth in search of her friend. At some point in the distant past, things were going so badly for the planet that much of humanity escaped to space, with some people choosing to stay behind. Once Moma arrives on Earth, it’s clear things weren’t as she expected as she finds evidence that many people had to stay on Earth against their wishes. It’s clear the things she’s learned about the past have covered up the truth of humanity’s split from Earth, so it becomes time for her to dive in for more than just a friend.

Levels in Million Depth are simple 2D combat arenas where you and your enemies side-scroll at each other to engage in combat. By bumping into your foes, you’ll inflict damage to them, whereas enemies signal their attacks with glowing AoE effects that include the incoming damage value, allowing you to calculate how you want to deal with it (jump over it, take the hit, move away?) Adding to this is a fun tool/weapon pod that you control with the mouse, independently from your character. Using a simple grid-based visual editor, the user can customize their mouse controlled tool to their liking and use it in addition to Moma to engage with enemies.

The final wrinkle in the combat system is perhaps the pièce de résistance. Enemies only move while you move. This fundamentally changes the game from what initially appears to be a cute little real time action title into a bit of a thinker’s game. Slowing things down and anticipating your enemies’ various movement paths and attack AoEs in order to plan your way through them is almost immediately revealed to be quite the satisfying set of gameplay dynamics. Although the content I got to play in the demo wasn’t particularly difficult, the combat system was already very promising and the footage in the game’s main trailer gives me some confidence that they have significantly more advanced combat scenarios in store. When I spoke with a developer on-site, he explained that later on you’ll get access to being able to have two mouse-based tools that you can swap between, so in theory you could have a setup like a sword and shield in addition to Moma. Good shit.

In truth, a big part of what excited me about the game is that I’ve been working on a lot of mouse game prototypes in the wake of the Switch 2. It was really cool to stumble into a game that was doing something I hadn’t at all considered doing, and with such solid execution as well! I can only hope that the game is successful, and they can make a Switch 2 version somewhere down the line! For now, I’ll be enjoying the Steam version when it launches later in the year.

Check out Million Depth on Steam!

There we have it, BitSummit 2023 in the bag! I tried to write these in a slightly tighter form factor because I frankly spent WAY too much time on the TGS article last year and I need to be not doing that, haha. Even after all that effort… I still only came in 500 words lower than that one though… painful…

Any of these games look interesting to y’all? Any you think I missed at the show? Either way, I’ll leave you with some pictures from my trip to Kyoto! Have a good one!