BitSummit Day 1 Report: Typing away trauma, curing patients for the mob, and FIFA meets Silent Hill

Every summer, indie developers from all around the world arrive in Kyoto to showcase their upcoming games at the BitSummit festival.

As the show’s Western media partner, VGC is here once again here to check out BitSummit’s 14th iteration, and now that the first day is over, here’s my recap of some of the more interesting titles I played.

Mercifully, this year’s event is no longer a mid-July affair, meaning the dangerously hot Kyoto temperatures – which were as high as 32 degrees (90 F) last year but felt like more than 40 (104 F) due to the extreme humidity – are now far more manageable and in the mid-to-high 20s with less humidity.

The real heat is coming from the show floor, however – not only literally, what with all the electrical equipment and people in there, but from the quality of what’s on offer too.

One of the more curious titles I saw today was FEAR FA 98, the latest from Madrid-based developer Jacob Jazz (if you haven’t seen his odd retro adventure Baobabs Mausoleum, check it out). It was pitched to me as a cross between FIFA 98 and Silent Hill, and it’s hard to argue with that.

Half the game consists of arcade-like football matches (with a head as a ball, naturally) with pitches set in dark streets, asylums and the like. As you play the game you can find items such as keys, which then help you navigate the survival horror parts of the game.

It’s a really strange idea but Jazz has big plans for it – he told me he’s not rushing its release until it’s ready, and he dreams of the game becoming popular enough to lead to esports competition and crossovers with other horror characters. Time will tell, but the idea is certainly a unique one.

Also catching my eye was Dr Oops, a darkly comedic medical adventure from Tokyo-based developer Black Tower Studios where the aim is obviously to cure patients, but with a twist – you’re not a real doctor.

When your mother dies it soon emerges that she owes money to the mafia. You’re swiftly kidnapped by said mafia and force-fed reams of medical textbooks in an attempt to turn you into a shady back-alley doctor. Learning on the job, you have to diagnose and cure patients to earn enough money to pay back your mum’s debts to the mob.

The interface is a basic enough one. Patients are introduced to you one at a time and you have to speak to them about their condition, trying to identify their symptoms from what they say and how they look. Once you think you’ve figured out their illness you choose the corresponding cure, fire it at them using a dart gun, and hope it works.

This Phoenix Wright-lite gameplay is interspersed with occasional mini-games like hitting a patient’s chest to wake them up, or swapping a teenage girls’ brain with her grandad’s so he can sit a school test for her.

It’s all very silly but I laughed quite a lot during my 15-minute session with it, and I’m curious to see whether the gameplay can maintain itself after the initial joke wears off, when the full game is out later this year.

Last year I gave VGC’s Media Award to Digital Exorcist, a hilarious visual novel which plays like a comedy version of Hideo Kojima’s Snatcher. Since it’s not out yet an updated build is also available at this year’s show, but alongside it at publisher Hyper Real’s booth is the wonderfully unique-looking Dome-King Cabbage.

If your memory’s top-notch you may remember seeing this game at a Day of the Devs presentation three years ago, and since then developer Cobysoft has been continuing to work away at this eccentric cross between a visual novel and a monster-collecting RPG.

In terms of its art style I can safely say I haven’t seen anything like Dome-King Cabbage before – it mixes clay dioramas with animated FMV scenes and throws a heap of psychedelic visuals on top for good measure.

The only downside about this particular build was that there wasn’t much actual playing – it was basically a 10-minute exercise in making my way through dialogue boxes. This is obviously the norm for visual novels but I was informed that there’s some RPG gameplay to be found in there too, so I look forward to checking out the complete package, which is currently planned for later this year.

If you’re looking for something more immediate, also on display was Pain Pain Go Away, which was only just released on Steam this week and is an indie offering from Jin Fujisawa, the former Square Enix developer who was co-director on Dragon Quest 9 and 10.

This is nothing like Dragon Quest though, to be clear – instead, it’s a sort of cross between The Typing of the Dead and a therapy session. You play as a counsellor who uses a special device to enter your patients’ subconscious and find out what’s troubling them.

Their worries and fears are manifested inside their subconscious, and you have to try to get rid of them by typing them as quickly as possible, with combos awarded for completing words quickly without typos. Eventually you encounter a grotesque mind-boss, who can only be defeated with a series of lengthy sentences.

Typing words to defeat enemies is a concept that’s been done before (such as in the aforementioned Typing of the Dead) but the idea of using it to identify and eliminate personal problems is a unique one, and it can get quite tense on higher difficulties.

That’s just a selection of the games I played today – when I return back to Scotland I’ll be preparing a lengthy video breaking down absolutely everything I saw on the floor.

Until then, I’ll be back tomorrow with another selection of BitSummit offerings, as well as this year’s winner of the VGC Media Award.