It’s another website, this one a review ‘zine of small indie games coming out of Japan. It has slowed down in its updates recently but still sometimes brings news of a pile of interesting things to learn about, and maybe someday to play.
Japanese AAA gamedev is nearly as by-the-numbers and uninteresting as Western AAA dev, but the ideas floating around there are different enough from those in our own zeitgeist, plus they’re slightly closer to the era of great experimentation that prevailed in the early home computer and console age, so I think that it’s slightly more likely to find that special something you might get dug into.
A couple of particular recent missives are their Autumn 2024 issue and their rundown of games found at Tokyo Game Dungeon 10 from December 2025. Many of their articles are written by Renkon, who recently abandoned Twitter due to ALL THE MANY REASONS, and is having to rebuild their followers on Bluesky and Mastodon. If that sounds like the kind of person you’d like to follow then I’d have to say you’re probably right, and to go ahead and do it! Renkon also has a blog you might want to check out, for similar reasons.
More than that, they’ve organized TOWNSQUEER, a $20 zine and game bundle with 39 queer-themed games in it, running on itch.io until June 15th. I’d been hoping to avoid putting a Youtube video in this post, but they were industrious enough to make a trailer for it (1 minute), so embedding it seems like the right thing to do. Here it is!
Oh my gosh, thank you so much for the shout-out to Indie Tsushin!! I definitely need to get back into the groove of updating it, and I have a bunch of plans for when the TOWNSQUEER bundle has finished!
BTW, just to clarify that I was only one of a whole team to put the TOWNSQUEER bundle and zine together. I gotta shout out my fellow organizers Bram Dingelstad, PRINCESS INTERNET CAFé, FUTURE RUINS (who made that great cover and all the key art!!), Luka the Mouse, Araly, Zorzamoth, and all the contributions we got from the members on gamedev.lgbt. The trailer itself was made by Lukito, and yeah, it is a very cool indeed and well worth the embed haha! We really hope you enjoy the bundle and zine and check out the kind of cool queer art you can find on gamedev.lgbt!!