Japanese (possibly Asian) Indie Titles

[gormlai]

When Phil Fish put out his now infamous comment on japanese games, my reaction was really "what the f*** do you know?!?".

I mean, because he is an indie, most people will never ever know of his game, no matter how brilliant it is. Likewise, I imagine that most games we hear of from Japan are AAA titles.

There are Keita Takahashi's Katamari Damacy and Noby Noby Boy, though despite their distinct indie flavor, those games are all developed and published by Namco. I guess Q-Games are a fairly successful japanese indie developer, with their PixelJunk titles, though the studio is really founded by a gajin, Dylan Cuthbert.

Anyone know of some examples of Japanese indie productions? Is there a real "western-sense" indie underground, and what is it up to? Maybe we can expand the discussion to Asia in general?
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[Allen Varney]

My November 2005 Escapist article "The Asian Weird" discusses a number of odd Japanese and Korean titles, some from smaller publishers.

[gormlai]

Wow, this is excellent. Thank you! :-) This is definitely excellent. Do you know of any recent titles as well?

[mrkwang]

Recently, 'Sugar Cube : Bittersweet Factory' from South Korea.
http://www.turtle-cream.com/

And 'Toast the Chicken' for iOS from South Korea.
http://blog.aqsystem.net/2011/05/toast-chicken.html

[lok32]

Japanese games seem to have about 40% more imagination in them, would love to see some games released of the top Manga titles like Ninja Scroll or Ghost in the Shell, if they were done right they would be amazing.

[lightassassin]

Ghost in the Shell was done on Playstation in the past, and wasn't that great. Also didn't sell a lot in the western markets.

I don't know what the Japanese manga owners are like with their ips either, because they do appear to do many games for the Japanese market, it's a rare site to see them go beyond that.

Always have to remember though, unlike say Medieval fantasy fans, manga fans are quite small in number in the western markets, and are often fragmented because somebody who enjoys say Ghost in the Shell might not enjoy Love Hina.