This post is also available in:
Tokyo Game Dungeon 13, a festival of indie games, was held yesterday—and I was there! So before the excitement wears off, it’s time to write up a report.
Note: Every photo used in this article was taken with permission from the exhibitors at each individual booth.
What Even Is Tokyo Game Dungeon?
Tokyo Game Dungeon is an indie game exhibition held in Hamamatsucho, Tokyo, roughly once every three months.
Tokyo Game Dungeon Official Website
And yes, sitting proudly in front of the event hall sign were both a poop and a giant manga-style chunk of meat.
The three girls on the panel seem to serve as something like the mascots of Game Dungeon. As far as I can tell, they’ve appeared in the main visuals and official merchandise for almost every event since the very first one.
There’s also an Osaka Game Dungeon held regularly in the Kansai region.
The main attraction at the venue is getting to try completed games and prototypes brought in by their developers.
Depending on the booth, you’ll also find things like pins and acrylic stands featuring characters from previous games for sale.
For visitors, it’s also a rare opportunity to meet game developers you normally only know from the internet, talk to them directly, and tell them what you thought of their games.
There were plenty of families too, with lots of kids excitedly shouting things like, “I wanna play THAT one!!”
Several security guards were constantly patrolling the venue as well, so the whole event felt safe and easy to enjoy.
This time in particular, there seemed to be quite a few media representatives and publishers around. Here and there, I could hear people discussing console ports or negotiating coverage for feature articles.
Promotion, networking, business talks—it was all mixed together into one giant space.
Honestly, it felt a bit like the marketplace outside the main plaza in an MMORPG.
Do You Have to Pay to Enter Game Dungeon?
Yep.
For reference, admission this time was:
- General Admission: 1,000 yen
- Business Ticket: 2,000 yen — for people conducting business meetings or media coverage
General admission was available both in advance and at the door.
If you bought an advance ticket, you could enter one hour earlier than normal, which was a pretty nice bonus.
Games I Played and Booths I Visited
Anyway!
Let’s get to the main event and take a look at the games I played at the venue.
Gensokyo Survivors
A Touhou Project fan game in the Vampire Survivors style, made by Gensaba Club, who I’m always interacting with over on X.
The two main protagonists and the cast of Embodiment of Scarlet Devil make up the core playable roster, and I headed into battle as Lady Remilia herself.
Being a vampire and all, she naturally has a skill that lets her absorb HP.
The problem was…
I had an absolutely terrible time positioning myself well enough to actually land that HP-draining attack.
Unable to recover my health and equally unable to deal with the enormous amount of danmaku flying at me, I gradually got worn down before eventually losing to the boss, Cirno.
Alas.
When I spoke with the developer, they explained that rather than focusing primarily on buildcrafting like the original Vampire Survivors, the game is designed with a stronger emphasis on action—carefully watching enemy attacks and actively dodging them.
They’ve also reduced the planned number of playable characters, instead putting more emphasis on making each character feel genuinely different to control and carefully balancing those distinctions.
That absolutely came through in the actual gameplay.
Despite how flashy everything looks, there’s a surprisingly meticulous side to the game, whether you’re choosing skills that can erase enemy projectiles or figuring out how to position yourself effectively.
It was a lot of fun.
Come to think of it, it’s been a long time since I seriously touched any Touhou fan works.
I left the booth feeling nostalgic for the glory days of Nico Nico Douga, when I used to watch ridiculous amounts of hand-drawn Touhou videos.
Gensokyo Survivors: Return of the Scarlet Devil on Steam
Inshu Village Tokimeki Playing Card Game
You draw cards, create combinations, discard them, and ultimately try to make the total value of your hand lower than your opponent’s in order to deal damage.
Reduce the opponent’s HP to zero before they do the same to you, and you clear the stage.
Between stages, you can enchant your playing cards.
These upgrades can do things like increase your damage when making certain combinations, add healing effects, or even give you the right to reveal your opponent’s hand.
During my demo, I absolutely steamrolled the first two stages and started getting a little too confident.
Then Stage 3 completely destroyed me.
I didn’t stand a chance.
One thing that always impresses me about Tsukucchau Ojisan is how every new project seems to start by inventing an entirely new gameplay concept from scratch.
The rules are also presented in a way that lets you gradually understand them just by playing, so everything felt smooth and intuitive.
One thing continues to bother me, though.
What exactly IS that yellow crocodile-man-looking creature he uses as his avatar…?
DREAMiLL (YumeYamai)
Next up, I spoke with the developer of DREAMiLL(YumeYamai), a game that attracted attention thanks in part to its absurdly stylish official website.
It’s a puzzle adventure in which a girl travels through a pixel-art world filled with silence and a faint sense of unease.
I had assumed it might be one of those games where the story stays mostly in the background and only offers small bits of flavor here and there.
But according to the developer, the game is actually being made with a very strong emphasis on story.
It’s not a genre I play very often, so now I’m curious.
INSTANTALE
A roguelike where the story, skills, and unfolding events are all generated on the spot by AI.
You begin by describing your character in natural language, and from that prompt the game automatically generates not only their portrait, but even the skills they possess and the mechanical effects of those skills.
I also absolutely love the hard, stark black-and-white visual presentation.
As a test, I created “a ponytailed lady working as a waitress in a tavern,” and I was surprised to see both the generated image and the actual story events reflecting that character concept.
Actions inside the game can also be entered freely in natural language.
So, naturally, I tried picking up a signboard and snapping it in half.
And the sign in the game actually broke.
That caught me completely off guard.
The game is apparently designed mainly around taking on quests as an adventurer.
During my demo, I accepted a request to investigate some suspicious monster appearing in a field and just barely managed to defeat it before my play session ended.
I also tried specifying a certain famous Rider-style kick as my character’s special move…
And yes.
The character really did end up with a kicking attack.
Amazing.
HeroesSagaZero
A strategy × hack-and-slash × roguelite 2.5D pixel-art battle game from StudioMoraGames, who I’m always interacting with on X.
I also visited their booth at Tokyo Game Dungeon 12 last time.
According to the developer, this latest demo has been expanded further, with features such as the skill selection screen now integrated into the playable build.
They’re currently working on things like game balance.
Unfortunately, the booth was insanely popular this time.
There was one of the biggest crowds in the entire venue gathered around it, and I just couldn’t find a good moment to get a demo session in.
I had to give up.
Tragic.
Melo Misterio – play your melody –
Another game from a developer I’m always interacting with.
For this one, honestly, the fastest way to understand it is to watch a video of the game in action.
The buttons used to perform actions are linked to changes in musical pitch.
In other words:
You play it like an action game, and in doing so, you simultaneously improvise music.
Ever since I first saw a video of it on X, I’d been extremely curious.
And actually controlling it was even better than I expected.
There’s something absurdly euphoric about moving the character while everything synchronizes with the music.
I am absolutely certain this game causes your brain to secrete some kind of medically beneficial chemical.
I can feel it.
Just playing it as a normal action game is fun, but trying to figure out, “Okay, how do I move in a way that creates an improvised performance I actually like?” is incredibly immersive too.
When I spoke with the developer, they told me that their original specialty was music, and that the project began with the idea of making a game that could take advantage of that background.
Also, once again, I approached the booth while deliberately pretending I had never met them before, despite the fact that we already follow each other.
Then after playing the demo, I revealed who I was.
I love that moment when the developer looks down at my business card and their face goes:
“Wait… is that profile icon…?”
Thank you, developer!!!
MeloMisterio -play your melody- on Steam
Attack Only
A game from Heaviside Creation, the developers of DYPING ESCAPE.
The premise revolves around an RPG-within-a-game starring a princess who has no command except Attack, alongside a real-world story that appears to descend into the madness of the player controlling her.
The princess may only have the “Fight” command, but the game is absolutely packed with gimmicks.
You can deliberately hit your allies gently to manipulate their AI behavior.
You can smash the game window itself to bring seawater flooding in from outside the playable area and drown enemies.
That sort of thing.
Events in the real world are also connected to the game-within-the-game, with solutions on one side sometimes providing clues to gimmicks on the other.
It’s just overflowing with playful ideas.
This is the kind of game that grabs hold of one central concept and pushes it as far as humanly possible.
Very fun.
Stay Without Saying “See You Again”
A slightly more mature visual novel by Chosuido about a ronin—a student spending an extra year studying for university entrance exams—returning home under somewhat awkward circumstances and reconnecting with a childhood friend.
It may be the final time they ever spend together.
The prose is relatively unadorned, but there’s a weary, languid atmosphere seeping through the writing that creates a very distinctive sense of place.
This style is extremely my thing.
I’d like to sit down and read the whole thing during the Obon holidays.
They were exhibiting several of their other works as well, and those caught my attention too.
As a novelty item, I also received a bottle of Super Mineral Water by Chosuido.
Will drinking it triple my combat power or something…?
It feels too precious to open.
I’m seriously hesitating.
超水道 @ ghostpia (@chosuido) / X
Eternal Palace Sakura
A cute—and impressively jiggly—3D action roguelite.
You gain buffs through choices made along the way, then enter 3D action stages.
From there, you defeat enemies while carefully timing your guards and dodges.
But before anything else:
The protagonist’s character design and model hit my personal preferences with pinpoint accuracy.
Dark skin and silver hair have been known since ancient times to cure all known diseases.
It cannot be helped.
The action itself was also fast and satisfying.
While I was playing, a kid standing behind me watching suddenly shouted:
“I WANNA PLAY THAT!!”
So when I finished my session, I gave them the seat.
That kid is definitely going to grow up into an excellent otaku.
What a sinful game…
Eternal Palace Sakura on Steam
IZEA 10 Puzzle Rogue-Lite RPG!
The final game I played was this colorful Make 10 puzzle game featuring a cast of vivid—and ever-so-slightly poisonous—characters.
Have you ever been bored enough to look at the numbers on a car’s license plate and try to combine them with addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division until you get 10?
This game takes that basic idea and adds roguelite progression on top.
By clearing stages, you obtain buffs such as:
“Deal 1.2× damage when using three or more operators.”
So in a sense, you’re gradually enchanting your own mathematical equations.
The loud back-and-forth between the characters and the vivid color palette are a lot of fun to look at.
There’s also something about the whole thing that reminds me of comics you might have found on someone’s personal website in the 2000s.
That hits a very specific sweet spot for me.
The protagonist—the red character covered in patchwork stitching—is especially great.
She’s cheerful and energetic, but there’s just a little bit of poison hiding underneath.
Excellent.
The core Make 10 puzzle is already a proven formula, so once I started playing, it felt like the kind of game where I could completely lose track of when to stop.
When I spoke with the developer, they mentioned that they were thinking about how to appeal to children.
And honestly, that makes sense.
There’s definitely something about it that feels like a really entertaining educational toy.
Final Thoughts
Man, that was fun!!!
Maybe because it’s summer vacation season, there were tons of families and middle- and high-school students around this time.
And once again, it reminded me that the indie game world feels less like some “deep, underground world for serious adults” and more like “the local community center while everyone is setting up for a festival.”
I mean that in the best possible way.
So with that said:
Thank you to the organizers, the exhibitors, and everyone who shared that space with me!!
I think I’ll wrap this report up with a photo of the doodle board.
Until next time—
Enjoy your gaming life!!
And thank you very much for reading all the way to the end!!!
I Went to Tokyo Game Dungeon 10 — Here’s My Take on the Indie Game Expo!
