Like Q-Games' PixelJunk Monsters, Starship Patrol is a classic tower defense style game, but with a focus on resource management, strategic weapons placement and a clean, unique visual style. From the same developer of Reflect Missile, Art Style: Digidrive and PixelJunk Shooter, Starship Patrol should be on your radar when it arrives in Europe next week.

It will then come to North America as Starship Defense on January 18. For screen shots and the official description, with defense spelled "defence," click on.

Starship Patrol [Nintendo UK]

Okay, maybe not a glass. PixelJunk Shooter is a game about saving miners and scientists trapped beneath the surface of a strange planet, but it's also a game about using opposing forces of nature in order to make your way through a twisted series of underground caverns. You can douse lava with water to create land, ignite pockets of gas with molten rock to unleash destructive explosions; over the course of the game you'll discover new tools to help you harness the elements, all the while using your weapons to take out the various mysterious enemies lurking beneath the planet's crust.

Water and fire are two of nature's most destructive forces, and many have lost their lives trying to harness them. How'd Q-Games do?

Loved
Troubleshooting: PixelJunk Shooter is a puzzle game disguised as a shooter. While there are times when your main focus will be on firing your weapons at enemies to survive, the main focus of the game is using the elements against your environment and each other in order to save miners stranded deep underground. It's this clashing of elements, water and lava, that forms the foundation for the gameplay. Lava cools heats you up, water cools you down, and when the two meet, destructible earth is formed. As the game progresses the difficulty ramps and new tools are introduced, but the relationship between the two is always paramount. It's a simple concept brought to life, and it's a wonderful life.

Bring A Friend: PixelJunk Shooter is a game that begs to be played with a friend. In a world where one stray bullet can mean the difference between freeing a trapped miner and being engulfed by lava, adding an unpredictable human element to the mix can be entertaining, to say the least, and raises all sorts of new questions as you play. Do you take turns saving miners, or is this a competition? Who gets to wear the water suit and who wears the lava suit? Will the player wearing the lava suit bury the other in a cascade of deadly molten rock? Most likely, but all will be forgiven once you realize how helpful it is to have another set of guns during the game's rare but entertaining massive boss fights.

Hated
A Candle In The Wind: Ah, PixelJunk Shooter, you had only just begun when you ended. Three different worlds with five levels each split into multiple stages seems like a great deal, but it's over in a flash. All things considered, four hours for a $9.99 game isn't bad, and multiplayer extends the game's life considerably, but it feels as if there could have been so much more.

Like PixelJunk Eden, the third game in the PixelJunk series, Shooter takes a simple concept and creates a complex, entertaining gameplay experience from it. With Eden it was the pollination of plants, and with Shooter it's the relationship between two opposing elements. Like water and magma crashing together to create rock, Q-Games has married this natural relationship with puzzle and shooting mechanics to create something more enjoyably substantial than its parts.

PixelJunk Shooter was developed by Q-Games and published in North America by Sony Computer Entertainment America for the PlayStation Network. Retails for $9.99 USD. A download code for the game was given to us by the publisher for reviewing purposes. Played through the entire game solo and multiple levels in two player mode.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

The December 10 update to the PlayStation Store will offer PixelJunk Shooter for an unannounced price. Here's to hoping that Shooter follows previous PixelJunk pricing at $9.99 USD or less.

For hands-on impressions of Q-Games new game, read our most recent Tokyo Game Show impressions of the downloadable title.

‘Tis the PixelJunk Season… [PlayStation.blog]

The official Nintendo of Europe web site has details and first screens on the Nintendo DSi downloadable title, promising 200 stages of action-puzzle-strategy in the Q-Games fashion. With the developer's recently released Art Style: Digidrive making DSiWare a better place, we're looking forward to giving Reflect Missile a shot.

Reflect Missile [Nintendo UK]

After a several weeks of inactivity, the Art Style series has returned to North America's DSiWare shop with Digidrive, an abstract puzzle game about directing traffic that can sit along side Art Style: Boxlife, a wonderful game about folding boxes in a factory, as a suggestion that Art Style games are downloadable because, were they sold in stores, the descriptions on the back of their boxes would scare people away.

This game is a remake of Bit Generations: Digidrive, a 2006 Japan-only Game Boy Advance game from Q Games, the studio known best these days for making the PixelJunk series on the PS3 and less-well-known for programming the PS3's background ribbon thing. And, yes, their take on directing traffic, virtually, is fantastic.

Loved
Terrific Traffic Trope: The gameplay in Digidrive is as solid and simple as it gets. Thank goodness, you know, that game designers consider waiting tables and taxi-driving and other often un-delightful real life activities as subjects for games. Here, being a one-man traffic light is a joy. What you've got is a gradually sped up relentless flow of color-coded cars approaching the center of a four-way intersection from four sides. With either the d-pad or the stylus players can direct the cars to one of the three lanes that branch from the road on which they are entering the playing field. Your directive is to park like-colored cars behind each other, which banks fuel. Doing this well and then cashing in that fuel by letting a siren-blaring emergency vehicle drive into that section of parked cars, provides force to a puck on the bottom of the screen. That's important, because you are hoping to push that puck away from a plunger that is creeping up on it.

Yes, that's weird. And no, that's not how directing traffic works in real life. But it's fun, because of a few smart twists: Going into a high-speed Overdrive mode if you have at least five cars successfully parked in all four lanes helps you bank a lot of cars. Also, a clever but risky technique lets you double your reserves if you sacrifice one of the rows of parked cars. Timid players will never park many cars and keep cashing in to bump that puck forward nudge by nudge. Bold players will bank more and more cars, doubling and re-doubling their reserves, waiting until the last possible minute and than cashing in to ignite a major push of the puck. Hey, trust me, okay?

Abstract Art: The techno soundtrack is good. Better is the iconography of the graphics. A less interesting development team would have used numbers to represent the number of cars successfully being parked at the end of a lane. Q Games uses shapes. Park five cars and you get a triangle. Park a bunch more and that triangle fills up and becomes a square. Repeat until the square becomes a pentagon, then a hexagon (if you haven't messed up by this point and had the puck hit by the plunger), and then the hexagon becomes a circle. I like ammo counters and flashing words too, but I'll take a game that signals success with shapes.

Hated
Touch Options: Hated is a strong word, but I found no great advantage from playing the DS version's new touch mode. It allows players not just to direct the game's cars with a tap of the screen but to tap the shapes of banked cars to cash them in, rather than waiting for — or sending out into the roadway — an emergency vehicle. This seemed to make the game simpler without making it better. I preferred the d-pad controls which allow me to play this game even when I'm standing on the subway, holding onto a railing for support with my other hand. Many portable games require you to play while sitting, leaning or standing still. Praise Digidrive for allowing us portable gaming on unsteady platforms, but, if you do, don't try those touch controls.

It's hard to express the quality of a puzzle game when just putting it in your hands would prove that the balance and flow here is good. Don't be deterred by the traffic-directing subject matter. In fact, I hope that kind of oddity emboldens you to try this game. It was fantastic on the GBA and makes the transition to DSiWare well.

Art Style Digidrive was developed by Q Games and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo DSiWare downloadable store on November 16. Retails for 500 Nintendo Points ($5.00 USD). Played three difficulty levels in single-player, tried touch mode, tried two-player Vs Mode against the computer, and had trouble looking at the traffic in the intersections of Manhattan without wanting to get involved.

Confused by our reviews? Read our review FAQ.

Q-Game head Dylan Cuthbert has stated that he doesn't think the company will port anything else to the PSP, telling Kotaku, "We thought the psp-go and the psp-3000 were safe but a rip "that works on psp-3000s" went up on the torrent servers the day after we released PJMD."

The PSP port is optimized for the PSP screen and features all the content of the PSN tower defense original as well as a brand new island.

Concerned about piracy, Q-Games decided to release the game as digital-only, but to no avail. "Seeing it up on torrentz.com the following day was very depressing," states Cuthbert.

A UMD version of the game was released, but in Asia, and it was not the full game. The pirated versions appearing online are the full game.

Piracy aside, if PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe isn't a big PSP hit for Q-Games, then porting games over to the PSP could very well be more trouble than they're worth.

I stumbled across the PixelJunk space by accident this morning, while checking out PlayStation Home on my PS3 for the first time in many months. Later, I chatted with Cuthbert about the space and some of the early success Q has had with it.

Click the thumbnails to see more and get more explanation about what I learned today. (Note that most of the images were taken off of my TV using a still camera. Apologies for the poor quality and for the creepiness of my mushroom-hatted guy.)

The PixelJunk space was launched a couple of weeks ago in Japan and here in the U.S. just a few days ago. It's set up as a museum for the company's line of downloadable PS3 games; PixelJunk Racers, PixelJunk Monsters, and PixelJunk Eden. This is the lobby, where I found people dancing and flirting, the two cliche actions of any Home community.

See that video screen? It runs a trailer for the upcoming PixelJunk Shooter. Cuthbert said it runs off a Q-Games server and was getting accessed 10s of thousands of times in the space's first few days of release in Japan. That's the closest he has to attendance figures so far.

Right at the entrance is a store where shirts are being sold for 49 cents. PixelJunk Monsters headphones are sold for men; slippers for women. "In Japan only we have sold 1000s of virtual goods in just the first week," Cuthbert told me.

Cuthbert said this is the most popular t-shirt in the space.

Though he said this one is popular is well. Given the constant flirting and sex-talk I see whenever I'm in Home, I'd say Q-Games knows what it's doing with these shirts.

Walking into each area of the space cues music from the related game. This is the PixelJunk Eden area.

This is the PixelJunk Monsters area.

This is more from the Monsters section, with Racer in the background. Cuthbert hopes that his team can iterate on the space and make it more active and interactive. For example, he'd like the fire tower here to occasionally shoot flame.

More Racers.

And the rest of the items on the store. The PixelJunk Home space is free for users in Japan and North America to access online through their PS3s.

Let's look at the official Tokyo Game Show trailer for the game, via GameTrailers.com...

OK. See how that video does a much better job showing off the dynamic fluids of PixelJunk Shooter? Regular screenshots would just make this game look like a co-op 2D shooter that has you rescuing little guys in jumpsuits. But this game is more than a Choplifter/Defender homage. It's a physics game using liquids and many clever gameplay tricks.

Let's put it this way: When Q-Games chief Dylan Cuthbert finished playing some co-op levels of the game with me at the Tokyo Game Show and referenced Yoshi's Island as a design model, it seemed neither hubristic nor inaccurate. What I've seen of Shooter shows a game full of good ideas, each confined to little more than a screen's worth of a discrete level.

The basic moves involve flying through the level in a ship that can't be destroyed by impact against cave walls. You shoot missiles at bad guys and to break rock. Holding down the missile button generates an auto-firing fusillade of missiles, but it also begins to overheat your ship. The goal of each level is to rescue the men in suits by snatching them with your grappling hook, but letting a bunch of them die triggers a game over. The guys can die due to your missile fire or by being accidentally dunked or doused in lava. Poison gas kills them too, though water is not a hassle. Your ship can blow up from overheating, which happens not just when you fire too many missiles but when you fly too close to lava, poison gas or into magnetic liquid. To cool off, you can spin your ship with a swivel of the control stick, dunk your ship in water or collect floating gems.

Those are the basics.

This is the cool stuff I discovered in Tokyo:

-The game's third of three worlds, following the previously seen volcanic and ice worlds, is an underground factory. In it is magnetic liquid that is drawn to your ship in a way that recalls, Cuthbert accurately referenced, the movement of the liquid creature in the 80s action movie, The Abyss.

-Two players going through a level in co-op can exert enough gravitational pull on magnetic liquid to make it stand as a tower of goo.

Wait. Maybe you should just watch the magnetic liquid in action. Here:

OK. Back to the cool stuff I don't need video to explain:

-Your ship in Shooter can don a "suit." Previously seen suits let you shoot streams of water or lava instead of missiles. Shooting water and lava creates rock (There's a particularly cool effect if players with the water and lava suits cross the streams). Spraying lava at gas, however, creates explosions. But spraying water at the magnetic liquid creates gas. You can imagine how a level might stack those elemental chains.

-Sometimes gas floods a level, forcing the player to race to save a survivor before the cloud gets him. Spinning into the cloud dissipates it a little.

-The magnetic liquid heats your ship on contact, but you can get a repulsor suit that lets you fly through the stuff, keeping it at bay around your ship.

-There's a spider boss, and he's fun to fight. Trust me! Three bosses in all.

-There's some sort of yin-yang suit that suddenly makes water heat you up and lava cool you off. I suggested it was an homage to Ikaruga.

-Overall the game will have about 75 "scenes" spread across about five levels per world. Each that I played involved either a tricky battle or a devious environmental puzzle. Watch the second video to see the kind of stuff that was charming me.

-The game's set for a December release, downlaodable to the PlayStation 3, at least in Japan. No U.S. date yet. Two player co-op is supported, which, Cuthbert told me, makes the enemies tougher.

Q-Games makes the pixels a little smaller on Thursday with the release of PixelJunk Monsters for the PSP and PSPgo. A slightly updated version of the PS3 tower defense game, the download-only title boasts some new features, including the ability to hang out in the lobby and watch a running play-by-play of the round currently underway while you wait your turn. You can check out Q-Games' Dylan Cuthbert discussing all of the new features in a video interview over at the PlayStation blog.

PixelJunk Monsters is a perfect fit for the portable treatment. I might pick it up myself come Thursday, even if my PSP doesn't slide open like the cool kids' do.

TGS 2009: Download PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe this Thursday! [PlayStation Blog]

Heck, I dunno. I don't work in the game industry, but rather, cover the game industry. If you want to ask me about that, do it. Fire away! I'm all ears and one open email account. Everyone else, read this.

I asked four Westerners who have worked in the game industry here in Japan for advice about working in The Land of the Rising Sun. They possess a range of skills that range from localization to writing to management to programming. But, most importantly, they have experience — and they were generous enough to share that with not only me, but you. How kind.

If you've ever thought about working in Japan, there are some pearls in here. Even if you have no interest in making games, but perhaps, just perhaps, you are thinking about moving to another country (not necessarily Japan, even!), there are, likewise, helpful tips that can start you on your journey.

And now we start on ours...

Former Tecmo/Team NINJA assassin and Tomonobu Itagaki aide-de-camp Andrew Szymanski is credited with everything from designer to director on nine titles in the Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive franchises. Now a freelance design and production consultant for the game industry in Tokyo, he brings his 6+ years of experience to bear in guiding Japanese developers and publishers to success in overseas markets. Andrew can be contacted at: andrewszymanskiATmac.com

His advice:

Be Memorable

Game developers are a unique group of people. While it goes without saying that being memorable is important to landing any position, it is particularly essential in this field. When you get far enough into any interview process, you're going to come face-to-face with a studio manager or executive producer, and you'll have to make an impression that will make them want to spend more time with you and hear more of what you have to say.

While in college here in Tokyo I applied to Tecmo during the peak of the Japanese recruiting season and attended the corporate hiring seminar. I was one American in a blue shirt amongst a sea of 200 or 300 Japanese applicants in dark suits. During a break, I went up to the company president and said, point-blank, "I want to make games in Japan." Two perfunctory interviews later, I was in. To my knowledge, I am one of the few (if not the only) examples of someone getting a job in the industry through the traditional recruiting methods.

That may not be an option for many, but there is always a way to get yourself noticed. Make a statement with fashion (without being inappropriate, of course), tell an amusing story, or recount a memorable life experience. Something that still comes up to this day amongst the teams I've worked with is the fact that, on my application, I had written that when I was a child I wrapped a black rag on my head, made shuriken out of cardboard, and ran around the house playing ninja. Find a way to tie an indelible part of yourself to the job, and they'll be sure to remember you. 


Be Indispensable

I can't stress this one enough - you have to bring something to the table that only you can.

It may have been the case that, 5-10 years ago, simply being bilingual and having an interest in games could land you a cushy job here. Now, while language ability is still important (and you'll be expected to have a respectable command of written and spoken Japanese), it's crucial that you have fundamental skills and abilities that developers want. Even if you don't have prior experience in the industry, find a way to show what you can offer in a way that's simple and easy to grasp.

Like to draw? Bring a sketchbook portfolio or 3D render. Developers always want good artists. Want to be a designer? Show them some sample concepts and game ideas, or do a "what-if" scenario with their intellectual property: "This is my version of a Lost Planet RTS." Have a management background? Discuss some thoughts you had about effectively managing schedules or budgets.

Even if some of your offerings are a little off-base, you will have shown that you can grow inside the team to fill a necessary role, not just be the go-to guy for English e-mail exchanges or developer blogs. And, if you can prove that you have knowledge, drive, language ability, and growth potential, then you will be an impressive candidate in this world of global markets and overseas outsourcing.

Once you get the job, make sure you continue to grow and stay indispensable. As you show that you can perform duties that no one else can and have carved out a unique niche for yourself, your "indispensability factor" will grow, leading to more authority and responsibility inside of the team. 


Be Flexible

I've been fortunate enough to play key roles in over ten AAA titles, but I've also been on projects that were stalled, rejected, or canceled. Go into it with your eyes open, and know that, no matter how skilled you are, you won't be lead designer or producer on a multi-million dollar project your first time out.

Maybe your first job will be second- or third-string designer on a DS title, or artist on an XBLA or PSN game. Embrace these duties. Working on a smaller team can be incredibly rewarding, and you'll find more satisfaction in saying "I designed this entire game mechanic" or "I modeled this entire level background" than you will in saying "I came up with hit point values for the enemies" or "I modeled the trees in this level," which is what may happen when first working on a huge team.

Many people in the industry here never work on a "true" AAA title, but that doesn't mean that they don't create great games and have a blast doing it.

Even if you do reach the plateau where team sizes are in excess of 100 people, you still have to be flexible.

I've had countless ideas shot down, entire game concepts denied, and months of work put into design documents vanish at the blink of an eye because of changes in a title's focus. Remember, games are a business, and you might have the best idea or greatest character design in the world but if the market doesn't like it, it's not going in.

It's not always about creating what you think is the "best" game (or even what you would necessarily choose to play). It's about making something that will sell, and sell well. I can't count the times that a junior team member has complained that management "doesn't get it" and swears that the game would be 100 times better if only their idea had made it in. It is the creative director's job (or producer's, in some teams here) to establish a clear direction for the title with management and make sure that all game content meshes with that direction.

The larger the team, the more individual compromises will need to be made. Learn to take it in stride and you'll begin to see the big picture. 


Be Tough

This one is deceptively simple but harder in practice. You've got to strengthen yourself both physically and mentally to endure the rigors of a career in game development here in Japan, where the language contains a word meaning "to die from overwork" and many normal salarymen don't even get home until close to midnight.

All development teams around the world experience what is known as "crunch time:" the period right before a title is released to certification where everybody on the team is in a mad scramble to finalize all of the content and iron out the last few pesky bugs.

Some Japanese developers, however, seem to have made it a goal to elevate the ridiculousness of crunch into an art form. Obviously it varies from team to team and title to title, but I've had crunches on two-year titles that have lasted six months. That's six months of having no social life and no free time, limited time with loved ones, and long periods in which you forget what the inside of your apartment looks like because you've slept at the office for five nights in a row.

While I certainly don't condone this practice — in fact I've made it a goal to alleviate it as much as possible — there is just no way around it on Japanese teams and you'll have to accept it as a fact of life. Learn to adapt: make your colleagues your best friends (they should be anyway), because they'll be the only company you have on many a long night spent testing or debugging. Practice living your entire life (food, work, and sleep) at your desk for a month and you'll be on your way.

Learn to be thick-skinned mentally as well. At first you will be demoralized because of perceived failures and because your ideas or designs were rejected.

Know that this happens to everybody, and don't take it personally. Japanese developers, for the most part, take a very strict and regimented approach to dealing with other team members. It's not because they are not kind (you will grow to learn that they are) or are out to get you, rather it is part of a long-standing tradition in production industries to codify relationships in a master-apprentice context.

So when the lead designer takes the paper containing what you believe is your best game mechanic ever and throws it into the trash (yes, I am speaking from personal experience here) or the art director has you redo a render for the 100th time because the sheen on the shoelace holes of a character's sneaker are not perfect, know that they do these things because they truly believe that you will learn and become better as a result. Hang in there and you may gain a wonderful mentor with whom the bond of friendship and camaraderie is not easily broken. 


Be Patient

Last, but certainly not least, is patience. You must realize that things won't always move as quickly as you'd like them to. This advice works on both a micro and a macro level.

On a smaller scale, you will no doubt wonder why your feedback is not carrying as much impact as you would like it to, particularly when you are new to a team or the project is in its infancy. You may feel (with good reason) that you have great ideas and designs and they are being brushed aside with nary a second glance.

I've talked already about becoming indispensable to a team, carving out a niche for yourself, and earning the trust and respect of team members. All of these things take time. To quote a Japanese figure of speech, most developers here prefer relationships that are "narrow and deep" rather those that are "wide and shallow." In other words, they intend to connect with fewer individuals on average, but when they do, those connections are profoundly strong.

If you persevere in your duties, remain dedicated, take criticism whether you feel it's deserved or not, and show everyone that you are a harmonious member of the team, you should find that your feedback and ideas will gradually carry more weight with those around you.

On a larger scale, realize that you may not initially advance in your career as much as you might hope from project to project. Japanese companies are notoriously difficult to move up in, and it will take a mountain of hard work and a great track record to convince team leaders that you are ready for an official promotion.

You will, of course, be asked to take on more and more responsibility without an change in title or increase in salary, and you must learn to work through these hurdles, just as you must overcome the "glass ceiling" that still hampers foreign developers at some companies.

You may feel that your contribution to a title was astronomical and that you fully deserve more say in the creative process, but don't be surprised if you find yourself in a similar position when the next project rolls around.

Just know this: if you have chosen the right team to work for, I will guarantee that someone is silently watching and observing your endeavors. You may not get much feedback or indication of an impending expansion to your role in the team, but it will come in due time and it will feel great because you will know you have truly earned it.

With a diverse background in languages, design and entertainment, the Welsh-born Dewi Tanner arrived at NanaOn-Sha in 2007 with a remit to aid in the company's rapid internationalization. After ensuring the smooth release of the games Musika and Major Minor's Majestic March through overseas publishers, Tanner took on the role of Director of Development where he now overseas all aspects of games development; from concept prototyping through to funding, management and PR.

His advice:

Be realistic about your expectations

Recently, Japanese companies have been laying off a lot of staff, so why would they take you on?

Try and make a list of what would make you an appealing candidate, and also be aware of your unappealing aspects. Despite many companies recently pedaling a rhetoric focused on globalization and driving overseas sales, there is barely any evidence here of an increase in foreigner employment. For many hiring managers, an application from a foreigner is synonymous with hassle, so the more of these issues that you can remove the better.

An example of some classic hassle issues include...

*You are not in Japan and you want them to support your visa application: Unless you are an experienced, skilled and/or bilingual developer, don't even think that some Japanese game company will sponsor your visa application. Also don't come here job-hunting on a tourist visa. A much better route is to come here on a teaching visa, as English conversation schools are happy to dole out visas. Once you are in Japan and settled you can then start looking. The closer you live to downtown Tokyo the better!

*You speak little or no Japanese, although you plan to become fluent: The games industry is a professional industry with lots of money at stake. Very few Japanese speak competent English, or have the desire to learn.

Put these two factors together and you can see that there are huge miscommunication risks. Trust me, unless you can understand at least 90% of whats going on, they will occur.

About two years' experience of working in an all-Japanese environment is ideal. Lacking that, a level two certificate in the Japanese Proficiency test and some travel experience in Japan will help.

Apply Like a Pro

Sending an email in English with your resume attached (even if it's translated) attached will probably get you ignored. A succinct resume, standard format employment history (there are templates for this) and covering email all in decent keigo definitely helps.

Be humble, mature and willing to learn

Applying for a job in Japan is almost as drawn out and frustrating as actually working here. Japanese business culture and western business culture clash badly in many areas. Despite your best intentions to "modernize" Japan, things aren't going to change here anytime soon. So, a lot of the time you'll have to grin and bear it. Try to keep your passion on a leash and know when to bite your tongue. Patience, respect and a reluctance to complain are valued over more western business virtues such as passion, never-say-die and individualism. If you can develop an internal buffer to deal with these contrasting styles then it will hold you in great stead when dealing with Japanese companies in the future. Better yet if you have this diplomatic skill already!

Target your applications like a veteran sniper

By all means look at the websites of game companies and apply for the positions that seem to match your skills. Some of them will even explicitly mention English fluency as a requirement. Tweak your resume and covering email showing your suitability for the position, the things you have done to make hiring you easy (you live in Tokyo, have a full working visa, speak Japanese, etc.), and also why you respect that company. Also, don't be afraid to send direct applications to smaller companies, even if they aren't advertising. You will find that they are much more willing to take risks than the bigger companies, who often have foreign staff forced upon them from their foreign branches.

It's not what you know, it's who you know

Personal recommendations go a long way here. Try to meet Japanese developers at GDC and try to keep in touch. Introduce yourself to speakers after their session has finished, and after exchanging business cards send a simple follow up email a few days later. Things are a whole lot easier when you know someone on the inside.

Before going to Platinum Games, Jean Pierre Kellams cut his teeth at Capcom, where he worked on the localization of titles like God Hand, Monster Hunter and Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Justice for All. Kellams also did early story work and script drafts for Bionic Commando. In October 2007, Kellams joined Platinum Games, where he has worked on the localization of Bayonetta, as well as additional writing/editing on MadWorld.

His advice:

Japan(ese) Is Not Optional

Be in Japan. Speak Japanese. If you plan on getting your foot in the door, you need to create an environment where you can make contact and interact with a Japanese company on their terms. Speaking Japanese and already being in the country helps that immensely.

Work Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

For a Japanese company to hire you, especially if you are living outside of Japan, they have to go through hell. Getting a job at a developer can encompass multiple interviews and tests, and then comes getting the visa. If you don't already have one, it takes months of paper work, a certificate saying you are eligible to get a visa, and then actually getting the visa itself.

With that in mind, you need to be realistic as to what you are asking a company to do. For a company to go through all that extra effort for you, you have to be a markedly better hire than someone they could hire more easily. Japanese people are crazy-dedicated and equally talented. You may have a leg up because your cultural background gives you a different insight into things aesthetically, technically, and linguistically; however, you need to complement that with skills equal to or better than a similar Japanese applicant. Ultimately, it needs to be worthwhile for the company to take on the added work and risk of hiring you.

(The exceptions to this are highly skilled programmers. A lot of research and new techniques are developed in the West, so it seems Japanese companies are more open to hiring top-flight western programmers despite any minuses. The pay scales are different, so I don't know how much success the Japanese industry as a whole is having attracting top foreign coding talent, but Japanese companies are probably on the lookout for more skilled, experienced programmers than any other field.)

Life Isn't What You Expect It Will Be

Living in Japan requires that one bit of tacit knowledge to be remembered at all times. No matter what your passport says, no matter how much you know about the people, the country, or the language, you will never be Japanese. A trip to the bookstore will not have very many books in your native language, if at all. A trip to the store will always have that awkward moment when the clerk wonders if they can communicate with you (or, if you look Asian and can't speak Japanese, the awkward moment when they realize they can't). Your differences will be the starting point of conversations in the office, whether you feel you are different or not.

This isn't a bad thing. In many ways, it can lead to an invigorating rush of new experiences. Yet, it can also become mentally tiring. If you can't deal with being away from home in every sense of the word, you probably won't be able to handle things here.

Otaku Need Not Apply

Many people think that being as Japanese as possible is going to help them get a job here. It is not.

No matter how much you love anime, j-pop, Japanese film, etc., there is a Japanese person who knows more about it than you. It is just common sense. They grew up surrounded by the stuff, absorbing the cultural influences of their parents and grandparents as well.

If your main selling point to a company is how you are going to bridge cultures and knowledge, bringing something new to a room full of people with similar backgrounds, you aren't going to do it by having a voluminous knowledge of Naruto, or presenting a portfolio filled with anime-style designs. You are going to do it by knowing how audiences connect with things differently based on their backgrounds, or having a portfolio that shows varied influences and range. 


Embrace Difference, Strive For Sameness

You will be expected to be different, but also the same. You may be allowed some leeway because of your different background, but in general, what is expected of Japanese employees will be expected of you. A maze of etiquette and rules that can sometimes seem "wrong" will need to become "right." Things like the order you pass out papers in a meeting, to the amount of documentation required to buy supplies, or even the manner in which you apologize (never explain why something went south unless asked directly, just apologize) will all need to be tailored to the cultural expectations of your superiors.

However, you must also embrace difference. You are not Japanese, and that is what they want from you. Don't be afraid to state your opinion as a different viewpoint. Just don't act like you are speaking for the entire rest of the planet. They knew you were not Japanese when you were hired, so make sure to retain elements of your cultural identity.

Dylan Cuthbert is the founder of Kyoto-based developer Q-Games, best known for its PSN PixelJunk games. Cuthbert began working in the game industry in 1989, when he joined Argonaut Software. He would later work in Kyoto, Japan on titles like Starfox and Starfox II. During the 1990s, Cuthbert was a lead programmer at both Sony Computer Entertainment of America and Sony Computer Entertainment in Japan. While at Sony, Cuthbert designed Ape Escape for the PS2.

His advice:

Kick Back With The Locals

Go out of your way to hang out with the Japanese staff. Go drinking with them. Go for dinner with them. Make them your best friends. This is one of the most important tips. Too many gaijin come over and then stick to gaijin friends which just creates a divide, especially in mutual understanding.

Learn Japanese!

There is no excuse, and there are tons of aides on the internet, a lot of which are free. It's so easy nowadays to learn Japanese compared to back in the pre-web days.

Speak Japanese!

Whenever possible, speak Japanese and then speak it more. Go get drunk and you'll find yourself able to speak it fluently!

Have an Open Mind

Japanese culture is very different to the West, and in lots of small little ways that might not be that obvious at first. People say that the Japanese don't say anything directly, but in a casual games development environment this simply isn't true (that is only relevant to business discussions). The Japanese language is the master of being absolutely direct, quite often just one word in Japanese expresses a sentiment that takes a whole sentence to express in English.

Don't Constantly Compare

Never complain that anything should be more like the West, a lot of gaijin fall into this trap. Japan has lots of cool things and is an amazing unique culture because it isn't more like the West. Always remember that balance. I would say the same thing to people from Japan going to live and work in America and lamenting that it should be more like Japan. Each culture and country to his own, we don't a homogenous worldwide society, that would be boring.

Print this out. Bookmark it. Memorize it. Save it.

These are tips to maybe help you get your foot in the door, or maybe help you through your day once your foot is in the door, so you can pry the damn thing open and not have it hit on your ass.

Working is hard. Working abroad is harder. There's a different language to grapple with and a different culture. But for those who make the plunge and who stick it out and stay for the long haul, there is personal satisfaction in pushing oneself in new directions.

Those who do decide to work abroad (in the game industry or elsewhere), more than anything, you won't learn more about Japan, but rather, your home country. And yourself.

"For right now, there is a culture of downloadable titles being smaller and generally 'shorter', but I think this is destined to change," explains ThatGameCompany programmer Rick Nelson.

"Companies will always compete with each other by offering more and higher fidelity content, on any platform, and it seems that there will always be an audience for that," he adds. "Download size budgets kind of keep things small, but there have always been an enormous array of compression and data baking technologies available to large game studios to overcome some of those obstacles. What this means is that "downloadable" does not have to mean 'small.'"

For example, compare the teams that made Shadow Complex and Bionic Commando: ReArmed to the miniscule teams that made games like Everyday Shooter or Braid.

Digital console titles do have obvious flexibility. "We can experiment more, because it won't be too long until we get our games in the hands of players and hear their reactions," says ThatGameCompany president Kellee Santiago." If we fail, well, there's not too much damage done, and we'll do much better on the next one!" Words echoed by PixelJunk boss Dylan Cuthbert.

Downloadable titles — as a retail model — continue to find their footing. Like ThatGameCompany, Kyoto's Q-Games has produced a handful of top quality PSN titles like PixelJunk Monsters and PixelJunk Eden, and PixelJunk's Dylan Cuthbert thinks retail still does have its advantages: "There is a lot of implicit advertising that you gain from getting your game out into the shops — the shops put up banners and displays and they all try to sell your game for you," Cuthbert explains.

"This gives sales a tremendous boost and I can't think of what the equivalent would be in the online distribution world." Though, he adds, developers like Q-Games or ThatGameCompany do not have to physically print up game discs and can tweak the game right up until it goes live — a costly, time consuming expense.

Customers, Cuthbert believes, are still a little too judgmental when looking at the price-tag of digital games. "I can understand why but it would be nice if at some point people wouldn't complain about the price of something that costs about the same as a cheap lunch," he explains, "yet gives you many more hours of enjoyment." And doesn't give you indigestion.

[Pic]

PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe is the first PSP release in the well-reviewed, artsy-retro PixelJunk series that has been a delight for PS3 owners (and for a certain someone I live with).

Announced last year, Monsters for PSP has been a long time coming. Some of us have wondered what possibly could be taking so long — what could be in this PSP version to make such a wait worth it?

What Is It?
PixelJunk Monsters Deluxe is a Q Games production slated for fall release that remixes and substantially adds to both the tower defense original, PixelJunk Monsters, and its expansion, Encore, that were released in 2008. The gamplay is simple. Enemies march toward your base in waves. You build money to build towers to kill them before they reach the base. Killing more enemies nets more money for more towers. Enemies and tower types vary, which is what makes the game a strategic puzzle. The new game adds a new map of levels called Gati Gati Island, introduces some new towers, new enemies, includes all the levels from the original game and Encore and even puts the new enemies and towers into the old maps. Plus, it has local and online co-op gameplay.

What We Saw
Very quickly upstairs at Sony's E3 booth, I got my hands on a PSP that was running Monsters Deluxe and took on a few waves of monsters. I was unable to use any of the new towers, sadly.

How Far Along Is It?
Long in development, Monsters Deluxe is well on its way to its fall release. The level I had running seemed to be feature-complete.

What Needs Improvement?
The View: The PSP screen just isn't big enough, it seems, to render a full PixelJunk Monsters map without scrolling. This could be a problem. The game camera has to pan a little, which means that there may be monsters crawling on parts of the screen you can't see. One way around that is to hold down a shoulder button, which zooms out into a full-screen view. But I'm already sure that I'm going to have to blame my inability to see all the monsters on the screen as the reason I fail a level or two. A Sony producer told me that the game will have some smart camera-scrolling that will help shift the player's view to important things happening on the screen. Seems like a trouble spot.

What Should Stay The Same?
The New Towers: I think they're going to be good. I'm guessing. I mean, the new towers seem like they'll be great, but I didn't get a chance to try them yet. A pair of Trap Towers can be placed on opposite sides of the pathway and will connect themselves with an energy field that hurts anything that walks or flies through it. Seems good, though the Sony rep couldn't tell me if I could put down a third one and create a triangle of traps. That'd be cool. Another new tower, the Gem Tower, emits upgrade energy to other towers on the map — just as dancing on towers normally would — but it can't be sold or destroyed once its energy is depleted.

The Chat System: Playing co-op Monsters requires a lot of communication. It sure does in my household, when one of us is not dancing on the right tower or didn't do his or her job right by building arrow towers instead of cannons. For online, assumedly because voice-chat is a no-go, players will be able to trigger symbol-based speech balloons that should short-hand most of the strategy needs of a good co-op effort.

Balloons: Nothing thrills the PixelJunk Monsters obsessives than a little thing like the sight of balloons being added to enemies that always kept to the ground in the preceding Monsters games. Now they fly? Time for a new strategy. Tweaks like that will ensure that the content already experienced by those of us who played lots of Monsters and Encore won't feel like our time is going to be wasted playing those installments' levels all over again on the PSP.

Final Thoughts
Handheld games are often reduced versions of their console counterparts. PixelJunk Monsters has everything its downloadable predecessors did and then some. I know at least one person who will be happy about that.

What Is It?
Why, it's PixelJunk Shooter, the latest model in the PixelJunk line of quality PlayStation Network titles. Rescue trapped miners while exploring the way lava and water interact with each other...or, in co-op mode, spill lava on your friends for shooting the trapped miners.

What We Saw
I played a good 20 minutes worth of the newly available co-operative mode with one of Sony's crack team of people there to play the game at E3 with me, creating a bond of friendship with what's-his-name that lasts to this very day. I apologize for the name thing, but I have eight new Sony business cards and wasn't going to take the chance.

How Far Along Is It?
Q-Games likes to spring release dates on us. They're the Apple of game development. It could be released tomorrow, or a year from now. They'll wait for the most opportune moment, then wait another few days for dramatic tension, and then BAM...there it is.

What Needs Improvement?
Not Released Yet: They have yet to release the game, so we cannot play more of it. They need to fix that.

What Should Stay The Same?
Classic Co-Op: Q-Games likes to distill the video game experience into small, easily digestible yet highly recognizable chunks, and PixelJunk Shooter's co-operative mode is no exception. The game play lends itself well to classic arcade co-operative moments. For instance, when my ship was about to explode due to overheating in the lava and my wingman shot the ceiling to douse me with water...that's a classic co-op moment.

Classic Anti-Co-Op: Conversely, PixelJunk Shooter also gives you plenty of opportunities to be a dick to your friends. Did your teammate accidentally shoot one of the miners you're supposed to rescue? Shoot open a pocket of lava and watch hot justice rain down, or better yet, uses the sponge of doom! What is the sponge of doom?

Cool (and Hot) Devices: The Sponge of Doom! Probably not what it is called, the sponge is a circular alien creature that you can pick up and carry with your ship's grapple. Pick it up, drop it in some water, and it begins to swell up, filling with liquid that then pours out everywhere once you fly off with it. It also works with lava, so if your friend needs a lava shower in order to get with the program, there you go. Water bombs and the like also feature heavily into the game's fluid dynamics.

Final Thoughts
After playing through some of PixelJunk Shooter cooperatively, I'm not sure I could play the single player game without placing an additional controller next to me on the couch, turning to look at it every now and again, a single tear running down my cheek. One day there will be a PixelJunk game for everyone, and this one just might be mine.

And that name is PixelJunk Shooter. The title was settled upon after users were allowed to nominate their own ideas for a name, and since the game involved shooting, Shooter was the winner (Actually, PixelJunk Elements was the winner, but it didn't work out, so Q-Games binned it).

Mike's had a go on the game already, and liked what he saw, so until the game's release during the Summer you can read up on his impressions here.

PixelJunk 1-4: Drumroll Please … [PlayStation]

So what is PixelJunk 1-4? Well, it follows in the tradition of previous PixelJunk games for the PlayStation 3, with 1080p resolution visuals running at 60 frames per second in two glorious dimensions. The fourth PixelJunk game, not unlike Eden, is about exploration, as you'll pilot a small subterranean craft searching for survivors in cave-like environments outfitted only with a thruster, rock blaster, and grappling hook, one used to pluck unlucky cave dwellers from their unfortunate situations.

You'll blast through rock and battle underground enemy lifeforms, not the most worrisome of obstacles facing the player in PixelJunk 1-4. The deadliest foe in Q-Games' latest is the lava.

PixelJunk 1-4's gameplay highlight is its spectacular fluid dynamics. With jets of magma spewing forth from volcanoes and precariously placed in pools cradled in loose rock, you'll need to be mindful of the game's "Heat" meter. Simply put, if your vessel gets too hot by venturing too closely to lava, you'll explode. That means direct contact with the freely flowing molten liquid results in instant death.

The other fluid that you'll find below ground is water. It not only cools your ship—simply take a dip when things get too toasty—it will turn flowing lava into rock when the two fluids interact. This can help protect survivors and your vehicle, as well as form new rock formations.

You'll be able to force water and lava to interact by destroying the rock that keeps those liquids in check. Your ship's blaster is powerful, removing earth and eliminating enemies with ease.

Players won't have to rely on just gravity and rock formations to direct the flow of cooling water. There will be giant spongy spores that can soak up and release their contents when hung from the subterranean vehicle's grappling hook. On some levels, spheres filled with water can be lobbed with the grappling hook into lava flows, but those reserves are limited.

So PixelJunk 1-4 is part fluid management game, part rescue scenario. It smacks of old school shooters like Asteroids, Defender and Choplifter, but has a more casual, puzzle-solving feel about it. Control is breezy and very similar to Asteroids with it's point and thrust controls.

Q-Games appears to have done what it does best with 1-4, tapping into a blend of retro-gameplay styles that manages to provide a more laid back thrill. The controls are spot-on, based on our sprint through a handful of the game's demo levels, with the shoot-and-save action kept at comfortable levels of intensity. Levels feel exploratory, but well-contained in their scope, easy to get lost in, but also easy to navigate. I expect hours, in PixelJunk 1-4, will feel like minutes.

Visually, as you can see in the game's first screen shots, the style is a little more earthy than Q-Games most recent effort, more on par with PixelJunk Monsters in tone, but with a style unique to the series. On the audio front, the independent developer has tapped techno pioneer Alex Paterson of The Orb and his spin-off musical project High Frequency Bandwidth to score the game. Q founder Dylan Cuthbert says the soundtrack will be a hip-hop techno affair, layered like a film score.

So what does that sound like to you? PixelJunk what? Q-Games is currently taking your suggestions with the PixelJunk 1-4 naming contest, if you're feeling inspired.

PixelJunk 1-4 arrives on the PlayStation Network this Summer. Pass the time with first screen shots.

Q-Games follow-up to PixelJunk Eden is being socially promoted via Facebook with a "PixelJunk 1-4 sells one million units at launch!" event. Clearly pandering for sales! That event starts on Monday, August 31, but Q-Games points out "the release date will MOST DEFINITELY CHANGE!" so don't ink this into your purchase calendar just yet. The Facebook fan page touts the game as "hotter than fresh toast straight off the grill."

The official PixelJunk web site also starts with the teasing, showing off an animated shovel and a "coming soon" blurb.

You'll have to make your best educated guesses about what PixelJunk 1-4 will be, as we can't utter a peep about the game until next Wednesday, April 29th. Oh sure, we've already played it, but we're sworn to secrecy.

PixelJunk 1-4 [Facebook]
PixelJunk.jp [Official Web Site]

New games, new stages, and new music are just the tip of iceberg in the PixelJunk Eden Encore expansion, available on April 16th for $5.99 at a PlayStation Store near your PlayStation 3. Smart bombs, gravity manipulation, and a special super secret surprise for those who complete the game and collect all of the new spectra also await fans willing to pay a little extra for some more time in the garden.

I'm just amazed that they've managed to actually keep a big secret to themselves all of this time. Luke seems to think that guns might be involved in the secret "completely different way" to play. I am going to guess it's a new blindfolded mode. It sounds crazy but it just might work.

PixelJunk Eden Encore Launching on PSN this Thursday [PlayStation Blog]

Cuthbert sounds like he wants no part of a new Star Fox title for the Wii. "It'd be a big project, like 100 people on the staff," he said. "It's just not something we really want to do." Wiimote control also doesn't appeal to him, although it sounds like he confused the question from the G4 interviewer. But there was no confusing this appraisal: "The Wii is a bit more of a toy, I think."

Cuthbert also gets a dig in at Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto. G4 asked him why some games (Star Fox Adventures and Star Fox Assault, which he didn't develop) took Fox McCloud out of the cockpit and made him run around, instead of sticking with the title's space-shooter theme.

I think that's all Miyamoto. Whenever I speak to Miyamoto about Star Fox, he says it's not meant to be just a flying, sci-fi shooting game. It's meant to be anything we want to think up. But the core fans don't want that, but Miyamoto doesn't really care about that. He wants to make what he wants to make, so he just goes ahead and gets it done.

Just because Cuthbert and Q-Games won't be doing Star Fox Wii doesn't mean it won't be made. "Maybe they'll go back to Namco," he speculates. "Star Fox is an interesting brand. It has a very hardcore audience. People like those furries a little too much."

Original 'Star Fox' Creator Not Interested In Making 'Star Fox' For Wii [G4 via Cubed3]

The new addition to the third PixelJunk brand game feels like a natural fit, both comfortable and innovative, not unlike the trio of downloadable games we've seen Q-Games deliver on the PlayStation Network. The newest Encore, which adds five new gardens and two new gameplay modes—the other being a "zero G" modifier—was in response to Eden's "general popularity."

We asked Cuthbert about the success of Eden and what we should expect from the next entries, tentatively titled PixelJunk 4 and PixelJunk Dungeons.

Cuthbert said that the PixelJunk series was originally "meant to be quite esoteric."

"We weren't expecting much in the way of sales," Cuthbert noted. "But sales have definitely surpassed our expectations." Perhaps so much so that Eden visual artist and musician Baiyon is now "more in-demand." Expect to hear more about Baiyon's other game endeavors in the near future, but don't expect them to be PixelJunk related.

After PixelJunk Eden Encore ships, we may finally hear more about the fourth game in the series that strives for a balance of old-school gameplay with modern day, "true HD" visuals running at 60 frames per second.

That fourth game won't be the previously hinted PixelJunk Dungeons that Cuthbert name-dropped at GDC last year.

It will, however, tap the PlayStation 3 hardware more so than any other previous game, with PixelJunk 4 taking advantage of the Cell's multi-SPU architecture. Expect to see Q-Games start teasing the game closer to release, a strategy different from the pre-release campaign of Eden.

"This time, we want to have more of a gap," Cuthbert said of the game's reveal. He wants PixelJunk fans to hold off from setting their expectations about what 4 will be.

As for Dungeons, we might know even less about the game than we thought we did. That's because the Q-Games founder says the game might not be called PixelJunk Dungeons at all. And it's not necessarily a dungeon crawler, re-imagined in the PixelJunk style.

"We want to make sure we can make a game that's different from what people expect," he said.