We hope everyone is enjoying their holiday; we sure are! We worked very hard to meet the contract, and finished it, and now we are taking a much-needed break!

As we mentioned before, the contract will end sometime in spring of next year. When it ends, we will be able to release the demo, which has already been completed.

Keep watch after the holidays, we want to release it as SOON as possible and show you our work!

We've mentioned before that we have been looking into some bigger ventures, and after months of going through them, one of them has actually hit.

We're all actually in shock about it, we didn't expect it to amount to anything and it did!

That said, this will put a delay on all of our planned releases until next year. Part of the agreement is to work on someone else's time schedule, and we're not allowed to say anything at all about its nature until they determine it's okay, which is going to be approximately Spring 2013.

Thanks so much for sticking with us and supporting us...it's gotten us to this point and we're really proud!

Sorry for the delay! We have three new videos of Mitsumata game play!

These first two are early scenes in the game that are nearly complete. We just want to test a few more effects and the parallax background in-story. There is now music!
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Ths is the updated platformer, with its new moving background! We're still working on smoothing it out, but hopefully we'll have a great look soon!
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Stay tuned for more information!

So one of the things we've been doing here is refining the game's art and animation so that we can show it to a couple of companies who have been talking to us. It's the reason we decided to take so much extra time and work very slowly.

Here is a trailer we crafted to help with that, hope you enjoy!
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We're still tweaking the platformer animation to work more smoothly, so stay tuned for that, and the demo!

We've been holding back quite a bit of new stuff since our last art update on Mitsumata!

Over the coming week, we'll have updated battle videos, updated platformer videos (you'll see why we specifically wanted to update these!), and images of the final menus, as well as images of lesser known characters who will show up, and a brand spanking new character we've been keeping mostly under our hat. We'll also have a little video teaser about the story toward the end of the week, and at the beginning of the coming month, a playable demo of the first part of the game!

The game is, as we mentioned before, pretty long, so we've been debating a bit over where exactly to cut it for the demo, but we're going to include a couple of in-game days of play, to give players the feel for the story, let them tinker around with the item system, the searchable screens, and meet the characters, finally, face to face.

The final rating for Mitsumata is T for Teen, 15+/16+ depending on where you are located. It is bloody, with implied sexual situations. The demo will have heavily implied violent actions

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There's also been some confusion between Mitsumata and a 3-D game. We are not them. Mitsumata is, and always has been since day 1, a 2-D interactive story game. You can read more about exactly what it is on the front page of the DA. We fund our games almost entirely out of pocket and work on them in our free time during the school year and full-time in the summer, which is why we're not rushing and taking the time to get Mitsumata completely perfect. We'd appreciate, if you want to address other people's work, you would actually send those people your comments.

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We're not doing anything else until Mitsumata is complete. It may be taking longer than we'd hoped because of the art additions we wanted, but for the increase in functionality, animation, and art, we think your eyes will be very pleased when you see the improvements.

See you soon!

These focus on general gameplay. One is of an early scene in the game, the other is of the PDA workings. We're still tweaking to try to make them the best they can be, so stay tuned for updates!

At this time, Mitsumata is code-complete and going through tweaks and any last artistic implementations.

Here are the newest videos, enjoy!
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Check them out on youtube!

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Hope you guys enjoy them! Stay tuned!

Have you been waiting for video of Mitsumata?

Finally, we have it for you!
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These are just short videos of two of the minigames in Mitsumata. Our internet here is on the blitz, so we can't upload the rest yet, but once it's fixed, we'll post up ALL of the videos for you!

Enjoy!

Recently, the group has picked up someone I'll call "Marketing Guy". Marketing guy is an amazing person who is helping us work with marketing techniques to get Mitsumata out to a larger audience. Part of that involves us spending our very real time talking to some publishing companies and getting them to work with our market, we have quite a few meetings coming up and it's become a bit tough to take on so much extra work for promos and update at the same time, but we put pictures here as often as possible, without revealing too much! We should have some video soon though, so stay tuned!

So right now we're going through everyone who applied and will pick some of them to help us test. Sorry to anyone who didn't get through, we're trying to be as varied as possible. We're delaying testing a few days to accommodate for a major national holiday taking place tomorrow in the US, and builds will officially be sent out this weekend to begin testing. We're also trying to implement a makeshift set of options that will make it easier to go through each and every option without needing to replay the game five million times, cutting down the amount of time you'll need to test.

Beyond that, we're just adding in music/SFX, doing our 50 millionth dialogue edits, finishing/plugging art and fixing any remaining bugs!

Staaaaaaaaaaay tuuuuuuuuuuned.

After working like crazy on Mitsumata, we've finally finished 99.9% of the essential coding and are working primarily on script tightening, finishing up art/music and plugging it, extra visual pretties/animation to make it really awesome, and the best part...TESTING!

We need just a couple of people to start testing next week. Testing is not just playing the game and giving us your thoughts on it, it's looking at the script, playing the minigames, going through the RPG battles, and giving us a very detailed, succinct write-up of your experience, the difficulty level, any typos or game errors, any improvements, and things like that. It will require you to play through every portion to make sure it works.

In addition, the structure of the group has changed considerably, as has the focus of our projects, in hopes of attracting more people, and different kinds of people!

Please send a note if you would like to test! We are looking for people who:
--Are 18+
--Have the time to play through and make comments.
--Have native or near native fluency in English.

Thanks so much!

We've gotten a few questions on what sort of game Mitsumata is in detail, so I wanted to give an explanation.

Mitsumata is in many ways like an average visual novel. The story is the most important part of the game, topping out at an amazing 120,000 words. While the writers did keep a lot of key elements of anime to appeal to anime fans, they also decided to expand on that and show different types of characters and break tropes in half over their knees. They also have a love of plot twists, so hopefully you will be surprised, be happy and end up crying by the end of this game.

The tale told is in line with "dark fantasy", which means that it is neither completely happy nor sad. It has its light-hearted moments, but it gets very dark, and for that reason we're ranking it at least a T or 16+ at its current stage in development. Sexuality is also mentioned and liberally discussed.

The story starts off with a 17 year old boy named Riku, who, though raised as a human, finds out that he is actually one of a humanoid, language capable species called Majin when he is one day attacked on the street. Like most 17 year olds, the discovery of this underground world of fantasy appeals to him, and he willingly leaves with his saviours, Roman and Soume, to a rescue where they will train him to use his abilities and hide him from would-be capturers. He meets the cranky owner of the rescue, Susa, as well as the creepy, paranoid librarian, Doctor Osamu, and all the other trainees. It's different from his privileged life, but he can shoot fireballs from his hands, so who cares!

From there, the story branches off, to tell the tales of the other people in the shrine. You can follow your favorite character simply by making decisions to interact with them on a repeated basis. Each one has a detailed history, and once you branch off, you will follow the story through that particular character. The direction of the story remains the same...the difference is only in how much of it you get to see, depending on who you choose. Because of that, getting all of the endings is required to understand the full direction.

This is also where the story gets dark. Where people start getting attacked, where suspicions run high, where people start to lose their lives. Why is Susa so distracted? Why is Soume so quiet? Why doesn't Roman want to talk about his past? Why is Kazutaka so afraid of imminent death, despite the rescue being safe?

Throughout the game, minigames will pop up. You may skip the minigames if you choose, but we urge you to play them at least a couple of times, as your prowess in battle will depend on both your decisions in game and your minigame scores. The minigames will be training for Riku or Roman, and the higher your level or score, the easier your battles will be. Amidst all of this, you can gain bonus events by collecting certain items, as well as events to help you in battle, or help you through the story.

I hope this is a detailed enough explanation of the story and gameplay!

It is not a dating sim by any stretch of the imagination. Sorry, guys.

Due to the hurricane going up the East Coast, we will be temporarily delaying everything, as many areas near to members of the group are receiving voluntary evacuation orders, with preparation for mandatory evacuations.

We will return Tuesday and continue to work on fixing the problems. This will not delay Mitsumata. It will delay a full version of Papa Pirate, and we may release both at once at a reduced cost to show appreciation for the people who reported problems. If you did report glitches, we are keeping your contact information and you will receive both games completely free, as well as extra art updates, so thank you again for doing that for us.

We will continue to post updates for Mitsumata in the meantime, as we work on improving the game experience in Papa Pirate, and add a tutorial for easy understanding.

Many lessons were learned, which is also why we are making changes within the group structure!

Thank you as always!

The demo is completed 100% and will be coming out at the end of the week. We encourage you to download it and try it out. It runs you through the first three years of the game~ o /o/ o/

It's been a long road, but we hope you enjoy it! We'll be spending the rest of the week until then preparing for Comiket and revamping the sites to be nice and prettyful to prepare for mass downloading.

There are also some pretty large changes going on within the group structure itself, which we will give a posting about as soon as it's finalized, but you might notice things vanishing and reappearing over the next couple of weeks as the team goes over what to do with them.

Many people work under this name. The smallest amount of members this group has had is four. We are currently at our largest with eleven people working on Mitsumata. Half of those people are able to access and update for the group, or address questions and comments, and all of them have.

There is not just one person here. Any mail or messages you send can and likely will read by up to six different people. Please keep this in mind when contacting us on our sites or email address.

We would greatly appreciate it!

We're still around, guys, no worries~

Within the next couple of days, we'll be showing off pictures from the conventions!

Currently, we're trying to fix some last minute bugs, and PPBB will be out for online preorders and sales as soon as we're done.

YES, WE ARE SORRY, WE ARE LATE. D:

Some things went a little downhill and delayed us until the end of this month, however, we are going forward at AnimeExpo and JapanExpo as planned, and the game will be open for demo downloads and preorders at that time.

Please bear with us. @_@ There's so much to do even in the last 1% of the game!

KinouGames is now open for pixel art commissions!

For these, we're going very simple.

You may choose from either of our two bases and we will change the hair, the eye-color, the skin color and the clothing within reason.

For pieces made from this base:
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$10 if it stays within 144x144 pixels.

For pieces made from this base:
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$5 if it stays within 100x100 pixels.

We may make walk animations, or other fun animations available later, so keep watch!

Note us with your information!

You ever have any questions for KinouGames? About us, about our artwork, or about our philosophies? How about our characters?

Ask them all here~! We can't guarantee that all will be answered, since we do want to keep details secret, but test us and find out!

(Respectful comments only!)

Due to an unfortunate accident, a good pal of KinouGames, has lost all of their art supplies and is doing commissions to try to make them back! Please help them out!

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