One product that does O2O really well is Japan’s Colopl. We’ve covered this company and its impressive geolocation mobile games in previous articles. The games require users to actually travel from one destination to another, and the distance is then converted into points within the game. I’ve heard that many fans of the game are businessmen, since the games add a little fun to their commuting life. Soon Colopl will hold its third annual ‘Colopl Bussanten’. This seven-day event is sort of like a farmer’s market, where 70 local stores from all over Japan gather together in one place. The participating stores are all partners in the game Colony-na-seikatsu, where users receive special cards called Coloca when they visit these stores and make purchases of a certain amount. There are over 190 partner stores carefully selected by Colopl employees, and they all provide original products that makes the trip expense money well spent. For the past two events, 40,000 to 60,000 people visited, and this number is expected to grow even higher this year. From September 25th to 30th, special priority tickets to the event will be available on Amazon for 3150 yen. The purchase comes with unknown special mystery…
One product that does O2O really well is Japan’s Colopl. We’ve covered this company and its impressive geolocation mobile games in previous articles. The games require users to actually travel from one destination to another, and the distance is then converted into points within the game. I’ve heard that many fans of the game are businessmen, since the games add a little fun to their commuting life.
Soon Colopl will hold its third annual ‘Colopl Bussanten’. This seven-day event is sort of like a farmer’s market, where 70 local stores from all over Japan gather together in one place. The participating stores are all partners in the game Colony-na-seikatsu, where users receive special cards called Coloca when they visit these stores and make purchases of a certain amount. There are over 190 partner stores carefully selected by Colopl employees, and they all provide original products that makes the trip expense money well spent.
For the past two events, 40,000 to 60,000 people visited, and this number is expected to grow even higher this year. From September 25th to 30th, special priority tickets to the event will be available on Amazon for 3150 yen. The purchase comes with unknown special mystery products as well.
Colopl Bussanten will take place from October 17th to 23rd (10am to 8pm) on the 8th floor of the Tokyu department store in Kichijoji.
This is an interesting initiative by a mobile gaming company, and it definitely fits under the company mission, ‘Entertainment in Real Life’.
If 2012 was the year that mobile exhibitors overtook consoles at the Tokyo Game Show, 2013 was the year consoles rebounded, with Sony and Microsoft dominating the show. But there was still a strong mobile presence this year, perhaps the biggest exhibitor being GREE, once again shelling out for a large floor space. We spoke to their SVP of social games Eiji Araki, who explained why they feel the need to go big every year. But the standout newcomer this year at TGS was GungHo Online Entertainment, the developer of perhaps the world’s most successful game, Puzzle & Dragons, spotlighting their new 3DS version. They also previewed their upcoming title, Divine Gate, which is set for a September 30 release on Android. There were some notable absences from the mobile space however. GREE rival DeNA, as always, chose to skip the event. Colopl had a pretty large booth last year, but they took a pass on showing up this year. Casual game makers Line Corporation and BeeWorks, the creator of the wildly popular (and cute) Nameco franchise, were also no shows. We turned our eyes to the little guys in mobile this year, skipping over consoles entirely [1]. In the…
If 2012 was the year that mobile exhibitors overtook consoles at the Tokyo Game Show, 2013 was the year consoles rebounded, with Sony and Microsoft dominating the show.
But there was still a strong mobile presence this year, perhaps the biggest exhibitor being GREE, once again shelling out for a large floor space. We spoke to their SVP of social games Eiji Araki, who explained why they feel the need to go big every year. But the standout newcomer this year at TGS was GungHo Online Entertainment, the developer of perhaps the world’s most successful game, Puzzle & Dragons, spotlighting their new 3DS version. They also previewed their upcoming title, Divine Gate, which is set for a September 30 release on Android.
There were some notable absences from the mobile space however. GREE rival DeNA, as always, chose to skip the event. Colopl had a pretty large booth last year, but they took a pass on showing up this year.
Casual game makers Line Corporation and BeeWorks, the creator of the wildly popular (and cute) Nameco franchise, were also no shows.
We turned our eyes to the little guys in mobile this year, skipping over consoles entirely [1]. In the indie gaming area it was great to see companies like Okinawa-based SummerTime Studio, who has had a hit with their Ancient Surfer mobile game. We had a short discussion with their president, Hirotsu Takeyasu, which you can check out below.
Set up right next to them was Tokyo-based Link Kit, the maker of Samurai Defender, a game that we reviewed (and loved) earlier this year. Team Martini was also showing off Pechan, a really fun game for iPad where you have to push a juicer around the screen to crush fruit.
The game show also had an area dedicated to romance simulation games, featuring Eitarosoft, Voltage, and the oddly named ZZYZX. We did a short interview with Voltage (see video below), a prolific game publisher with over 50 titles to date. They plan to release one app every month, including some games that men can enjoy as well. This is one of those genres that is unique to Japan, but I imagine we will see more of these kind of titles creep into the global market (as we saw with card battle games), on an experimental basis if nothing else.
They came from beyond
Of course, the game show wasn’t just about Japanese game producers peddling their wares. There were also an abundance of foreign game makers parachuting into the country to show off titles here. As we mentioned yesterday, the one that most impressed us was Israel’s Nordau Creative with its Kazooloo augmented reality dragon fighting title.
But there was also an abundance of exhibitors from the Asia region, representing Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Tawian, Thailand, and Vietnam.
We also were quite impressed by the efforts of Russian developer and publisher Game Insight, who just recently launched a localized version of their Tribez game here in Japan for iOS. They win our unofficial award for the most enthusiastic game demo, corralling me and my colleague into a room and not letting us go until we had seen five of their games. They should get a raise.
And finally, making my naughty list this year is Square Enix, who once again had their “no photos” policy in effect at their booth, demonstrating that they still do not comprehend the concept of a “show”.
The Nordau Creative team, featuring Kazooloo AR game at Tokyo Game Show
There no shortage of coverage over on sites like Tktk and Tktk, so you can check that out there. ↩
About a week ago we told you about how Japanese game developer Colopl (seriously, that’s its name) had added popular geo-location restaurant game Boku no restaurant II to its platform. The company is busy this week as well, pushing its Quiz RPG: Wizard & Wiz the Black Cat here in Japan. The quiz/RPG hybrid game (which takes more than a few pages from the playbook of Puzzle & Dragons) has been promoted in a Japanese TV commercial (view it on YouTube) since August 19th, pushing it past the 4 million downloads milestone as of August 23. In the charts below (for iOS and Android rankings) you can see exactly the kind of boost TV promos represent for mobile games in Japan. Meanwhile, the game has just been released in English as well for anyone who wants to give it a try. The official English language title is Quiz RPG: The World of Mystic Wiz [1]. I was curious to check it out and see what quality of questions it has. So far the questions are decent, although it seems to me that there are an unusual amount of ice hockey-related questions for some reason or another [2]. If you’d like…
About a week ago we told you about how Japanese game developer Colopl (seriously, that’s its name) had added popular geo-location restaurant gameBoku no restaurant II to its platform. The company is busy this week as well, pushing its Quiz RPG: Wizard & Wiz the Black Cat here in Japan.
The quiz/RPG hybrid game (which takes more than a few pages from the playbook of Puzzle & Dragons) has been promoted in a Japanese TV commercial (view it on YouTube) since August 19th, pushing it past the 4 million downloads milestone as of August 23. In the charts below (for iOS and Android rankings) you can see exactly the kind of boost TV promos represent for mobile games in Japan.
Meanwhile, the game has just been released in English as well for anyone who wants to give it a try. The official English language title is Quiz RPG: The World of Mystic Wiz[1]. I was curious to check it out and see what quality of questions it has. So far the questions are decent, although it seems to me that there are an unusual amount of ice hockey-related questions for some reason or another [2].
If you’d like quick walk-through of the English version (h/t Serkan Toto), you can check out my video demo above. The battle card mechanics will be familiar to anyone who knows the genre, letting you collect, enhance, and evolve cards as you proceed on your quest.
Overall the game is not a bad one. And I might play it a little more if I didn’t like Puzzle & Dragons so much. If you’d like to try it in English, you can download it for free from the App Store or Google Play.
Colopl has also released a Korean version of the title, and that’s also available for iOS and Android.
iOS rankingsAndroid rankings
Note that when I referred to the Japanese title in English in the first paragraph, I opted to translated the title directly. ↩
Back in July, we wrote about Japan’s Colopl and its geolocation conquest game Keitai Kunitori Gassen. And now just recently, Colopl has announced the release of Enish’s Boku-no-restaurant II (meaning ‘My restaurant’ in Japanese) on its platform. Boku-no-restaurant is a simulation geo-location game where users open up a restaurant and aspire to make it into a first-class establishment. You can cook a variety of (virtual) food, such as Japanese, French, or Chinese cuisine, or even sweets. The game works just as if you were opening a restaurant in real life. It’s about creating unique menus, promoting the restaurant, and working to increase sales. There are mini games that allows users to enhance their experience points to make their restaurants more popular. Because there are tips in the game that let users learn about food and restaurants (such as the origin of a certain menu item or details about the ingredients) the game can be pretty educational. There are collaborative features too, where people can help each to cook better food, or chat on bulletin boards to share tips. Initially released back in 2009 by two ex-Yahoo employees, the game is available on all possible platforms including Gree and Mobage, but…
Back in July, we wrote about Japan’s Colopl and its geolocation conquest game Keitai Kunitori Gassen. And now just recently, Colopl has announced the release of Enish’s Boku-no-restaurant II (meaning ‘My restaurant’ in Japanese) on its platform.
Boku-no-restaurant is a simulation geo-location game where users open up a restaurant and aspire to make it into a first-class establishment. You can cook a variety of (virtual) food, such as Japanese, French, or Chinese cuisine, or even sweets. The game works just as if you were opening a restaurant in real life. It’s about creating unique menus, promoting the restaurant, and working to increase sales. There are mini games that allows users to enhance their experience points to make their restaurants more popular.
Because there are tips in the game that let users learn about food and restaurants (such as the origin of a certain menu item or details about the ingredients) the game can be pretty educational. There are collaborative features too, where people can help each to cook better food, or chat on bulletin boards to share tips.
Initially released back in 2009 by two ex-Yahoo employees, the game is available on all possible platforms including Gree and Mobage, but it was first made available on Mixi. The game acquired over 500,000 users in the two weeks after its release.
The geolocation aspect of the game is called ‘Osanpo Gacha,’ where ‘Osanpo’ means to take a walk in Japanese. By actually traveling some distance and checking in to a new location, users can get special items. In the past, there were O2O campaigns at stores like Gyukaku (a Korean barbecue chain) or Lawson (a major convenience store), by ordering a specific food, users got special cards with a code that let them download special game items.
Boku-no-restaurant can be played on iPhone, Android, as well as feature phones. These geolocation games are a fun way for people to enjoy their everyday life a little more, especially if they have to commuting from their home to the office.
In Japan, geolocation mobile games have always been popular, going back to the days when featured phones ruled. One of the most successful is the Keitai Kunitori Gassen (or ‘mobile nation conquest war’), provided by one of Japan’s largest internet mapping companies, Mapion. Keitai Kunitori Gassen has over one million registered members and it works sort of like a stamp rally. Users of the game can conquer different locations around the country by checking in to the location and competing with other users. There were over 600 spots available as of April of 2012. The game gives out special Japanese warlord cards that originate from specific locations, and warlords can be strengthened to fight each other. A new stamp rally will be released this summer that allows users to conquer Japanese castles all over Japan. This particular stamp rally takes place in the age of the Civil War (or Sengoku jidai), and users who can nab over 100 castles can qualify to apply for special trips and train tickets to help you conquer other locations. Users can also post photos and make comments on places they have visited. This particular rally can be played for 100 days. Every summer, a…
Keitai Kunitori Gassen
In Japan, geolocation mobile games have always been popular, going back to the days when featured phones ruled. One of the most successful is the Keitai Kunitori Gassen (or ‘mobile nation conquest war’), provided by one of Japan’s largest internet mapping companies, Mapion. Keitai Kunitori Gassen has over one million registered members and it works sort of like a stamp rally. Users of the game can conquer different locations around the country by checking in to the location and competing with other users. There were over 600 spots available as of April of 2012.
The game gives out special Japanese warlord cards that originate from specific locations, and warlords can be strengthened to fight each other. A new stamp rally will be released this summer that allows users to conquer Japanese castles all over Japan. This particular stamp rally takes place in the age of the Civil War (or Sengoku jidai), and users who can nab over 100 castles can qualify to apply for special trips and train tickets to help you conquer other locations. Users can also post photos and make comments on places they have visited. This particular rally can be played for 100 days.
Every summer, a game like the one mentioned above is realeased on Keitai Kunitori Gassen. Since its initial launch back in 2008, there have been over 500 users who have conqured all 600 areas within the game. This new campaign will kick off on July 24th, with ten times the spots it had in previous games. Core fans are already saying how this particular version is the ultimate ‘Muri-ge’, or ‘the ultimate impossible game’.
The app is available on both iOS and on Android if you’d like to check it out.
Another famous app from this genre is Colony na Seikatsu, which can be roughly translated as Colony-like life. That game was released all the way back in 2003, and is now available as a smartphone app.
colopl 
Yukari Mitsuhashi
Rick Martin
