What’s been the most difficult challenge the business has had to face over the last ten years and how did you overcome it? This last year has been very hard, similar to a lot of other devs and publishers. Appetite for, and visibility of, niche audience games seems to have declined sharply, as well as the sheer amount of games there are out there. I think it’s hard for gamers to find games that might surprise and delight them, unless you’re deep into a particular genre or creator. It’s a shame as I’m sure there are a huge number of games out there that could be people’s next favourite game, if only they knew they existed. But it’s the same with all entertainment and I’m optimistic that games that really resonate eventually find their audience.
“We’ve all been around the block a few times and not much fazes us”
Is being an indie publisher more difficult in 2024 than it was in 2014, or is Chorus just better at it? It’s definitely harder now. As hard as it is to believe, there was a gold rush mentality for indies when mobile gaming started. At that time, some of the best games were coming out of the West and they weren’t finding it easy to get out into Japan and China so we were able to help introduce Asian audiences to games like The Room series. I don’t think we’re better at it than any other indie publisher and we certainly look up to many. We do have two particular strengths that I think have helped us: affinity for developers as ex-devs ourselves; and native familiarity with both Western and Japanese markets. That gives us a couple of strings to our bow that have been useful for sure.
Obviously Chorus has published a variety of games, but perhaps is seen to specialise in quirky and socially aware adventures and visual novels? Does it pay to specialise? Actually, if anything we don’t tend to specialise in a genre. We’ve picked games that interest us as a team, and there happens to have been quite a few that do fit that description. But to be honest, each game was chosen on its own merit
and how we felt about the dev team, whether we could partner with them well. So while we’ve released games like Coffee Talk, A Space for the Unbound, Frank and Drake, and Neurodiver, we’re working with Toge again on Kriegsfront Tactics - a turn-based mecha tactics game - and we’re also working on UNDEFEATED: Genesis, a UE5 superhero game! If we personally like the game and think it offers something innovative, if we think we can work well with the team, and if we believe there’s an audience - those are really the three components we look for.
The indie gaming landscape has changed dramatically. How would you change it further if you could? That’s a hard one. One of the things I love about indie games is that you see daring innovation and often these appear as shorter experiences, which often take one idea and execute them brilliantly. Inscryption springs to mind, as does The Exit 8. I love to see that kind of creativity and daring. However, there are huge challenges and I’m not sure there are easy solutions. For example, the democratisation of dev tools has allowed anyone
Paper Ghost Stories: Third Eye Open
Undefeated: Genesis
June/July 2024 MCV/DEVELOP | 39
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