AUTOMATON WEST

Delivering gaming news from Tokyo/Osaka Japan.

Articles: 83

Indie Games Interviews News
2025-06-24 00:01

Meet the creepiest publisher in indie games. Critical Reflex are “midwives bringing monsters into the world,” backing projects no one dares to touch

Interview with the founder and CEO of Critical Reflex, publisher of indie hits like Mouthwashing and Buckshot Roulette.

Interviews
2025-06-17 01:00

Kinky horror game Saeko: Giantess Dating Sim was deeply inspired by Va-11 Hall-A, and Va-11 Hall’s creator loves its “punk spirit”

Joint developer interview with VA-11 Hall-A creator Christopher Ortiz and SAEKO: Giantess Dating Sim creator kyp.

Interviews
2025-05-29 23:06

Brainwashing society into embracing furries. We ask Fuga: Melodies of Steel’s developers about their long history of furry-themed passion projects

Interview with Hiroshi Matsuyama, CEO of Fuga: Melodies of Steel developer CyberConnect2, about the studio's long history of furry-themed in-house games.

Interviews
2025-05-27 01:00

The market for furry games is huge, and the Fuga: Melodies of Steel series was saved by it

Interview with Hiroshi Matsuyama, representative of Fuga: Melodies of Steel series developer CyberConnect 2.

Game Development Interviews
2025-05-19 18:00

Like a Dragon’s devs invest not only in debugging, but in developing “tools to prevent bugs,” like heat maps for VRAM consumption

Interview with SEGA's quality engineers about how they prevent bugs in the Like a Dragon and Super Monkey Ball series.

Game Development Interviews
2025-04-29 12:09

How do Like a Dragon games come out so fast? One of RGG Studio’s secrets is a highly efficient testing and debugging cycle that starts as soon as development does

Interview with SEGA's quality engineers about the automated testing cycle used to maximize the efficiency of Like a Dragon's development cycle.

Game Development Interviews
2025-04-23 18:03

Interview: The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy’s devs needed players to think they were “completely out of their minds” to compete in the game market

Pre-launch interview with The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy's co-directors Kazutaka Kodaka and Kotaro Uchikoshi.

Interviews
2025-04-22 12:00

Interview: Nitroplus missed Armored Core so much, they started making their own mecha action game Dolls Nest – then AC6 got announced

Developer interview with Nitroplus's Yojo Ota and Keiichi Ogami - director and sub-director of 3D mecha action game Dolls Nest.

Interviews
2025-02-26 10:52

Interview: Tokyo Xtreme Racer is selling like hot cakes thanks to an IP name more powerful than any marketing strategy. We talk to Genki about the successful Early Access launch

Interview with Tokyo Xtreme Racer producer Noguchi Kentaro and marketing representative Takatoshi Sato about the game's performance on Steam so far.

Game Development Interviews
2025-02-18 14:38

Interview: Tokyo Xtreme Racer’s big comeback after 18 years was fueled by the booming popularity of Japanese cars in the real-life car scene

Interview with Kentaro Noguchi, the producer of Tokyo Xtreme Racer. We ask him about what led to the series' reboot after 18 years.

Interviews
2025-02-17 10:58

Interview: Drawing influence from HADES, the run-and-gun shooter Project Tachyon shows that the roguelite genre and storytelling work well together

Interview with HIKE and STUDIO N9, the publisher and developer of the new run-and-gun roguelite shooter Project Tachyon.