{"id":11460,"date":"2022-04-12T17:23:35","date_gmt":"2022-04-12T08:23:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/?p=11460"},"modified":"2022-04-12T17:23:36","modified_gmt":"2022-04-12T08:23:36","slug":"20220412-11460","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/automaton-media.com\/en\/playism\/20220412-11460\/","title":{"rendered":"Ib developer interview: Why a remake after 10 years?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Publication date of the original Japanese article<\/a>: 2022-04-12 17:00 (JST)
Translated by. Nick Mosier<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n


Indie game publisher PLAYISM has released a remake of Ib<\/em><\/strong> on Steam. The game currently only supports Japanese, but English, Korean, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese support are planned to be added at a later date.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

* Disclosure: The publisher PLAYISM is part of Active Gaming Media, which is also the owner of this website.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The original Ib<\/em> came out in 2012 as a free horror game in Japan. The game takes place in the unlikely setting of an art gallery adorned with mysterious and fascinating artwork, but with no one in the gallery to view it. The game is full of unique puzzles and its characters captured the hearts of many players, spreading through sites like pixiv and Twitter, as well as through Let\u2019s Plays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On social media, content seems to go viral in an instant almost every day. But much of it is forgotten almost as quickly as it rises. On the other hand, Ib<\/em> is still loved by players around the world even after 10 years. The proof can be seen in kouri\u2019s tweet from October of last year announcing the remake of the title, which as of April 7 had gathered 190,000 likes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In honor of the remake of Ib<\/em> being released, we have conducted an interview with the game\u2019s developer kouri. The questions were provided by Shunji Mizutani, the Executive Producer at PLAYISM.


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– After 10 years, what made you decide to remake Ib?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The biggest reason is a few years ago people started contacting me saying they couldn\u2019t play the game. The original free version of Ib<\/em> was made in RPG Maker 2000<\/em>, a tool that\u2019s over 20 years old now, so there are cases of it not working on modern hardware. It was sad that people who wanted to play the game weren\u2019t able to. There was also a considerable amount of demand for a remake, so I thought if I\u2019m going to do it, I want to do it right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Requests were coming by email, particularly from overseas. After seeing so many emails of people saying they wanted the game on Steam, I started to think that might be the way to go. But at this point, it\u2019s hard to tell if it will actually sell or not\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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