As someone with a special place in my heart for the personal, experimental and creative side of indie games, I'm a big fan of the growing trend of small game anthologies such as Indiepocalypse, the recent Cartomancy Anthology, and the subject of this and a few subsequent blog posts 同ZINE // douZINE.

What makes this anthology - here a zine - particularly interesting to me is its focus on Japanese indies. Since I moved to Japan I've been exploring the indie scene here and finding a wealth of incredible games that largely go unnoticed in English-speaking games media, despite the preeminence of the (capital letters) Japanese Games Industry in how we think of games in general. As in other countries, the label "indie" covers a really wide range of developers and games, from fairly significant companies to small teams or single developers, and most don't get the visibility they deserve.

Into this space comes douZINE - whose name comes from "doujin", a Japanese culture of self-published creative works - whose mission is to share doujin and indie games from Japan with the world. To quote the zine itself, its creators "are making 同ZINE to say that anybody can be an indie game dev if they want!"

In that spirit, Issue #0 of 同ZINE brings together five games from developers in Japan, of different genres and styles, together with a zine presenting each game in the words of the developers themselves.

I'll be playing through all of these games and sharing some of my thoughts about them (hopefully interesting ones!), and I might also wrap around at the end and talk about the zine as a whole.

But for now, let's begin with the first game I played, 湯圓 [tong jyun] by developer npckc.

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I'm already cheating a little bit as I have already played tong jyun, having gotten it as part of the Queer Games Bundle last year. But what a pleasure it was to dive back in again!

湯圓 [tong jyun] is a short chat with protagonist Polly Chan's mum, as she guides her through cooking the eponymous dish of glutinous rice balls filled with sesame paste and served in a ginger syrup. But the cooking is, as it often is for children of immigrants, also a connection to a culture she was raised in but has a distant relationship to.

What makes 湯圓 such a special experience is how deftly it weaves topics of identity and culture into its otherwise banal setting : the game slowly unfolds over a lazy Sunday morning as Polly reads her family group chat, texts her mum and girlfriend and goes though the steps of the recipe in simple interactive vignettes. The way it imbues these little actions with meaning is reminiscent of Florence, but where that game uses the long arc of its narrative to recontextualise previous interactions, tong jyun is a short experience where those actions let you sink into Polly's pace, and into her perspective.

That perspective is of a young lesbian woman of Chinese heritage, whose relationship to those intersecting identities is glimpsed throughout the game. Her queerness is a soft backdrop to the narrative, with her girlfriend being both reason and encouragement for her exploration of her heritage. And her desire to connect to her culture is seen most strongly in her conversations with her mother, who guides her through the process of making tong jyun.

Food is an especially interesting part of culture, as it's one of those things that is threaded through the childhood of most second-generation immigrants. It can shape much of your tastes and values, but often is only passively consumed as a child. I personally only ever cooked non-Indian food growing up, delighting in making dishes that felt different and exciting, and only when I left home did I attempt (poorly) to explore the flavours of my mother's cooking. Cooking feels particularly meaningful as it is not just about passively learning about culture, but about doing culture, literally making it with your own two hands.

In the game, the intricacies of that experience are made to feel completely natural, with few concessions made to the unfamiliar player's ignorance of the culture. Polly's family chat is mostly in untranslated Chinese, and the words and cultural concepts that are explained are ones that she herself is uncertain about. This again resonated with my own experiences, of conversations in Tamil only half-understood, a language both deeply familiar and yet just out of grasp. Her vague recollection of foods and festivals without quite being able to remember the details of them echoes my own. The honesty of the cultural depiction in 湯圓 shines through in a way that is all too rare in videogames - far from being a barrier to players, it lets them see themselves in the details of its humanity.

I haven't even talked about the way the game uses little everyday intimacies to show love in the different forms it can take ; the way it captures the queer joy of familial acceptance ; the apps on the phone's home screen that give little glimpses into her personality ; the way it asks you to be patient, to enjoy moments of peace, even including a simple breathing exercise app ; its minimalist and adorable art style. That so much can be packed into a 15 minute experience is a testament to npckc's design, and I can't wait to play more of her games!

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Thanks for reading my first post on this blog! It may be a tad meandering, but I hope you enjoyed it anyway, and that it encouraged you to try out the game :)

I'm hoping to use this space to regularly share some thoughts on smaller indie games I play - not reviews really, mostly vibes and maybe some analysis - and maybe the odd larger game if I have something interesting to say. 同ZINE came along at just the right time to inaugurate this! Definitely send some money its way if you can.

See you soon for the next game in the zine!

PS : After playing the game the first time, I of course ended up making tong jyun myself, and they're sooooo good! And easy to make, and they freeze really well! Give it a try when you're done with the game 💜