Friday Rambles 2025-09-26

Quite possibly the latest Friday Ramble ever, considering we've already passed another Friday after this one, but I'll be darned if I don't keep my commitment to rambling every Friday. So, it's the Wednesday, October 8 Friday Ramble for Friday, September 26.

Tokyo Game Show 2025

I went to Japan this week for Tokyo Game Show 2025. But before TGS, I went to Tokyo Indies, which is a monthly indie game community meetup held in Akihabara. They usually hold their September event the night before TGS, so I was able to attend and meet up with old friends and new colleagues. I basically went there directly from the airport (after checking into my hotel), so I was pretty pooped, but it was a great time.

Part of the event is a series of presentations from indie devs showcasing their games. This presentation is about a game called "Doom Spiral" by dev Forbidden Saucery.

Of course, I would be remiss not to shout out npckc, a fellow game dev who helps run Tokyo Indies and is probably the most friendly and helpful person on the planet, without whom I would not have met all the cool people I have while in Tokyo.

For TGS 2025 itself, as a proper game development business professional, I went during the business days (Thursday/Friday).

Penny and Miss Whiskey went too. What a coinkidink!

It was still crowded and I had to stand in line for an hour to pick up my badge and get in, but otherwise the process was pretty smooth.

Going anywhere meant walking through a big crowd of people.

Lots of people in the Game Dev Business!

I stopped by my old haunt, the Graph booth. I had exhibited my game with them last year, so I wanted to visit and say hi to the staff there.

They really leveled up their booth this time around, with cool big banners and everything. Can you imagine a big ol' Endless Monday banner hanging there? They told me the Tiger-chan plushie I gave them still hangs out in their office, which made me happy. Maybe I'll be back with Game 2, whenever that is.

Indie games had a pretty big presence this year as well. I wish I could have played every indie game! Alas, I am but one person.

The Selected 80 indie section was outside Hall 11 in the lobby this time around, but it was fairly crowded and I had a chance to play a bunch of cool indie games in various stages of development and talk to some of the devs. You can check out all the exhibitors here.

This thing was pretty crazy. It's fully operational. I want one for my desk.

I ended up with a giant ream of flyers just walking around the halls, and I still need to sort through all of them. I'll probably just put them in my stack of flyers from last year... lol...

I went to the Fangamer Japan merch booth. They had shirts and and a giant wall of pin sets and a bunch of other stuff. I bought an Undertale stationery pouch and covered it with stickers I got walking around TGS. Maybe I'll be able to buy Endless Monday stuff here in the future. Who knows? Crazier things have happened.

Anyway, attending was a different experience from exhibiting, and while it was great to meet new people and see old friends again, I think I want something new to show for myself if I'm going to make another trip to a future TGS.

The End

Thank you for being patient with me while I catch up with the Rambles! Next Ramble will be for Friday, October 3, and will cover the rest of the Tokyo trip, I guess. As you can imagine, I didn't get a lot of work done, but I did walk around a lot and buy a bunch of pens and stationery. So I guess it'll be about walking to places and new pens and stationery, and maybe(?) another comic(?). Okay! thanks for your support, as always, and see you uhh... next week?