Sony has been known for its support of indie developers for years, but it seems especially keen to demonstrate that recently. Yesterday, it announced that the PlayStation Store would get an indie game area, and today it has shone a light on three new indie games that are coming to the store: Doki-Doki Universe, Hohokum (which you can find here), and CounterSpy (here).
Doki-Doki Universe is from a studio called HumaNature Studios (apparently that's “human nature”, not “huma nature”); founder Greg Johnson, who worked on Toejam and Earl back in the day, explains the game in a blog post. He describes the game as an “RPG/Simulation/Interactive Story”, but since that doesn't really pin it down he goes on to outline the story.
You play a robot called Model QT377665 (or QT3 for short) which has been abandoned on an asteroid by its human family; after QT3 has dutifully waited for 11,432 days for the family to come back and get it like they said, an alien called Alien Jeff turns up to find out how much humanity this robot has and whether it should just be scrapped. Proving its humanity turns out to be a case of travelling to a variety of themed planets (the examples we're given are “cute, scary, gross, robot, ice”) and interacting with bizarre characters while Alien Jeff looks on. You'll also stop at asteroids to take visual personality tests, and the Therapist on your home planet (which you can decorate) will give you a personality report. The personality tests are available even if you don't pay for the game.
Alongside the game, HumaNature Studios will also release a free messaging app that will let players send animated messages to each other.
Johnson says he's tired of shooters, and this game reflects that. Do you feel the same?
