Anime

You're a Japanese record promoter, trying to recruit cute teen anime-style girls, train them artistically, and make them "idols" -- the Western cultural analog would be, of course, that you're hyping manufactured boy bands. Idolcraft is built using RPG Maker, though, so it's an interesting combination of a classic console-style RPG, an adventure game, and a resource management sim. You run around town, trying to make friends with cute girls and persuade them to sign with your studio, then training them, and trying to release as many successful CDs and DVDs featuring them as possible before the timer runs out.

Meeting and recruiting each girl (there are 12 possibles) requires solving adventure game-style puzzles -- some inventory based, and some more convoluted (there's even a Sokoban-style puzzle in which you need to shove fans surrounding a girl out of the way in precisely the right order to get to and talk to her). Even once you've signed some "idols" however, you still need to train them up, which requires money, which you can gain by exploring the map and performing odd jobs at various places there.

RPG Maker is not a sophisticated development environment (move with the arrow keys, space for all object interactions, 16x16 sprites), but this is a quite original and sophisticated use of its limited capabilities (only Aveyond, of games I've seen, exploits it better); and, begorrah, it's fun to play.

Though the graphics and sound are Japanese, used with permission of their creators, the developer is American; I suspect Americans will find it "very Japanese," though I suspect Japanese people will find this American reflection of their own culture off-kilter in an amusing way (just as Miyazaki's depiection of European culture is, to my eyes, charmingly not quite right). But that's a digression; Goodman is using the tropes of an alien culture, but producing his own offbeat gameplay as a consequence, and good for him.

Georgina Okerson specializes in light adventure games with anime-style graphics that are designed to appeal primarily to a young adult female audience (but that are perfectly enjoyable by those of us with a Y chromosome). In Summer Schoolgirls, you play a recent high school graduate going to an orientation program at an women's college, where you meet your roommate and the other girls in your dorm.

You have to think that most game designers have an imaginary consumer clearly in mind, and based on the evidence of most of what gets published, that seems to be a Maxim-reading dude with baggy pants and plenty of heavy metal and hip-hop on his iPod. Yes?

If that's so, then Georgina Okerson's imaginary consumer is very different -- an anime-obsessed teen emo girl, probably.

Looking for a multimillion dollar 3D big-budget extravaganza from a major publisher? Boy, have you come to the wrong place. A lot of the graphics in Cute Knight are scans of line sketches, and most of the rest are anime-inspired Illustrator drawings. The gameplay itself is pretty simple, too--you choose a place for your character to go and some actions for her to perform, and your stats are updated as a result.

And yet somehow you find yourself drawn into her story--and want to drive it to something like a happy ending. In other words, Cute Knight quickly creates a sense of emotional engagement that's lacking in far more expensively-developed and commercial titles.