From Thursday 20th to Sunday 23rd of September, the Makuhari Messe in Chiba, a neighboring prefecture of Tokyo, was host to the biggest video game convention of Japan. At the Tokyo Game Show, numerous developers and publishers showed the newest games and innovations of the video games industry to the visitors. For four days, the halls of the Makuhari Messe were filled with spectacular booths, innumerable “cosplayers” and live shows. This year, a focus was set on e-sports, allowing enthusiasts to follow the competition between professional gamers of games such as the football simulation “FIFA 19” or the classic beat’em up game “Street Fighter” on the big screen.

Among the numerous exhibitors were 6 studios from Switzerland. They were mostly gathered together under the tag “Swiss Games” in the Indie Games section of the event.

“Leif’s Adventure: Netherworld Hero” is a game being currently developed by “OneManOnMars”, a one-man studio, for the Nintendo Switch. Inspired by classics like “The Legend of Zelda”, the game allows two players to cooperatively brawl through the levels.

“Falkenbrew” showed the 90’s style classic arcade game “Devader”, another game developed by only one person, an intense shooter with numerous levels and a tricky degree of difficulty.

"DigitalKingdoms" presented their game “Invisiballs”, which is already available on the Nintendo Switch, an intuitive multiplayer experience. Easy to learn, but difficult to master!

“Helvetii” is a stunning looking game with an impressive art style, feeling like a painting. Being currently developed by “The Craig Parliament”, the action-adventure game is scheduled for an early 2019 release.

The two developers from “KWAKWA” let cat enthusiasts jump into “Splash Blast Panic”, where up to 4 players can fight each other with cute characters wielding different weapons.

Only one Swiss developer was hosted apart the “Swiss Games”-delegation. The studio “BitCrystals” was among the companies focusing on Blockchain. The company incorporated the interesting technology in their digital trading card game “Spells of Genesis”.

The Tokyo Game Show showed that Switzerland does have a thriving Indie Game Development Scene that puts forth interesting and creative games and makes them accessible to the gamers back home as well as here in Japan.