Penny Blood: Hellbound featured in the Dengeki Indie Game Awards 2025!

Posted on by
0 Comments

Thanks to a heads-up by a fellow member in the Penny Blood Discord for this news! 

It appears as though there was a voting period held by Dengeki for the most recommended indie games as part of the Dengeki Indie Awards 2025. Voting was open until Sunday, April 13 at 11:59pm, so it’s a little sad to find out about this now.

At any rate, Rie-pon has written a really nice article introducing the top three titles in the Dengeki Indie Awards 2025 as chosen by the Dengeki online writers.

Here’s the blurb that she wrote for Penny Blood: Hellhound:

6:00pm – Wednesday, April 2 – by Rie-pon
▶︎ PENNY BLOOD：HELLBOUND

This roguelike action game by Studio Wild Rose and Natsume Atari serves as a prequel to the RPG Penny Blood, which was originally announced as a spiritual successor to the Shadow Hearts series from the PS2 era (2001).

I am a big fan of Shadow Hearts and naturally supported Penny Blood during its crowdfunding campaign. I’ve been playing this game since its early access release, and there’s also a review article from that time―feel free to check it out if you’re interested. 

The full version was released in December, featuring the final companion and final boss. If you enjoy the dark yet humorous world of Shadow Hearts, I highly recommend giving this game a try.

It’s a solid roguelike action title. While it might be challenging at first, you can take your time with it. Even if you’re not familiar with Shadow Hearts but are intrigued by the game itself, I hope you’ll give it a shot!

▶︎ About the Dengeki Indie Game Awards 2025

Voting Deadline:
Sunday, April 13, 2025, at 23:59 (JST)

Eligible Titles:
Games released between April 1, 2024, and March 31, 2025 (including early access versions)

How to Vote:
Please read the guidelines carefully and submit your vote through the “Dengeki Indie Awards 2025” voting form. Only one vote per person is allowed. Multiple submissions will not be counted or entered into the prize lottery.

Prize:
An Amazon gift card (email type) worth 3,000 yen
Three winners will be selected by lottery.

Winner Announcement:
Only the winners will be notified via email (scheduled for June 2025). Please note that only residents of Japan are eligible to receive the prize.

Important:
Notification emails will be sent from <redacted> (PC email). Please make sure your email settings allow you to receive messages from this address.

▶︎ Related Tweets

Renowned mangaka Daisuke Moriyama deletes all his images from social media, citing the rampant art theft via generative AI

Posted on by
0 Comments

Technology has always been exponentially advancing, almost of its own accord and possibly since its very inception. With the arrival of such easy to use text based art generatorsー”generative AI”ーwe’ve seen a distinct separation of those for an against such technology which utilizes, often unauthorized, artist’s work to train algorithms to magically spit out free art for anyone. If you never had an ounce of an artistic gift, now you could create works of art merely with descriptive words and strategically constructed code.

But the question remains: is this ethical? When you use generative AI to create “art”, you are effectively stealing somebody’s work that has been used to train a string of code to replicate and alter their original work. People have even taken this a step further by selling generative AI work for hundreds if not sometimes thousands of dollars, all the while the original artist gets nothing.

Nedroidcomics on Tumblr

The latest trend has been the Ghibli fad, where people are now creating generative art in the style of Japan’s most prestigious animation studios, Studio Ghibli. The fact that so many people don’t seem to have any problem doing this, merely to satiate their need for immediate gratification, is beyond disturbing.

Moving on, it seems as though the renowned mangaka and illustrator Daisuke Moriyama (World Embryo, Chrono Crusade, Thou Shalt Not Die, etc.) has taken it upon himself to delete all artwork that he’s posted to Twitter in the past. Some of this stuff goes WAY back, too, so it’s very sad to see all of this go, but I am entirely on his side with this unfortunate decision.

Please see below his most recent comments regarding this:

I realize this is a bit abrupt, but I will be deleting all of my artwork from X.
With the implementation of the generative AI function “Edit photo with Grok”,
I have lost any desire to leave my work on this platform.
I hope you all can understand. ー6:08pm, April 14, 2025

You can still find my color roughs and other stuff in my Xfolio,
but I’m really sorry about rough monochrome sketches.
You’ll have to see the final version in their respective released books,
so I hope you all understand this difficult decision. ー6:08pm, April 14, 2025

I really appreciate everyone’s likes and replies; I will treat them as my precious memories.
I’m quite sad and heartbroken over this, but I don’t think I can continue on as I have in the past…
Everything will have to go. ー6:09pm, April 14, 2025

As a fan, it also breaks my heart to see such talented people have to literally DELETE their work stretching back years and years merely in the hopes of protecting what little autonomy they still have over their brand due to chaotically unregulated generative AI practices and devices. He actually liked all of my replies over the years before deleting them… So, sad. I feel so badly for him.

I’ve also met Moriyama-sensei several times at various signing events and the like, so I feel especially distraught for his current predicament. You can find my various reports on this site, or maybe just take a look at this one of the all-night release event for the Thou Shalt Night Die manga.

If you are on the boarder line regarding generative AI, I would highly recommend that you watch the following documentary. It seems to have just been released yesterday, so it is very timely and up-to-date with current events.

On a more personal level, I currently work for an animation studio, and have been a collector of production animation artwork for going on 30 years now… So, I am entirely on the side of the creatives, the artists and designers. I do believe there needs to be stricter regulations to reign in the continual advancements with generative AI, but more than that, I wish people would take a deeper look at themselves and contemplate their own actions when they use such programs, because at the end of the day, it does come down to an ethical choice that you either choose to uphold or willingly rip to pieces. Which side are you on?

Kamui Fujiwara’s New Art Exhibition: DQ / TEN WORLD TOUR

Posted on by
0 Comments

This right off the press!

We’ve got word that the amazing Kamui Fujiwara will be holding a DQ / TEN WORLD TOUR* art gallery featuring artwork from the beloved action/RPG Terranigma by QUINTET and released by then ENIX (no SQUARE ENIX) along with Dragon Quest Emblem of Roto later this summer in Japan! Please see below for more details!

* Please note that this does not mean it’s an actual “world tour”… Simply, this art exhibition is meant to delve into the worlds of these two series. It doesn’t mean that there will be international exhibitions outside of Japan.

The Dragon Quest Emblem of Roto / TERRANIGMA World Tour has been decided!!
Celebrating the 45th Anniversary of Kamui Fujiwara’s artistic career
With the Dragon Quest Emblem of Roto / Terranigma World Tour

▶︎ A Special Message from Kamui Fujiwara!

Join Arts and Arc on a breathtaking journey through two worlds and two parallel realms!
Overcome countless trials and tribulations as these vastly different worlds collide in a grand fusion like never before.

Step aboard a luxurious cruise and experience the spectacular DQ/TEN Exhibition!
Please join us for this once-in-a-lifetime adventure♪

＜PART 1＞
DATE: Saturday May 17 〜 Sunday, June 1
TIME: 12:00pm 〜 6:00pm (Last entry at 5:30pm)
PLACE: ART SPACE SKY GALLERY
No holiday closures during the scheduled exhibition, Free entry

＜PART 2＞
DATE: Saturday, June 7 〜 Sunday, June 22
TIME: 11:00am 〜 7:00pm
PLACE: SPAN ART GALLERY
No holiday closures during the scheduled exhibition, Free entry

COPYRIGHTS:

Organized by: Art Space Co., Ltd. and Span Art Gallery Co., Ltd.
Direction by: Kamui Fujiwara
Cooperation by: SQUARE ENIX

This is also excellent news for us TERRANIGMA fans since we will be celebrating the 30th anniversary of the game’s release on October 20 in Japan, a celebration which will continue for the course of the whole year until October 20, 2026!

Please stay tuned for any additional updates!

▶︎ Related Tweets

▶︎ Related Links

Penny Blood Fan Activities

Posted on by
0 Comments
Commissioned artwork by @Kubaushi

As it seems like the progress of the mainline Penny Blood game will have to be put on the back burner for a while due to the unfortunate lawsuit, and since the official devs / Kickstarter crew are likely unable to do much for us fans right now, I thought we’d might as well move forward on our own to help bridge the gap and enjoy what little we currently have.

That is why I’d like to start some strictly fan-based and fan-run events for us to enjoy and participate in (ie. holiday-themed art contests, fan fiction prompts, etc.).

→ 日本語訳はこちら。

▶︎ What is the purpose of doing this?

The main purpose is to promote the Penny Blood IP in a fun and creative way, to strengthen general awareness of the title (you’d be surprised how many people are STILL finding out about Penny Blood for the first time!!), and to build up our own community of fans.

▶︎ Will there be prizes?

Since this will be strictly fan-run, it’s not possible to offer much in terms of prizes, but at least I might be able to give the winners a postcard of the Matthew illustration that I had commissioned from a good friend of mine (that is assuming anyone would want it as a prize). I would also like to promote everybody’s work, whether it wins or not on social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit. Honestly, it might not even be necessary to have a typical “winner” if people just want something to engage with or participate in.

Since I live in Japan, it’s not all that difficult for me to get Shadow Hearts related items, so it’s not impossible to offer some other Shadow Hearts related prizes, but I’d have to see what I’m able to do since I’m super broke right now. (I *might* be able to get some cool items that would be a great ifncentivisor for people to participate!) At any rate, I’d have to ask for at least the cost of shipping anything to the winner(s).

▶︎ Possible Themes

  • April Fool’s Day (might be coming too soon to do this)
  • General Spring theme (Japanese cherry blossoms, flowers, spring-time foods, etc.)
  • Golden Week (several holidays in a row in Japan, starting April 29)

The above are just a couple ideas for this time of year (roughly April-June), but we can certainly continue to add to the list as we go.

I will continue to update and edit this page the more I’m able to develop this idea. I’m totally open to feedback and we can totally change or update things as we go. All of this is still very much a work in progress, so if anyone has any other ideas or general feedback, I’d love to hear from you! You can get me on Twitter @RekkaAlexiel, leave a comment on this post, or in the Penny Blood Discord server. The current invite link for the server seems to be faulty at the moment, so you may have to search for it in order to join. Sorry about that!

I’ll try to update this information as soon as I can.

Additionally, I’m not sure if the official Press Kit would be a useful resource for anyone to create your own art or whatever, but I’ll list both download links for the Japanese and English versions below.

* Please note that the Japanese version is somehow missing a couple additional files: the gameplay trailer and main visual image.

▶︎ Get the official ENGLISH Penny Blood Press Kit here! – 467MB

▶︎ Get the official JAPANESE Penny Blood Press Kit here! – 94MB

▶︎ Background Art

  • asakusa_6ku_1923.png
  • background.txt
  • tarrytown_house.png

▶︎ Character Art

  • 00_FusionMonster
    • fm01_00_helm.pmg
    • fusion.txt

___

  • 01_Matthew
    • matthew.txt
    • pc01_00_Matthew.png

___

  • 02_Emilia
    • emilia.txt
    • pc02_00_Emilia.png

___

  • 03_Suseri
    • pc03_99_Suseri_fullbody_cutout.png – This file was actually left in Japanese.
    • suseri.txt

▶︎ Enemy Art

  • Atam.png
  • Maliferous Patient.jpg
  • monsters.txt
  • Motofuji.png

▶︎ Logo

  • Illustrator File
    • PB Logo_EB.ai
    • PB Logo_EW.ai
  • PB Logo_EB.png
  • PB Logo_EW.png

▶︎ Main Visual

  • PB_keyvisual_02.png – This file wasn’t renamed to match the English translation, as “key visual” is literally the Japanese term that’s used for this.

▶︎ Press Release

  • Double_Kickstarter_PressRelease.docx

▶︎ Screenshots

  • PB_Sh001_001_220809.jpg
  • PB_Sh001_002_220809.jpg
  • PB_Sh002_001_220809.jpg
  • PB_Sh002_002_220809.jpg
  • PB_Sh002_003_220809.jpg
  • PB_Sh003_001_220809.jpg
  • PB_Sh003_002_220809.jpg
  • PB_Sh002_003_220809.jpg

▶︎ Videos

  • Penny Blood – Gameplay Trailer.mp4

Anticipation for NieR in 2025

Posted on by
0 Comments

Although Saito Yosuke retired his “Santa Yosuke” series of livestreams some years ago, I still feel like a bit of that aesthetic permeates until this very day. Case in point: the most recent 4Gamer End of the Year/New Year statements from folks all across the video game industry. It’s from this article in which many NieR fans have been going wild with talk about the next installment in the NieR series.

Except, I feel like fans and various journalist sites are misrepresenting Saito’s quote, taking it out of context for what was intended. Saito isn’t suggesting that any of these things will absolutely occur in 2025 but rather he’s aware of the fan excitement over the 15th Anniversary and the anticipation that creates hype for news about the next installment in the franchise or other related events.

Simply, this is neither confirmation nor a dismissal for any of the aforementioned topics.

Question 4: What sort of aspirations do you have for 2025, and lastly, do you have a message for 4Gamer readers?

“Well, 2025 marks the 15th Anniversary of the NieR series, so we’d certainly like to do something to commemorate that huge milestone. We’re just thinking about what to do… I’m not quite sure about the next game or how things might unfold at this point, but I’ve certainly heard many expectations from fans, so it makes this an extremely difficult decision. As a producer, I may need to take a step back and be a little less involved, so I hope fans can be a little more patient for what’s to come.” Yosuke Saito, 4Gamer

As you can see, this statement is neither for nor against the idea of a future game being announced next year, but rather he’s simply acknowledging the fan anticipation for such a thing; therefore, it may be premature to definitively state that there will IN FACT be an announcement of a new game in 2025.

Additionally, what is acutely apparent from this statement is that they are keenly aware of fan expectations and are wondering what to do for the 15th Anniversary. It’s not something that can be decided upon easily, although should something occur next year, they’d already be well within the development stages by now (which means he knows but simply isn’t saying).

This is hardly Saito “teasing” the next installment in the series.

I would imagine there will be a Japan “End of Tour” extravaganza for ‘the end of data’ concert world tour, especially since Japan has been left out thus far. I would imagine they’d put on a big even similar to the Fan Festival back in 2022.

So, as always, I would suggest for fans to reign on the side of caution and/or skepticism when it comes to mainstream media interpretations of real quotes from official folks. I just hope that fans are able to take a step back and digest all the information that we’re given in an impartial and unbiased manner, and that includes those who would like to twist the words of those involved to rally the fanbase into a wild frenzy.

Believe me, I get the hype, but it needs to be warranted, and thus far, there’s nothing to entirely rejoice about. It’s all speculation at this point. Let’s hold out a little longer before definitively stating speculation as fact!