Carpe Fulgur brought indie-JRPG Recettear from Japan to Steam, and thanks to big sales it’s not stopping there.
EasyGameStation’s Japanese-developed RPG Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale was brought to Steam by Carpe Fulgur in September 2010, and as Steam’s first independent JRPG it became a hit in less than a month with 26,000 copies sold. Carpe Fulgur was ecstatic by the comparatively scant amount of sales due to its independent status, but now that the game has moved over 100,000 the company has confidently revealed project number two.
In a blog post made by Carpe Fulgur’s Andrew Dice, he revealed the massive sales increase, but also made sure that everyone knows Carpe Fulgur isn’t sleeping on bags of money made of money just yet. Many of Recettear‘s sales have been due to the recent Indie Story Pack sale on Steam which packaged the title with four others for $5, and Carpe Fulgur sees only a quarter of the profits because of their split with EasyGameStation. Still, money is money, and copies sold are copies sold, so Carpe Fulgur is now considering the possibilities of adding English voice options to Recettear and future titles, and developing for consoles.
But for now, Carpe Fulgur is focusing on another EasyGameStation PC title called Chantelise. It’s follows two sisters, Chante and Elise, who journey into a nearby forest against their mother’s advice. Chante is cursed and turned into a fairy, and the pair must use their swords and spells to determine who did it. According to Hardcore Gaming 101, Chantelise is an action-adventure game that features at least 20 hours of gameplay (excluding side-quests), pretty graphics, plenty of secrets, and is similar to the Ys series.
It sounds like another quirky title in the vein of Recettear, but with a few new angles of gameplay. For fans of titles that are off the beaten path, Carpe Fulgur’s declared intentions to keep bringing the Japanese indie market to English speaking audiences is good news indeed.
Source: Carpe Fulgur Blog, via Siliconera
