Welcome once again to Jetsetter, Digital Trends’ weekly look at the international world of video gaming. Whether it’s a weird German indie studio putting out Neo-Geo and Sega Dreamcast games or a new developer in India opened by heavyweights like Square-Enix, Jetsetter’s there to tell you about what’s going on outside DT’s home base in the US.
This week, we’ve got a look at a new multiplayer plane combat game from a new French studio with an impressive pedigree, an old school survival horror game straight out of Indonesia, and a PS Vita sequel for an obscure Japan-only PlayStation 1 RPG.
* Sony Liverpool, Quantic Dream, and Dontnod vets plot out their Strike Vector.
While games like Resident Evil 6 and Assassin’s Creed III were made by hundreds of developers toiling away in studios around the world, it’s hard to remember that bright, beautiful, big games don’t need an army to be born. Take Strike Vector for example; this new PC shooter is crafted by just four people. The team announced its game on Monday teasing aerial combat akin to the Xbox classic Crimson Skies, but with a speedy style akin to Unreal Tournament and Quake 3. The team has an impressive 
resume, with the four having spent time at Wipeout maker Sony Liverpool, Heavy Rain’s Quantic Dream, and Dontnod, the studio behind Capcom’s upcoming Remember Me. The game’s still far away from release, but it’s certainly one to watch.
* DreadOut brings Indonesian horror to the masses.
Survival horror as a genre has fallen on hard times in recent years, with classic series like Resident Evil and Silent Hill nosediving into mediocrity, and only scant few releases like Deadly Premonition to fill the hole. And when it comes to games made in Indonesia that aren’t mobile titles, they’re few and far between – hence why DreadOut is so exciting.
Rather than build its game to try and satisfy many different audiences, thus diluting its unique cultural flavor – we’re looking at you, Resident Evil 6 – the team at Digital Happiness made DreadOut’s tag line: “Experience the Indonesian horror.” Director Vadi Vanadi and designer Randy Basuki made a game pulling on their home archipelago’s traditional ghost stories while also pulling inspiration from some classic Japanese survival horror games. As in Fatal Frame, you fight ghosts in DreadOut using a camera. The team recently finished a demo that’s out now for Mac, Linux, and Windows, but the crew is looking to raise $25,000 to finish the game. As of this writing, they’re close to a fifth of the way there. If you like horror, head over to Indiegogo to support them, and vote them up on Steam Greenlight.
* Over My Dead Body gets a PS Vita sequel almost fifteen years after the first RPG hit PS1.
It’s sometimes staggering how many awesome PSOne games never left Japan. It was the last great era of prolific Japanese game design, when the market was booming and could support many developers making many different types of games, not just the same old cutesy anime nonsense. One of the myriad RPGs to never make the Pacific jump was Over My Dead Body, an old style role-playing game whose feudal Japan setting and use of Shinto themes made it closer to Okami in tone than Final Fantasy.
The game was remade for PSP in 2011, but even that version didn’t get translated. Director Shoji Masuda, whose most prolific period of development was pumping out weird RPGs like Metal Max for Hudson Soft in the early ‘90s, is talking up his sequel to Over My Dead Body due out on PS Vita sometime in the next year. “Things are moving forward properly on the PlayStation Vita,” exclaimed Masuda via Twitter (via Siliconera.) Hopefully they move forward internationally this time.
