Homemade “Zelda” Hits Xbox 360 Indie Games

By Spencer . August 11, 2009 . 8:48pm

The Xbox 360 summer system update came with a flood of Japanese developed Indie games like Fenak Mura Monogatari (Fenak Village Story), an action-adventure game inspired by The Legend of Zelda.

In Fenak Village Story you play a sword wielding hero that explores top down dungeons filled with switch puzzles. Sound familiar? While the style and even the puzzles are reminiscent of the NES classic there are some differences. Instead of hearts you have HP and there’s a MP meter.

Curious? You can play a timed demo for free. Log on to Xbox Live and look for the pictured listing. Since the game is in Japanese I wrote up a mini-guide to help players get into the first dungeon.

- The first option in the main menu starts the game.
- After you get out of bed walk into the house next door.
- You automatically talk to people (and read signs) when you run into them.
- Technically, you can start the quest now, but you mind as well spend your 50 gold coins!
- Walk right into the brown house, it’s a shop. You can buy potions here, but I would pick either the Fast Running Shoes (they look like winged boots) or the Magic Wand. The running shoes let you move twice as fast when you hold RB. The magic wand shoots a fire explosion when you press A.
- When you decide what you want to buy walk up to the item and press X to purchase it.
- Now you’re ready for the dungeon! Walk past the happy flame into the castle.
- If you’re running low on health or magic hit start and go to the second option (“tools”) to drink a potion.
- TIP: press Y to pick up and throw things.

The full game costs 240 Microsoft Points ($3).

TAGS: Fenak Mura Monogatari, Highlight, Indie Games, Xbox 360

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TheCleaningGuy

If I had a 360, I'd be on this! Looks pretty interesting.

Mazen

All these millions of games in the US Xbox community games and the one I want to really play is from Japan! sheesh,
the funny thing Zelda is more popular in the west than Japan yet no one tried to make a game like this.

Vapor

Pros:
Cute
It's like a Zelda-light
Free trial
Cheap
No need for Japanese knowledge

Cons:
Grating sound
Weird animation
And my boyfriend actually got stuck behind a loaf of bread and had to stop playing at one point.

Haha.

Still, cute game... I'll probably buy it.

daizyujin

There have been several Japanese developed Indie games as of late. A few shooters have popped up but they are all fairly boring. Another one people might want to check out though is Koron De Jump. It is a pretty short game but only costs a measly 80 MSP or $1. It is the only one so far that I have put any cash down on.

Billy

Can anyone post the link to US XBL Marketplace site to download this? Thanks!

Aoshi00

I can't seem to find it either, is this out yet?

Spencer

Can you post links to indie games? It is (was?) online, I downloaded it yesterday.

Update: I did some digging around and the game isn't available anymore. Here's a link to the page that once existed for it -- http://marketplace.xbox.com/games/media/66acd00...

Aoshi00

And I thought it was just me missing something, I searched up and down, by alphabetical order, genre, new arrival, didn't see it..

I think Soredemo Watashi wa Aishiteru the visual novel was taken out too right? Now I really regret not getting it while I had the chance, I liked the demo and am really curious to find out what happened next :(.. and people say it was like the top selling indie game. Stupid thing is I deleted the demo too, because I couldn't purchase the full game, so I thought of redownloading it..

And this and the visual novel are not on the Jpn marketplace either, so I really wonder what is the reason of them disappearing, copyright infringement, not passing ratings? But they're not subject to ratings as the disclaimer says..

mikaylaaria

I think these are made from Enterbrains Action Game Maker. (Think: RPG Maker XP, VX, ect.)
I'm pretty sure you can put games made on that PC program onto XBL.....
You can made adventure games, platformers, shoot-em-ups....
In fact, those look like it's default graphics, too....

evsu

A bit of Good/Bad news! ((Please read entire comment))
As a game developer myself, i'd hate to spread this around but as a game fan here i go. Yesterday morning i downloaded this game trial played it and kinda enjoyed it, but was torn between buying it or not because it was and RPG in japanese. I thought it over at work and decided to get it when i got home. To my surprise the game was no longer available! I had every intention to purchase this game but found that i could not.
I decided to try and play the trial to the point where i ran out of time and attempt to purchase it there. I found that i could not even after the trial. So i decided to run the trial again, turns out the little fire guy saves your game when you press (X). On the main menu if you select the second option it loads where you left off. By doing this i was able to complete the entire game, i had to start it over maybe 7 times but i got to finish. So if you still have the trial you can play the entire game.