Monday, April 6, 2015

Introducing my latest localization project, Fantastic Boyfriends: Legends of Midearth

I've alluded on Twitter to the fact that I've been working on a very exciting project over the past couple of months, but now I can finally share what it is. I'm assisting with the translation and English promotion of a Japanese indie game for smartphones titled Fantastic Boyfriends: Legends of Midearth!


The basic gist of the game is you play as the adorable protagonist holding the sword in the image above, who gets magically spirited away to the fantasy world inside an app on his phone (so meta!). Like many epic fantasies that have come before, you're tasked with nothing less than saving the world from the forces of evil. Fantastic Boyfriends is unique, however, in that you gather a band of hunky fighters and adventurers to aid you in your quest... and maybe share a budding romance with, too!

The developer, Lifewonders, is an emerging LGBT-friendly company with the goal of showing a wide variety of different kinds of relationships and genders in their games, starting with Fantastic Boyfriends. While Fantastic Boyfriends was generally created with a gay male audience in mind, they hope to expand their reach even further in future titles!


Needless to say, it's been an honor to work with a developer that values diversity in gaming. I've already done significant work on localizing the game for them, but as a small indie developer, they're going to turn to crowd funding to raise the remaining funds to localize Fantastic Boyfriends. The crowd funding campaign will be announced by the end of spring, but for now, you can head over to the official English website to learn all about the characters, gameplay, and world.

You can also follow them on Twitter for updates, but rest assured, I definitely won't stop talking about it when the crowd funding actually gets rolling!

21 comments:

  1. I've... actually been playing this very slowly for the last little while...


    I am excited. I much prefer this art to all the silly bishonen boys out there. The script seemed funny enough.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I hope I can do the humorous script justice! It's been quite a fun project to work on. I love how self-aware it is ;)


    I'm actually not surprised to hear that you've been playing the Japanese version! I'll admit I'm usually not so big of a fan of beefy guys (in real life or art, hah), but I think BomBom's art style is really cute ^^

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yeah, it's a nice balance between cute and muscles. I am not much for super beefy art, I prefer something a little more... normal. But yeah this work is nice. I was surprised how quick it was going to let your MC drool over them though with I think once of the first dialog options having a typical "he's hot" kind of expression.


    I mostly only gave it a shot because an app I use called 9monster (a dating app with the most appalling gamification...) was promoting it heavily and it just seemed so bizarre I couldn't say no.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Well, I'm all in for this sucker, Anne. It'll be nice to be able to add another game to my iPhone (eventually)--and a gay one at that! A question for you, though: is the romance content of this one the equivalent of PG, PG-13, R, X, etc.?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Oh, it's definitely PG! The App Store/Google Play won't really allow anything much more risqué than that ;)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Yeah, the game is pretty open from the beginning about allowing the MC free reign to drool all over the place XD;;


    You know, you should talk do a blog post about the Japanese dating apps you use sometime! I'd be really interested to hear about the different ones

    ReplyDelete
  7. Oh, right, I completely forgot. That's why games like Coming Out on Top ignored iOS :( Anyway, although it's too bad that this is a PG affair, I'll still get it. I was kind of excited, though, because the similar-looking Ana Holic! for PC is decidedly X-rated, and I really liked the idea of that. (Don't judge! Heh...)

    ReplyDelete
  8. I only really use 9monster, because Jack'd just doesn't have active users...


    I've considered it, but I ever since I found out the reason why Japanese gay men fled from Grindr was because it was too popular and people outside the LGBTIQ community knew about it and there were cases of various people using it exclusively as an outing tool. So I am a little in two minds about talking about these things in a blog post.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Oh really. I must admit I kind of assumed it would get a little more R rated as we progressed. You mean to tell me all that time I spent trying to please the demon man won't pay off?

    ReplyDelete
  10. Oh wow, I didn't even hear about the issue with Grindr. I can understand not wanting to talk about it too much, then.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Haha! For some reason I thought you might be more inclined to play a PG-rated game, Bryan! I guess the developers wanted to try to reach as many people as possible. I can't talk about content too far in the game, as I won't be able to start translating the bulk of it until the crowdfunding campaign is successful, but my impression is they can't get away with anything too explicit on iOS...

    ReplyDelete
  12. Unfortunately I can't comment on the game as a whole because they need their crowdfunding campaign to be successful before I can take a look at the whole thing... But as I mentioned to Bryan, I don't think it'll get too steamy given the platform. I can always ask them if you want further clarification ;)

    ReplyDelete
  13. Yeah, I only ran into this info when I asked a bar tender why even in big cities there doesn't seem to be many Japanese people on Grindr, and that was the response. Honestly, I'd be pretty surprised if most people knew about it unless they were in Japan using Grindr at the time.

    ReplyDelete
  14. It honestly doesn't surprise me now you've mentioned that iOS and android don't do that. But I just got the impression from the advertising I ran into that it probably would be.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Don't get me wrong, Anne, I'm sure I'll still enjoy it if it's a PG-rated game, but I def. would've preferred it to be an X-rated game.


    BTW, I think it's funny that everyone always thinks I'm such a goody two shoes. Believe me, I'm not ;)

    ReplyDelete
  16. I'm so excited for this game! I'm thinking of putting together an OT on GAF for it when it comes out. Hope this works out well for everyone involved. :)

    ReplyDelete
  17. Hehe, I guess it's because you're so sweet, Bryan! ;) Of course there's nothing wrong with X-rated games :3

    ReplyDelete
  18. Thanks for your comment! I saw you post about it in the VN thread on GAF, I think (If I'm remembering correctly...) as well as Tumblr. Really appreciate it, as do the developers, I'm sure! An OT would be suuuper awesome :) Stay tuned for more news very soon!

    ReplyDelete
  19. Well, as I'm sure you know, Anne, some people can be both sweet and dirty :)

    ReplyDelete
  20. Hello! To more easily handle your game localization projects, I would suggest using a collaborative translation platform.
    https://poeditor.com/ is a software localization management platform designed to make the localization workflow simple for both
    translators and project managers.

    ReplyDelete