Hey there! I'm Yoshinori Ono, CEO at Lasengle.
Welcome to my blog and thanks for dropping by!
If you've been reading my blog, you'll know that remote working is pretty standard at Lasengle. Not long ago, we gave everyone on the team an iPad, in addition to their laptop, as a way to improve team communication and a sense of community. You can read more about that initiative here.
Here's how we're using iPads at Lasengle.
■Weekly stretch sessions
Working from home, it's easy to get stuck in your chair and forget to move around, so once a week, we all hop on a call and do some light stretches. We can have cameras on or off, so no one's going to judge you if you can barely touch your toes while someone else is tying themselves into a human pretzel (I'm more for eating pretzels than being one, but you do you)!
■Online gaming sessions
It's hard to feel part of the team when you're new, but there's nothing like games for bringing people together, right? We play video games and online board games through our iPads, and some members stream playthroughs. Everyone at Lasengle is welcome to join in or just watch.
■Broadcasting the Lasengle original radio show: "Ideation Radio! Where anyone can easily tune in and create a project anytime, anywhere!" (Okay, maybe the title needs a little work!)
Every other week, we take turns hosting. The Lasengle team ranges from people in their 20s to 50s so it's a nice eclectic mix of topics (last episode was "Fun or Profit: What's more important? A look at entertainment in the Jomon Period"). The hosts turn their cameras on, share slides, and use live audio and text chats to make it interactive...so it might be a stretch to call it a "radio show" but it is a lot of fun. The team can drop-in and leave when they like, and a lot of people listen while they're having lunch, or let it play in the background while they work.
I guess what I want to say is that at Lasengle, we're not going to let stereotypes, preconceptions and old-school ideas about how things "should" be done, prevent us from doing it our way. We'll do what works for us.
Everyone on the team has their own "yardsticks" and that's what we're all using to evaluate and decide our next moves, to make Lasengle into the best gaming company it can be!
If you're sitting there scratching your head like, "Radio shows? Pretzels? Yardsticks? Who are these people and what's their deal?" Then, I can't promise to explain it all, but I can hit you up with some fun data-based facts about remote working take-up and age and gender ratios at Lasengle. Because hey, numbers don't lie, right?
Next, some more head-scratching entertainment with my featured game for blog #16: Jitsu Squad.
Jitsu Squad is a side-scrolling action game.
"Jitsu" comes from Japanese, and in this context means "a mastered art." The Jitsu Squad have mastered a bunch of these: ninjitsu (the art of the ninja), kenjitsu (the art of the sword), taijitsu (the art of unarmed combat). The intensity with which they unleash these skills is wild. And I mean it: it's utter chaos and completely wacky. Love it!
I played the PC version. There's no Japanese language support so I played in English.
The dialogues are text-based, and event scenes have voice narration but no subtitles.
Here's where it gets really interesting and unique. When you pull off a special move, the characters shout out the names in Japanese, and when you take out all the enemies in a stage, two giant kanji, meaning "Life" and "Death," pop up in the background. As a Japanese player, this injection of Japanese language into the game puts the fun on a whole other level.
The heroes of Jitsu Squad deliver their lines with deadly seriousness, and the comic-style character design and backgrounds are beautifully done. But as a Japanese player, this off-beat interpretation of Japan makes it a truly entertaining experience.
It was things like, I recognized the words the characters yelled as they did the special move, and it kind of made sense, but it also made me go "Huh? Come again??". The background has shop signs, lanterns and other elements written in Japanese, but when I looked closer, there was something not quite right about it.
But, I got the sense that this was intentional. I feel like the designers knew what they were doing, and purposely created a gameworld Japan that was not exactly authentic.
Jitsu Squad is full of parodies and homages to Japanese games from the '80s and '90s. I could really feel the love and passion in these references, and there were so many scenes that made me literally laugh out loud with how they'd brought that understanding to the game.
When it comes to side-scrolling beat 'em up action, this game is filled with great moves that I really enjoyed pulling off, even with simple controls. You've got your basic button-mashing combos, but if you combine directional keys and buttons you can bring on special moves similar to a fighting game. Plus, if you time your button presses just right, you can trigger time-limited combos that change up the animation and boost your power.
And if that's not enough for you then: you can deal counter damage with a parry, dodge attacks with a dash, perform a flashy ultimate move that renders you invincible and deals massive damage to all enemies on screen, and then transform for a temporary boost to abilities and special moves. If you combine all this, you can juggle enemies in the air and rack up '200 Hit' combos.
The combat in this game is incredible for a side-scrolling action, and the visuals are just stunning. Sometimes the effects get a little crazy and it can be a little hard to see what's going on, but overall I think it works.
Since the game has co-op mode, I gave the multiplayer mode a try too, and it made the already chaotic battles even more insanely fun!
If you and your friends are the kind of people who enjoy parodies, homages, and slightly quirky depictions of Japan, then you'll have an absolute blast with all the references and in-jokes.
But even if you don't catch all the references, Jitsu Squad is still a really fun and feel-good side-scrolling action game that's perfect for getting together with friends and just having a great time.
That's my take on Jitsu Squad!
Thanks for reading.
The next game is calling my name so gotta go--till next time!
Yoshinori X（Twitter）