Hey there! I'm Yoshinori Ono, CEO at Lasengle.
Welcome to my blog and thanks for dropping by!
It's April, the start of a new financial and academic year in Japan.
At Lasengle, we welcomed new members to the team and kicked off a new financial year. We've now closed applications for new university graduates and I'd like to say thank you to all the students who applied for a position with us.
If you're interested in seeing what other opportunities we're hiring for, you can visit our Careers page for a list of current openings. And we're also considering a second recruiting drive for new graduates, so check back regularly to stay updated. You can see all our latest openings here.
I took the start of a new fiscal year as an excuse to upgrade my gaming setup. I've replaced my beloved handheld PC, my trusted companion at work, play and travel, with a Ryzen 7 6800U installed device.
Of course, to keep my new companion safe, I needed a protective case, but there seemed to be nothing on the market. Then, down a random internet rabbit hole, I discovered that there was a Steam Deck case from a particular brand that also fit this device.
I had one in my house, pulled it out and voila! It was a perfect fit!
So, if you've bought a OneXPlayer 2 and are struggling to find a protective case, then I can recommend the Spigen Steam Deck hard case as a handy alternative. (Just my personal recommendation, so use it at your own risk!)
Some of you might be thinking that this isn't typical CEO blog content. But, rest assured, it's all intentional. As long as you enjoy it, it lets you know more about who you'll be working with (i.e. me), and it gets you excited about Lasengle, then it's exactly the kind of content I want to share!
Ok, more not-typical-CEO-blog content: my featured game for blog #29, Noita.
Noita is a side-scrolling action game set in a world where every pixel is based on physics.
The physics concept is what caught my attention, so I decided to just jump right in and buy the game without watching any trailers. In my head, I was picturing a flashy and dynamic game with particles flying everywhere like fireworks, and liquids sloshing around all over the place. The game is not exactly what I expected, but it's still mind-blowing!
I wasn't totally off the mark. The game delivers on the pixels plus physics promise. It just went way beyond what I imagined it would look like. And once I started playing, I realized how brutal a world could be when pixels are governed by physics simulations. Most of the time all I could do was laugh at the chaos I'd accidently kicked off.
Say, there's a poisonous liquid dripping from a cave's ceiling. Usually you'd think, "Okay, the poison is dripping into this pool here, so I'll stand just a few pixels away and I should be safe."
But in Noita, this poisonous liquid is made of pixels subject to the rules of physics. If the ground is flat and there's nothing to stop the liquid from spreading, it'll keep pooling and eventually rush towards your feet in a huge wave. Imagine getting in a hot bath where the water is gushing out and overflowing--but instead of water it's poison.
This means that you need to consider your actions before you move, especially when working with elements. And one of the most dangerous of these is fire.
In Noita, you have magic, so if you're anything like me, even if there's nothing to destroy, you'll walk through the game blasting a spell here and there just to see what'll happen. In most games, you're not going to cause much trouble. But Noita is not like most games.
Walking through a dungeon I let off a shot of magic which hit a lantern. The lantern fell and broke, and set alight to some nearby trees. The flames grew until I caught on fire, the enemies caught on fire, and all the trees started to burn. In no time at all the whole screen was ablaze.
You know that classic comedy trope, where you throw a grenade but it hits a wall and bounces right back, only to explode at your feet? That's pretty par for the course in Noita. Not only that, but explosions create fire and fire spreads and well, you get the picture!
It's at that level where it's so bad, one thing after another leading to a bigger and bigger chaotic disaster, that you just want to show someone, because it's actually so bad it's funny. And it keeps happening over and over. When I started playing, I'd often die after just a few minutes--sometimes I wouldn't last seconds. Yet, it never made me want to quit playing.
When you think about it, it makes total sense. In the real world, nobody walks around throwing rocks for no reason, because you never know what you might hit. It could easily bounce back and hit you. If you're planning to set off fireworks, you make sure you have a bucket of water ready, just in case something unexpected happens and you need to deal with it quickly.
In the real world, you think about your actions and take precautions. That's what you need to do in Noita. You have to observe your surroundings and think about what reactions your actions might cause. Once you get that, you can begin to understand the game world more.
And that's when you can start to have fun with trying out different ideas and techniques. For example, water can:
- Put out a fire if your clothes catch aflame.
- Soak your clothes before passing through flames to make them less flammable.
- Be carried in a bottle for drinking or to put out fires.
- Be used for rinsing out and cleansing poison.
If you find a clean pool of water, you need to be sure to remember the location. I also learnt that water can be redirected with some strategic bombing. Needless to say, playing Noita gave me an even greater appreciation of clean and drinkable water in my real life.
Once you start experimenting and trying things, you gain knowledge that you can apply in your next run. Which means a game over is not the end of play, it's just a chance to learn something that didn't work.
But Noita isn't limited to physics and the real world because there's also the magic element, which means you can cast spells. You also have the ability to analyze the properties of magic wands and customize them by choosing which spells to equip. As I puzzled over which wand to use with which spell, I really felt like a professional wizard.
I can't count how many times I died in Noita in a way that made me go, "C'mon! That's insane! How did that even happen??", just because one of my test shots from a new magic wand went haywire. But, it's this unpredictability that makes Noita so addictively fun.
That's my take on Noita
Thanks for reading.
The next game is calling my name so gotta go--till next time!
Yoshinori X（Twitter）