Nintendo has hired the creator of indie shoot-em-up Downwell

News
By published

A big move for Ojiro 'Moppin' Fumoto, who created one of our favorite PC indie games of 2015.

Nintendo has hired the creator of reverse-shmup Downwell. As one hawk-eyed ResetEra user spotted, Ojiro 'Moppin' Fumoto tweeted the news out earlier today, though he previously announced the hiring last month on Facebook. 

The tweets are in Japanese, but according to my knowledge of Japanese and a little help from three online translators, they roughly translate to: "I got a job at Nintendo! I'll do my best" and "Days are shorter when you're working." 

Sadly, this likely won't lead to much for PC gamers, seeing as how Nintendo says it has no interest in putting its games on PC. Even so, it's nice to see a talented indie developer who started on PC take his talents to a big studio. It's also an interesting talking point in the Nintendo Switch gold rush, which has been a huge boon for many indie devs. 

As our own Tom Senior wrote in 2016, Downwell is a simple game hiding layer upon satisfying layer of hidden depth. Equipped with gun boots, you fall down procedurally generated levels in a seemingly bottomless well shooting baddies and meeting merchants. It's all about racking up bigger combos and falling deeper each time, which is an incredibly absorbing cycle. If you want to try it yourself, you'll find Downwell for $3 on Steam and GOG. 

Moppin is also part of the development team of UFO 50, one of of our most anticipated indie games of 2018. UFO 50 is a collection of 50 small games that span 2D platformers to golf games to RPGs. It's a collaborative effort by a huge team of indie devs, including Spelunky creator Derek Yu. At this point it isn't clear what Moppin's hiring means for the game, if anything. Have a look at its announcement trailer:  

Austin Wood
Austin Wood
Staff writer, GamesRadar

Austin freelanced for PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree, and has been a full-time writer at PC Gamer's sister publication GamesRadar+ since 2019. They've yet to realize that his position as a staff writer is just a cover-up for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a focus on news, the occasional feature, and as much Genshin Impact as he can get away with.