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December 9th, 2014 
Carl Williams 
The Sega Dreamcast is no stranger to wild and wacky games, especially those from homebrew developers. Since Sega left the Dreamcast pretty open, we can debate if that lead to its death at a later time, homebrew developers are able to continue releasing new titles for it over a decade after it was commercially ended. Ameba is new, so new in fact that not a lot is known about it but the developer pedigree is high. Ameba is a product of Retro Sumus, more on them in a minute. Visual novels are interesting as, in North America, they are rare and not received all that well (for some great games in this genre, check out issue #2 of Retro Gaming Magazine). The most popular visual novel to hit our shores was Snatcher for the Sega CD and that was over two decades ago.
Even more interesting is the storyline of Ameba, at least what we know of it so far. Ameba is set in modern day Madrid (not many games set there) with you taking on the role of a veteran police detective (somewhat like Snatcher for those wondering). Detective Hugo (you) has to investigate and solve a bunch of wild, weird, seemingly unconnected murders. Hugo’s detective skills kick in and like a sixth sense, you know something is linking these murders, something not yet revealed.
Ameba will feature real world locations along with some puzzle elements. The puzzle elements will elevate Ameba slightly above other visual novels that really only require you to exhaust all of the possible question/location specific options available to advance the story.
Retro Sumus is a full team of artists, programmers and musicians that are working around the clock to ensure Ameba is available in 2015.
Source: Retrocollect
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Thanks for spreading the word, Carl! It’s funny how you expressed the “sixth sense”, as that’s pretty much how we have envisioned Hugo’s powers of observation! We’re in the process of creating our website and forums at the moment, so we hope we’ll be able to release more information on both Ameba and our other, top-secret project! 😉
It’s STILL thinking.
You might say I am a fan of this genre, both story and game. I can hardly wait to see how Ameba evolves throughout development, please keep us posted and we will do our best to keep our readers posted.
It’s comments like yours that really encourage me! I’ll do my best to write a great story. A western take on a typically japanese genre sounds challenging enough! I’ll make sure to keep you informed. ¡Gracias! 😀
I know it sounds like lip service but not only am I a big fan of visual novels but most of the team here at RGM are too. We even dedicated half of our second issue to them:
http://retrogamingmagazine.com/buy-rgm/
I’ve been playing Xblaze for the past few weeks for references… I love the way the dialogue makes narration unnecessary and that’s something we’re aiming for too. Funny thing is, RPGs and visual novels are genres I usually loathe, but I really enjoy when games add something new or unique to their genre.
I don’t have a problem with role playing games, just particular with which ones I play for very long. Visual novels are new to me, and for the most part, are interesting though far too many are “adult” themed but not in a Snatcher kind of way.
I hear you 😉
By the way, our blog and forums are now live! Please visit http://www.retrosumus.com and http://www.amebaofficial.com 😀
[…] You can read the whole article here. […]
Introducing Retro Sumus Dev Diaries! This is where we show our work on both Ameba and Xenocider!
Check out our first video here for a glimpse of how Xenocider will look and sound:
http://retrosumus.com/2015/10/dev-diaries-01/
😀