Design Compendium

Oh, Star Ocean: Anamnesis, how we hardly knew you. After a couple of years available on the Japanese iOS and Android app stores, Square Enix opted to bring tri-Ace's gacha-game smartphone instalment in the Star Ocean series to western audiences. This was...

When it comes to detailing the artwork and conceptualisation of the characters, setting and lore of THQ's long-running Darksiders video game franchise, Udon Entertainment has been the company to look to for a few years now. In the last...

Following their other past design compendiums such as those for Dark Souls and many Persona games - Udon Entertainment have announced they will be releasing Shovel Knight: Official Design Works in August. As its title already implies, this will be an artbook based...

A few years ago, ATLUS developed and published Shin Megami Tensei IV on the Nintendo 3DS. This was a long-awaited numbered instalment in the main Megami Tensei series, and saw samurai come together with demons, feudalism and a post-apocalyptic...

After their release of Dark Souls: Design Works a few years ago, international artbook and manga publisher Udon Entertainment have announced that an English localised edition of Dark Souls II: Design Works is now available for purchase. While some players may...

While the decreasing value of the Australian Dollar has made it harder for me to acquire Japanese artbooks this year, I have still had the pleasure of checking out several of them. After introducing the award last year, which was won by Himitsu no Kin'iro Mosaic, I am happy to once again issue The Otaku's Study Japanese Artbook of the Year award again for 2014. As with last year, I am a bit more lenient on relea

As gaming over even the last few years have shown us, there are many creative minds embedded in the video game industry. But with many belonging to different development studios, most would never have the opportunity to work as...

Released during a time where The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim was still being lauded as one of the greatest Action Adventure RPG's of the generation and despite lacking in the visuals department, Dragon's Dogma still proved to be a...

With some shared concepts between both games, 2.5D visuals and an overall visual novel style of delivering dialogue... you might not be expecting much to come out of the series' official artbook. I was too until the opportunity arose for me to pick up this monstrosity of a design compendium which comes in at a whopping 512 pages (A fact they happy boast on the book's obi). It has been a while since I have been so excited to receive a video game artbook.... and to date it remains one of the best books in my collection.

Bayonetta may not have been the most flawless experience when it came to video gaming in 2009 / 2010, yet despite the notable flaws (Particularly in the PlayStation 3 edition) it proved to be a highly enjoyable third-person action experience...