The thirteenth (and penultimate) in a series of articles I’m writing, looking at the output of a number of Vita-supporting companies from launch through to the present day. I’ll be examining what the games they released were; (if the data is available) how well they sold; (in cases of them being ports) how well they ran; as well as a brief look at games which perhaps should have come to the console either in the west or in general.

While this series of articles have focused heavily on Japanese publishers – obviously due to the fact that they have been the main supporters of the handheld – I couldn’t finish my series without looking at the other major aspect of Vita’s life in indie developers. Obviously, the majority of these do not produce enough titles to write an article – but as a publisher, Devolver Digital were different – working with independent developers to bring their titles to consoles, they managed to find major successes with a number of their releases which led to decent support for a good number of years; although a habit of promising titles which they didn’t deliver on served to lessen the impact of this.

Launch & 2012 – nothing to show

Despite being founded in 2008, Devolver took things very slowly in their first few years – and that included Vita’s launch year in 2012.

To be honest, there’s very little they could have actually brought during this time as their first years were dominated by Serious Sam releases including multiple HD ports of earlier PC titles. These likely would’ve been able to run on the handheld and would’ve been a nice addition to the library – but considering most of these weren’t even ported to PS3, it’s not that surprising (or disappointing) that they didn’t make the jump across.

It would take until 2013 for the publisher to blossom into the off-the-wall, unique and brilliant indie publisher that they became in later years – and this is also the year their Vita support began, led by their flagship release in Hotline Miami.

2013 – a hot lineup

Better late than never is a common expression – and that was very much the case with Devolver’s Vita support, as it took more than 12 months from the console’s launch to appear. Still, the first game they released was an all time classic – one of my favourite on Vita in fact – that set the standard for what they’d be releasing going forward.

That game is, of course, Hotline Miami – Dennaton Digital’s first ever title that took the aesthetic and tone of the film Drive and made it into a fast-paced, bloody, schizophrenic masterpiece. The twin-stick shooter was ported over to Vita with care by the team at Abstraction Games (you can read more about my thoughts on their work here) who managed to make the game feel even more at home on the handheld than it did on PC thanks to smart-touch screen controls and tight aiming. And Vita owners were receptive to the amount of effort put in – the game spent two months at the top of the EU PSN charts and seemed to see similar success worldwide

Unfortunately, that was all Devolver had to show for Vita in 2013 – suggesting Hotline Miami was a ‘test the waters’ title to see what kind of market they could find. As with 2012, they were still finding their feet in general and didn’t have a great deal of releases as a whole – although one title I’d have loved to see on the handheld would be Shadow Warrior Classic Redux. Their updated port of the 1997 3D Realms PC title saw a rebirth which sadly stayed PC-only at the time, but it would’ve been lovely to have such a classic title on the go with Vita.

2014 – not quite there yet

Like with 2013, Devolver’s 2014 was defined by a single game – but it was a fun indie title that fit perfectly on Vita. Thankfully, they at least promised more to come in the future which would come to fruition the following year.

Their game for the year was Luftrausers, an aerial dogfighting shoot ’em up from developer Vlambeer. The title was one of a number of notable indies that came to Vita throughout the year and was initially well received by fans until a number of bugs and glitches were discovered, not least a trophy glitch which infuriated completionists. In 2016 a patch was promised but as of the date of this article (more than a year later) there’s been no movement on this front, which is a rather disappointing turn of events.

In addition to this, there were a number of games released by the company during 2014 that would’ve been perfect for Vita but never happened. Gods will be watching, a futuristic point ‘n’ click adventure game that prioritized puzzles and time management was released initially on PC before coming to mobiles, but managed to swerve consoles altogether – despite Vita rapidly becoming a home for the genre with games like Broken Sword and The Walking Dead. In addition, the quirky RPG Always Sometimes Monsters looked like perfect Vita-bait and managed a mobile release in 2015 and PS4 in 2017, but somehow missed out on Sony’s handheld altogether.

However, I feel like Devolver’s year was more defined by their brilliant E3 showing. At Sony’s conference they released a trailer showing a number of great looking indie games that would be coming to Vita and PS4 – Broforce; Hotline Miami 2; Not a Hero and Titan Souls being among them, all of which were due in 2015. Unfortunately, not all of these managed to show up on Vita (in fact, half of them didn’t), but that’s something I’ll cover in more detail in the 2015 section.

2015 – Devolver’s year of Vita brilliance

Compared to previous years, 2015 was when Devolver went all-in on Vita – which brought with it some brilliant titles.

The year kicked off in January with a port of another classic 3D Realms title – Duke Nukem 3D (subtitled Megaton Edition) that had arrived on PC in 2012. Bundling in a number of DLC packs including Duke it out in DC and Life’s a Beach, it was an extremely complete packaged and in my mind remains the best way to play the game today. Unfortunately, due to licencing issues with Gearbox Software the game was pulled from digital stores just a year later and now remains lost to time, but those who managed to play it (like I did) agree it makes a fantastic addition to Vita’s lineup.

In March, the company released their long-awaited sequel to Hotline Miami subtitled Wrong Number that continued the bonkers story of the original while refining the gameplay formula in new, exciting ways. While it wasn’t quite as well received as the original, it seems this didn’t translate into sales disappointment – UK games magazine MCV noted that it would have been the fourth best-selling game in the UK on the week of its release if digital sales were counted in the chart, which is an incredible result for a small indie title.

In April, they released Titan Souls, an action-adventure title developed by Acid Nerve that seemed to take a page out of the book of Shadow of the Colossus by having the player battle a series of gigantic bosses except in lovely 16-bit style. Reviewers had mixed feelings about its success – praising the checkpointing and challenge, but criticising the empty world and repetitive actions required to defeat the titans – overall though, it seemed to find a fanbase on the handheld.

The rest of Devolver’s year on Vita was dominated by one series – Hatoful Boyfriend, the bonkers pigeon-dating otome game. Originally released in Japanese doujin circles in 2011, Devolver got involved to remake the title in Unity and release it in the west – where it piqued the interest of many Vita fans who were just trying to figure out what the hell it was. It actually received a fairly positive critical reception and clearly did well enough for the company as they released the Christmas-theme sequel Holiday Star in December of the same year.

So with two of 2014’s E3 announcements released at the start of the year (Hotline Miami and Titan Souls), we still had two to look forward to in the remainder of 2015, right? Sadly, wrong – it quickly became apparent that the remaining games announced that year (Broforce and Not a Hero) weren’t going to make it to Vita, although the company weren’t exactly forthcoming about this. Broforce was quietly cancelled in September with no reason given, while Not a Hero was cancelled in January of 2016 citing technical difficulties. It was a frustrating turn of events – Devolver had just started showing proper support for Vita, only to pull the plug on two projects that really shouldn’t have been announced before proper technical testing was done.

And it only got worse as they had another busy E3 in 2015 where they announced a number of titles for both PS4 & Vita. This time, the Vita highlights were Crossing Souls and Ronin but unlike their 50% success rate with titles announced at E3 2014; the games announced during Sony’s 2015 press conference had a 0% success rate of landing on Vita as of the date of this article (although they did announce Hatoful Boyfriend: Holiday Star during the conference too, so that’s slightly unfair). Neither of these games materialized and there was no word from Devolver themselves – but again, I’ll touch on that in future paragraphs.

2016 – a down year

Devolver’s theme of Vita support was quickly being established – although they have indeed released some brilliant games, they also liked to promise a lot, but didn’t always deliver on it. 2016 would cement this – they published a fantastic game which really enhanced Vita’s library, but also let other titles get away that had already been announced.

Still, let’s start with the positives. They begun the year with a port of the 2013-released unique brawler Foul Play from developer Mediatonic (who had been big on the PS Minis platform and also ported Hatoful Boyfriend in 2015); but it was May’s Downwell that really shook things up. Originally released for PC and iOS by developer Moppin, the game had you play as a man falling down a well with gunboots strapped to his feet and provided a perfect pick-up-and-play experience on Vita (check my review). The ability to also play the game in ‘tate mode’ (holding the Vita vertically) provided an extra dimension to the whole experience and made it feel like Downwell was designed specifically for the handheld (much like Hotline Miami did all those years prior), showing Devolver really did understand what made the console special.

It quickly became evident, however, that their E3 announcements from the previous year would’t all come to fruition. While Crossing Souls was still a few years away from release and Hatoful Boyfriend: Holiday Star had already happened, all eyes were on Ronin – the slick stealth-based action-platformer, which eventually landed on PS4 in November. It seemed a Vita release wasn’t happening, but the only confirmation of this came from an interview with Pocket-Console with the developer himself. Again, no official word came from Devolver and as such handheld players missed out on another excellent-looking title.

This wasn’t the only game they were having communication problems with either. Eitr, a brilliant looking pixel Souls-like that was originally supposed to land in 2016, was delayed to an undisclosed date and as of publication of this article still hasn’t released. The developers expressed an interest in getting the title on Vita, but the further it gets delayed the less likely it is that this will happen. 2016 also saw releases such as Mother Russia Bleeds that seemed a perfect fit for the handheld, but only showed up on PC and PS4.

I can’t fault Devolver during 2016 too much as they brought me Downwell, which remains one of my favourite titles on Vita. But it was obvious at this point that they weren’t able to deliver on all of their promises for the handheld – and they would quickly stop announcing games for the console overall.

2017 & 2018 – the end?

Again, as of the date of publication of this article, Devolver have yet to release any Vita games in 2017 – and they possibly have one lined up for 2018, but communication on this has been poor once again.

The final previously-announced game that I’m yet to address is Crossing Souls, a unique open-world action-adventure game inspired by classics like E.T and Stand by Me. It previously hit Kickstarter where a Vita version was announced before being re-confirmed during Devolver’s 2015 E3 news. A release date announcement happened in November of 2017… but only addressing PS4 & PC, until fans took to Twitter to ask for clarification where they only got a vague “no real plans” answer from the developer with absolutely no word from Devolver.

They did address Sony’s handheld in a roundabout way yet again at E3, when they released a ‘behind the scenes’ video where a member of the company revealed they were “seriously thinking about bringing a game to Vita this summer” but they weren’t ready to announce it at that time. It was never clarified what this game was and as of the date of publication of this article, it hasn’t been formally announced and no more Vita releases from Devolver have happened.

Perhaps that title was The Swords of Ditto, a fun-looking RPG from developer Onebitbeyond (a studio founded by Jonathan Biddle, a former member of Curve Digital who were also big supporters of Vita). But with Crossing Souls uncertain; no releases in 2017 and only a vague tease to go on, it seems unlikely we’ll see much (if anything) from Devolver land on Vita in the future – which is a sad way to end their support given the brilliant promise for the future there seemed to be when Hotline Miami landed in 2013.

Conclusion

I feel like I’ve been quite tough on Devolver in this article, which perhaps isn’t deserved. They’ve still been a key part of Vita’s life – heck, the reason I decided to write about them at all is because they’ve provided a range of brilliant titles ranging from classic FPS’ to fast-paced twin-stick shooters to otome visual novels. They’ve pretty much always been there, and they’ve always been vocal with Vita support.

Yet at the same time, an inability to deliver on their promises is something that became apparent the more I typed. Titles like Not a Hero and Ronin were among my most anticipated games to come to the handheld when they were announced, but it seems they shouldn’t have been announced in the first place as for whatever reason they aren’t able to make it across. Crossing Souls is the next big question mark – a fantastic looking title that the publisher seemingly forgot they’d already announced for Vita.

I’ll always be grateful to Devolver to introducing me to both Downwell and Hotline Miami – two fantastic games that I’ll likely be replaying for many years into to the future as they’re just that good. I just wish they had managed to deliver on more of their promises, to help Vita have an even more robust and brilliant indie library than it already does.