BitSummit The 13th in Kyoto — Business Day Highlights: Standout Indie Games from Japan and Overseas (Even If You Couldn’t Attend)
BitSummit The 13th, one of Japan’s leading independent game festivals, took place at Miyako Messe (Kyoto International Exhibition Hall) from July 18 (Fri) to 20 (Sun), 2025. The event brought together indie creators, publishers, and stakeholders from Japan and overseas.
This article reports from the first day, Business Day—useful for readers who wanted to go but couldn’t—covering who exhibited, what we discovered, and what to prepare for your next visit.
Event Overview: BitSummit The 13th (ビットサミット ザ サーティーンス)
Event: BitSummit The 13th
Dates / Hours: July 18 (Fri)–July 20 (Sun), 2025, 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.
Note: July 18 is Business Day.
Venue: Miyako Messe (Kyoto International Exhibition Hall), 3rd Exhibition Hall, 3F, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto City, Kyoto Prefecture.
Organizer: BitSummit Organization Committee; Japan Independent Games Aggregate (JIGA) — Q-Games / Pygmy Studio / Skeleton Crew Studio / BlackSheep Consulting; Kyoto Prefecture.
Co-organizer: KYOTO CMEX
Production: ORICOM
Ticket Prices: Business Ticket JPY 20,000 (tax included). General (advance): general & university students JPY 2,000 / high-school students JPY 1,000 / junior-high and younger free. Same-day: general & university students JPY 2,200 / high-school students JPY 1,200 / junior-high and younger free. Elementary-school children must be accompanied. Each ticket admits one person for one day.
2024 Attendance: 38,333 visitors.
Official Website: https://bitsummit.org/en/
On the Show Floor
Theme and atmosphere
The 2025 theme is “Summer of Yōkai” (妖怪たちの夏祭り). The venue uses a black base tone with deliberately dimmed lighting; targeted uplighting gives parts of the hall a haunted-house feel.
Developer exhibit area
More than 300 booths filled the 1F and 3F of Miyako Messe, while the basement level (B1) served as B2B meeting rooms. Booth signage and service descriptions departed from typical trade-show styles, with plenty of originality. Many teams built spaces that conveyed each game’s world—never a dull moment. Genres ranged widely: digital titles, experiential setups using special devices, and even tabletop games. The impression is that any genre is welcome as long as it’s indie.
Board-game area
A dedicated area showcased tabletop titles.
Notable booths seen on site
Fantasy Event Planning Guild BAHAMUT
Nintendo booth
17-BIT
At most booths you could jump in and play; PCs, monitors, and controllers were set out on tables, and some spaces felt as relaxed as a living room. If a game catches your eye, chat with the team and try it on the spot.
International participation and the Business Day vibe
We saw many participants from overseas on both the exhibitor and visitor sides. English could be heard at booths across the hall. Because it was Business Day, people roughly in their 20s to 50s were trying games, holding meetings, and exchanging information. These days, taking indie games overseas is standard, so the strong international turnout made perfect sense.
Featured Booths
COLDBLLD Inc., “NEVERWAY”: Wanted Japanese players to try it
Drawn by the purple-and-green pixel art with a slightly unsettling vibe, we stopped by NEVERWAY—a horror-tinged life-simulation action RPG.
The team had traveled from Canada. We spoke with COO Heidy Motta. The studio is run by three members, including a woman game developer and a male pixel artist. Why exhibit here? Heidy said they love Japanese culture and wanted Japanese players to experience the game. They discovered BitSummit online.
They were handing out giveaways such as acrylic keychains.
Many overseas visitors stopped by the booth, so most conversations were in English. We chatted with Heidy in Japanese, using Google Translate for parts that were hard to convey.
Ysbryd Games, “LOVE ETERNAL”: A Singapore-based publisher
Maya, a lonely girl separated from her family, finds herself trapped in a castle and tries to escape. The distinctive mechanic is gravity manipulation. After trying it, we found it more challenging than expected—solving it feels like working through puzzles. The pixel art is delicate with an eerie edge.
The game is planned for release in late 2025. To build awareness, the Singapore-based publisher Ysbryd Games exhibited at the show; the developer is based in the United States.
They chose BitSummit over mega-events like Tokyo Game Show, judging that an indie-focused festival would be a better fit.
Taipei Game Show 2026: Taiwan’s largest game expo
This booth was promoting Taipei Game Show 2026. The 2025 edition ran January 23–26, drawing 346 exhibitors from around the world—including Germany, Korea, and China—and showcasing more than 350 titles. Dedicated Indie and Business areas were featured. In 2024, Japanese exhibitors included Nintendo and Cygames.
The 2026 show will take place January 29–February 1 at Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center.
Tokyo Polytechnic University: A beer server as the controller?
In the Special Device Area, the event partner make.ctrl.Japan Secretariat organized the make.ctrl.Japan showcase—games controlled not by standard pads but by custom-built controllers.
One standout was a hands-on beer-pouring game. Recommended by Professor Nakamura of Tokyo Polytechnic University, the goal is to pour beer and foam into a glass at a 7:3 ratio. The beer server and the glass themselves act as controllers: pull the tap for beer, push for foam, and the glass’s LCD panel shows the beer filling up. The realism was enough to recall part-time shifts at an izakaya.
According to the team, the concept came from a desire to create a playful idea they wouldn’t be able to make once they entered the corporate world. It’s a great example of students’ free thinking unconstrained by convention.
BitSummit is a truly international indie game festival
BitSummit brought together indie developers and stakeholders from Japan and abroad. If you’re attending for business, being able to communicate in English is a real advantage.
I’m not fluent in English. More than once, when I asked whether we could speak Japanese, I was told their team didn’t have Japanese speakers, and we often relied on Google Translate to keep the conversation going. At the Taipei Game Show 2026 booth, Jing Pai also noted that speaking in Japanese was difficult. With so many chances to talk with people, it can feel like a missed opportunity when language gets in the way—and exhibitors likely feel the same.
That said, you can still get by even if English isn’t your strength. With translation tools and some gestures, communication is more doable than you might think. The important thing is having the courage to start the conversation.
For pure hands-on play, language matters less. But if you want to talk business, it helps to download a translation app in advance and prepare simple materials in English—an overview sheet, business card, and self-introduction.
It’s genuinely great to see so many exhibitors from overseas. If the language barrier gets a little lower, exhibitors and visitors alike will be able to connect even more freely.
