Ruby Party

Ruby Party (ルビー・パーティー) is a video game developing team working for Koei that focus on the company's popular romance-adventure series for their female consumers (known now as their Neo Romance series —ネオロマンスシリーズ— to respect male fans). The team is famous for producing the first romance title targeting the female market in Japan, starting the trend for the Otome game genre. Members of the team are known to be predominately female, but the structure has changed over the years to include male developers. The team's name is meant to highlight the female members since rubies are considered the "queen of gems" and represent passionate love. Ruby Party also partakes or supervises the various media made based on their products such as the drama CDs, light novels, magazine publications, radio programs, live events, talk shows, comics, and anime. Select animated and comic adaptations have been localized overseas, but the games have largely remained in Japan —aside from a few rare exceptions. If enough interest arises for their games, there may be a chance someday they will be brought overseas and translated into English. As of April 1, 2016, Ruby Party doubles as a brand name for the company's romantic simulations, merchandise, licenses for multimedia projects, and stage event management. Mei Erikawa, Kou Shibusawa and Keiko Erikawa's eldest daughter, is the director for the Ruby Party brand.

Ruby Party at a Glance

Ruby Party is a Japanese development team that has operated under Koei since 1994. They are known for creating romance titles aimed at female players, a market segment they helped define in Japan. The studio released their first game in this niche during the 1990s and continued to produce work through 2021. Their catalog on PlayPile contains 37 games where they served as the developer, though they do not appear as publishers for any of these titles. Their output grew steadily over the decades. They released five games in the 1990s, followed by twelve in the 2000s. The team was most active during the 2010s with eighteen releases before slowing to just two games in the 2020s. Their primary focus remains on the visual novel genre with twenty-nine titles, though they also made twelve simulators and twelve role-playing games. Many of their projects fall into adventure or strategy categories as well. The company has a strong history with PlayStation hardware. They developed thirteen games for the PlayStation Portable and ten for the original PlayStation 2. Eight titles exist for the PlayStation Vita, while five were made for the first PlayStation console. Their reach extended to other systems including the Sega Saturn, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, and Nintendo 3DS. More recently, they released three games for the Nintendo Switch. Recent releases show a continued focus on established franchises. The team launched Harukanaru Toki no Naka de 7 in June 2020 and Angelique Luminarise in May 2021. Previous hits included Kiniro no Corda Octave in February 2019. Despite their long history, the data shows their games have largely stayed in Japan, with very few localizations available overseas. The team manages various media adaptations like drama CDs and light novels alongside their game development work.

Total Games

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Avg Rating

1994

First Release

2021

Latest Release