Ruby Party (ルビーパーティー, Rubī Pātī) is a Japanese video game developer and division of Koei Tecmo. The team was established around 1990 by Keiko Erikawa as a female-based team at Koei.[2]
The team has mainly been producing the Neo Romance series, a series of otome games aimed at women. The first title released in this series is Angelique, released in 1994, and which is known as the first otome game in the world.[3]
History
In around 1985, Erikawa was developing various games with her husband Yōichi Erikawa. But the games in those days were all targeted to males. Erikawa thought it was strange that games aimed at women did not exist. There were almost no female staff in Koei at that point. Therefore, she started to recruit women as staff members, leading to an all-female development group within Koei, forming the Ruby Party team.[4][3]