First of all, Happy New Year 🎇 Or あけましておめでとうございます (akemashite omedetou gozaimasu) as it says on the right side of the image above. What does it say on the left side, though? 一緒に咲きましょう (isshoni sakimashou): let’s all bloom together 🌸
Given our new project’s title and our plans for the year, I figured that’d be a perfect motto for 2026, haha!
Before we dig into the details, however, let me just throw out two quick reminders:
- Last week, we’ve posted our annual retrospect in which we’ve summarized all the major developments throughout 2025.
So if you’ve missed it (and especially if you haven’t checked in with us for a while), maybe you wanna give that a read! - The Winter Sale is currently still running (until January 5, 10:00 AM PST), with the original SHINRAI discounted by 50% and GENBA by 25%. So if you’ve been curious about checking them out, or know someone who is, it’s a good time to strike!
But with that out of the way, let’s talk about our major goals for the next twelve months ahead!
- SHINRAI 10th Anniversary
It’s so hard to wrap my head around, but on August 26 this year, SHINRAI – Broken Beyond Despair will celebrate its tenth release anniversary! Not only that, if you consider that the original story was written between September and October of 2011… it’s technically gonna be fifteen years old by then! Holy fucking shit! It feels like it should only be five years, at least since the VN release.
Where the hell did the time go…??
But yeah, I’ve liked to celebrate every anniversary thus far, and this one is obviously extra special. So we do wanna do something extra special for it. It’s too soon to talk about any specific details, but the biggest thing we’re planning to do you can probably already guess:
Release our next project!
- SHINRAI Saku – Blooming Beyond Despair
As I’ve mentioned in last week’s blog post, I had actually been hoping to release SHINRAI Saku last year already, but that didn’t work out for a couple of reasons. It might have been for the better, though, because what’s cooler than to celebrate the original’s release by releasing a follow-up? So, this year, we definitely wanna share Saku with all of you!
For a while, I was considering February 26 as a potential release date, because it’d still be winter, fitting with the game’s wintery setting, and because it’d be the halfway mark to August 26, with the anniversaries thus lying exactly six months apart.
However, some things are coming up, especially on Natsu‘s side, which will sadly not allow for that, either. So, at this point, I’m thinking we might as well release it on August 26 again. I mean, it’d sure be fun to celebrate all our games’ anniversaries on the very same day!
That said, I definitely wanna get my part of the work done ASAP, which includes finishing up the remaining backgrounds, sprite expressions, notebook entries and giving the script some more polish. So my personal aim still remains to take care of all that before the end of February. Because, starting from spring, I’d really like to move on to the next thing!
- SHINRAI – Withering Without Hope
The proper sequel to the original SHINRAI has been occupying my mind now for as long as our work on turning the original into a VN began. This was also be supposed to be long done by now, but then GENBA blew up into this enormous project, twice the size of BBD, even though it had only been supposed to be half as long, ahahah…
I ultimately consider this a good thing too, though! Because, over the years working on GENBA, I got so many new ideas for WWH, which undoubtedly turned it into a much more interesting story. So I’m actually very, very glad that we never released it the way it was originally intended. Personally, I think there is a lot of really cool stuff in there now, which I cannot wait to work on and share with you!
After working solely on murder mysteries for over a decade, I have to admit that, following GENBA‘s release, I was rather exhausted from it. That’s part of the reason I decided to make Saku. I wanted a breath of fresh air by creating something a little different, more character-focused. Something that didn’t revolve around a complex murder case, requiring tons of planning, insane attention to detail and countless hours of research.
Now, a year after work on Saku began, I am finally itching to get back to murder, though! So, with GENBA and Saku planting the seeds for its story, I also want 2026 to be the year when, at long last, development on Withering Without Hope will go into full bloom!
- Final Words
As you can see, we’ve sure got some big aims. Of course, this year will also bring more personal challenges and I cannot be certain yet how they’ll further affect our plans. However, in this very moment, I’m very stoked to get to work, be productive and do my best. And I hope you feel the same way, whatever your own aims and goals may be. So, no matter what may come our way throughout it, let’s kick off 2026 as best we can! Natsu and I definitely wish you a super successful start!
Now, as always, please enjoy the rest of your weekend and, until next Saturday, take care ^w^
