Shujinkou News

This small update (linked build # included) fixes the Steam Cloud saving / loading issue that was reported by a lot of players. This new patch confirms working Steam Cloud and also includes the new menu called Steam Cloud Save Conflict Menu:



In this menu, you will have the option to play with locally stored save data or the last saved Steam Cloud save data.

As mentioned in the help text in the screenshot, please be warned that choosing one save data, then saving the game after that, will cause the other save data to be overwritten and permanently deleted. This also occurs when opening and closing the Option Menu in both the Main Menu and in the Party Menu.

Here is a zoomed-in image for those curious about the flow.


In the unfortunate event that you unintentionally overwrite the wrong save, please send an email with your Steam username to [email protected] with the subject title Recover Lost Save Data and we will see if there's anything that can be done to recover it.

If this doesn't appear for you when you start the game, please save the game (with Steam Cloud synced/enabled) once on the device with your preferred / primary save data, then start the game on your secondary device.

Also, please note that if you pick the Steam Cloud save but do not save when quitting the game, this menu will appear when you return to the Main Menu.

Happy dungeon-crawling! We're finally starting to see some players on PS5 and PC reach the second half of the campaign and approach the conclusion of the story. Our most dedicated players have averaged over 10 hours a day with 150+ hours put into both the game's main and side content! 🤩

Julian

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Fix rare crash when interacting with the Lottery system (Takarakuji). Few users affected.
  
• Fix UI crash when receiving a rare drop from an akuma after a successful negotiation. Has a low crash rate of less than 0.5%, but it has happened to more than one player. Sorry!
  
• Fix potential crash when spamming "Back" within 0.5s of confirming a Gamble (difficulty, bet amount, rank select) for a minigame at any Fuu Lobby.
  
• Fix uncommon game crash when a DLC costume is set, then a Genya costume is set back to a certain partner, then a player completes that partner's minigame. Few users affected.
  
• Fix bizarre crash and soft-lock that causes the player to get stuck on a non-interactable NPC in Town 8.
  
• Fixed dialogue for the fishbowl in Tsunako's house playing when interacting with her kimono. Some users affected.
  
• Fix game stall when a group-wide attack move is used on an akuma that is protecting an akuma that has escaped the battle that turn. Some users affected.
  
• Fix game stall when an akuma tries to heal or revive an akuma that has escaped the battle. A fair number of users were affected.
  
• Added missing helper dialogue for Youkyuu: Money Heist, This Hitsuji Has Horns, To Be the Best of Them All, Royal Party, Who Said Pretty Girls Weren't Smart?.
  
• Fixed missing end-dialogue when winning Kotoba Kyuugi at Difficulty 10.
  
• Item Compendium is not synced properly with R3 status (remove the feature)
  
• Fix the dialogue log feature being desynced for: A Brotherly Escapade
• Fix one typo for the Furigana spelling of the youkyuu: A Terrifying Nightmare
• Fix various reported typos by players and our QA team.
  

[h2]Polish / Quality of Life[/h2]

• Change Time in Town. This interactable event now also supports changing the time to Dusk and Dawn. This should make it smoother to progress through some of the youkyuu that have time-of-day limitations.
  
• Skills that replenish TR, MR, or both after a hero's turn or after the end of battle do not trigger if the hero is fully healed for the target stat(s). This slightly improves the flow of battle.
  
• When winning a battle, any skills that heal the heroes after the battle will now properly update the bars of health seen for the hero UI when the battle message appears. This was a minor oversight.
  

[h2]Balancing[/h2]

• Bonus Skills like To Recuperate, To Restore, To Revitalize, To Regenerate, and To Replenish would not stack, and high-value skills would be overridden by lower-value skills. Now, these skills stack, allowing for more fair usage of AP and strategy.
  

[h2]Miscellaneous[/h2]

• Removed Day-only time requirement for interaction with Kobayashi in the Youkyuu: Bouquet Play.
  
• Adjusted wording for more accurate instructions in the Youkyuu: Honoring My Father's Memory.
  

[h2]Our Biggest Feature / Fix Priorities[/h2]

• PS5 Save Data Transfer from Demo to Full Game (optional for those who want to use it).
  
• We are still working on optimizing the PS4 version.
  
• There seems to be an issue with Steam Cloud for many users.
  
• We are working on a fix for playing on ultrawide monitors.
  
• Investigating the Tsuri (Fishing) minigame input issue on some PCs.
  
• Loading Lore Menu in the Party Menu (Lexicon) is in development.
  
• Adding a "Fast-Forward" key to some minigames so that they can be played and progressed through more quickly.
  
• Lighting issues (areas are too bright) for a small subset of computers, specifically in labyrinths during Dusk and Night, but also sometimes on the Nation Map.
  
• D-pad movement is not implemented smoothly, The L-stick is a perfectly fine input style (and the intended one) that you can work with while the D-pad implementation is being worked on.
  
• This seems to be an existing issue, but under certain circumstances, the Town music will remain unchanged even when the time of day is changed. This is known and will be patched in v1.34.
  

This is a smaller patch that fixes all of the crash reports and missing dialogue reports we received from PS5, PC, and PS4 users. We know a number of you had to restart the game after encountering these issues, and are very sorry for the inconvenience. Crashes are never intentional, and we do our best to catch everything we can.

Whenever a crash or exception happens, the team gets a notification about it, and I add it to the urgent list of things to fix for the next patch. We'll keep our eyes peeled for any more issues and hope you continue to have a fun time playing through Shujinkou!
Julian Rice

[h2]Polish / Quality of Life[/h2]

• PC-Only - Right Click to Go Back: Now, you can right-click to go back on all menus, including every menu in the Party Menu, Shop menus, Battle menus, and more.
  
• Rank Requirements for each minigame now displayed in the Records menu when signing up for a minigame. This transparency will allow players to make better decisions as to what rank to gamble for.
  
• New Hold to Mash UI appears in Tsuri (Fishing) and the Escaping Combat (Nigeru) if enabled, reminding the player what their active setting is.
  
• You can now sell and store Ingredients at Kurozushi after reaching Town 2.
  
• You can now use R3 / CTRL to cycle between all four displays (English, Japanese, Furigana, Romaji). This has resulted in various keybind remapping.
  
• R3 / CTRL Keybind Change: Z / Square / X (Xbox) to change active hero in Kanakae Equip.
  
• R3 / CTRL Keybind Change: Z / Square / X (Xbox) to change View Category in Kanban Menu.
  
• R3 / CTRL Keybind Change: Z / Square / X (Xbox) to swap between Armor and Weapons in Daisuke's Mokubukiya.
  
• R3 / CTRL Keybind Change: Tab / Triangle / Y (Xbox) to change to List View in the Arawasu Skill Tree menu.
  
• R3 / CTRL Keybind Change: The Battle Sequence Log keybind remains as R3 / CTRL, and the 4-display cycle system will only trigger when looking at a Battle menu that has different text to display, such as the Items submenu.
  

Now, you will be able to cycle through four displays and override your current settings at any time, similar to the English-Only mode. This was a highly requested feature by our language learners.

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Optimized PS4 version to reduce likelihood of memory crashes.
  
• Fixed one mistyped choice option in Tatiana's second Kizuna quest.
  
• Fixed spoilers appearing in Ishi 9 for Otogawa and Sugi.
  
• Fixed wrong character named for unlocked costume when completing a series of Kizuna quests.
  
• Fix rare crash during specific conditions when in the Fuu Underground.
  
• Fix potential input issues during specific conditions during Tsuri (Fishing).
  
• Fix issue with save not working over multiple sessions for Jin's Nen'oshi.
  
• Fix inaccurate location details for a certain Chop resource in Labyrinth 6.
  
• Fix issue with sometimes being able to use Kakusei before it fully unlocks.
  
• Added missing dialogue when clearing Sakana Sensou with Jin at Difficulty 2.
  
• Fix issue with being able to clear the Quiz without getting everything correct in the quest: Hotel Heartbreak.
  

Transparency for Rank Requirements: Note that special terminology (in this case, "Top Score") is defined at the bottom of the list of potential ranks.

[h2]Balancing[/h2]

• Raised Inventory maximum for Ingredients from 60 to 99.
  

If you have Hold to Mash enabled, certain mashing activities will show a new UI component to remind you of the setting. Because input processing currently differs between holding to mash and not holding at all, this should reduce confusion for players having trouble mashing when Hold to Mash is enabled.

[h2]Miscellaneous[/h2]

• Adjust grammar and word Kanban so that the sentences on the top take the whole width.
  
• Youkyuu tutorial updated to say a max of "twelve" quests instead of "five."
  

[h2]Our Biggest Feature / Fix Priorities[/h2]

• PS5 Save Data Transfer from Demo to Full Game (optional for those who want to use it).
  
• There seems to be an issue with Steam Cloud for many users.
  
• We are still working on further optimizing the PS4 version.
  
• We are still working on fixing the displays for ultrawide monitors.
  
• Investigating the Tsuri (Fishing) minigame input issue on some PCs.
  
• Loading Lore Menu in the Party Menu (Lexicon) is in development.
  
• D-pad movement, especially with controller, as well as keyboard-only movement, can be slow and laggy, and not fun for dungeon-crawlers who are more accustomed to D-pad movement (instead of the L-stick, which currently is the smoothest working solution).
  
• We want to add a "Fast-Forward" (by holding a certain key) to some minigames so that they can be played and progressed through more quickly.
  
• BUG: Using To Protect on an enemy that uses a group-wide attack can cause stalling issues in-game.
  
• BUG: An enemy that attempts to heal an enemy that decides to escape that exact turn can cause stalling issues in-game.
  
• BUG: Some players are running into an input error causing harmless errors on Steam Deck, but the error seems to be Unity package-related instead of being Shujinkou-related.
  
• BUG: At least one player ran into an issue when starting a random encounter. It seems very rare and isolated, and we're looking into the issue.
  
• BUG: Lighting issues (areas are too bright) for a small subset of computers, specifically in labyrinths during Dusk and Night (sometimes Dawn), but also sometimes on the Nation Map.
  
• Note: We are aware that there's a syncing input issue in the Item Compendium if the player spams R3 too quickly and will address this for v1.33.
  

Lengthy sentences like the one seen in the Kanban above now take up the entire width of the Kanban page, allowing for greatly reduced likelihood of text overflow into the second line.

As always, thank you for playing! Our team will be getting into marketing mode once a couple more important issues have been ironed out. Expect announcements for cool things in the coming weeks!
Julian Rice

[h2]Bug Fixes[/h2]

• Fix typos and add one missing helper dialogue to the quest: Gymprovements
• Add one missing helper dialogue to the quest: Jail Time, Bail Time
• Fix disgusting bug where, under very specific certain conditions, the game could lock and infinitely loop when in a town. Caught by players playing through Tatiana's third Kizuna quest and one of Hina's Kizuna quests.
  
• Fix bug regarding item removal logic in one of the exchange shops in the second half of the game.
  
• Fix bug where sometimes using a battle item with "Any Ally" scope could cause it to be used on an ally you didn't select. Bad!
  
• Fixed a bug relating to the Nen'oshi trophy (achievement).
  

[h2]Polish / Quality of Life[/h2]

• Sold Item Stock System: Now, when you sell items to shopkeepers like Daisuke and Kunihiko, they will keep the items in their shop, and can be used for valuable in-game features such as Forging and Cooking without the need to have the required items actively present in your Inventory or Storage. This should greatly reduce the risk or uncertainty present thinking about selling your hard-earned materials, resources, ingredients, and more.
  
• L3 / 1 - English-Only Functionality on All Menus: We've tested and confirmed that L3 / 1 can now be used on every menu in the game. This includes when in shops, in the Party Menu, Tutorials, and more. Please note that currently, the English-Only keybind gets temporarily disabled right after entering and leaving the Options Menu, and resets after leaving the Party Menu once.
  

[h2]Balancing[/h2]

• Increased max active Youkyuu from 5 to 12.
• Increase the chance of a target enemy for a Hunt youkyuu appearing by a fair amount.
  
• Jin's Nen'oshi now gives you a scaling monetary reward the more times you complete it.
  
• Hebi now has an increased encounter rate in Area 3 of Labyrinth 2.
  

[h2]Miscellaneous[/h2]

• Removed Slide 1 from the 3-slide Options Menu tutorial. It contained too much redundant material to warrant a slide.
  
• Added new tutorial for Sold Item Stock system.
  
• Added new tutorial image for Mokubukiya Tutorial (Slide 2).
  

[h2]Our Biggest Feature / Fix Priorities[/h2]

• PS5 Save Data Transfer from Demo to Full Game (optional for those who want to use it).
  
• We are still working on optimizing the PS4 version.
  
• There seems to be an issue with Steam Cloud for many users.
  
• Some of the grammar and word-based Kanban have long-enough sentences that it makes it hard to read on a smaller screen. We will be adjusting the UI for this.
  
• We are working on a fix to increase Storage capacities for certain items.
  
• We are working on a fix for playing on ultrawide monitors.
  
• Existing R3 / CTRL keybinds are to be changed to allow for display-changing across all four display types in any menu (like the Item Compendium menu).
  
• Investigating the Tsuri (Fishing) minigame input issue on some PCs.
  
• Loading Lore Menu in the Party Menu (Lexicon) is in development.
  
• Using To Protect on an enemy that uses a group-wide attack can cause stalling issues in-game.
  
• An enemy that attempts to heal an enemy that decides to escape that exact turn can cause stalling issues in-game.
  
• We want to add a "Fast-Forward" (by holding a certain key) to some minigames so that they can be played and progressed through more quickly.
  
• Lighting issues (areas are too bright) for a small subset of computers, specifically in labyrinths during Dusk and Night (sometimes Dawn), but also sometimes on the Nation Map.
  
• D-pad movement, especially with controller, as well as keyboard-only movement, can be slow and laggy, and not fun for dungeon-crawlers who are more accustomed to D-pad movement (instead of the L-stick, which currently is the smoothest working solution).
  

Thanks again for playing Shujinkou. We'll be pushing hard on fixes and quality of life updates in March, now that the Release phase has cooled down a little bit. Hoping to see you soon in the depths of Sanrin and other dungeons! 🌟
Julian Rice

Our fourth Metacritic-affiliated review is here! We got a review from Matt Sainsbury (Editor-in-Chief of Digitally Downloaded), scoring Shujinkou a maximum score of 5 stars—only the second one the publication has given this year!

[h2]Please give the full review a read here:[/h2]
https://www.digitallydownloaded.net/2025/02/review-shujinkou-sony-playstation-5




[h2]Excerpts from the Review[/h2]

• "(...) Of all the many “language learning” games I’ve played, Shujinkou is the one that “gets it” the best. And that’s precisely because it eases you into Japanese using it in context."
  
  
• "Because the game is there to teach, it actually has more of a narrative than most dungeon crawlers. Oh, and it’ll take you 70 or so hours to play through. This thing has substance, is the point."
  
  
• "The induction (...from too many tutorials at once) is likely to be at least mildly confusing to most players until they have taken the time to immerse themselves within the game itself and mess around with the systems personally." - Oops! We'll see what we can do about that! - Julian
  
  
• "It’s a testament to the quality of the game that it holds up perfectly well if you don’t want to be educated by it at all, but if you do take it seriously, it’ll actually progress you pretty far down the path to proficiency all by itself."

[h2]Review Conclusion[/h2]
"Shujinkou is a genuinely worthwhile language tool wrapped up in a genuinely worthwhile indie Etrian Odyssey-style dungeon crawler. It’s an inspired, intelligent idea and I hope people give it a chance despite being as indie as they come. On sheer ambition and creative energy, I would be hard-pressed to point to anything I have ever played that’s more impressive than this."