Yuri Kissaten Studio Update: A Lilyful Year to Come
[p]Yuri Kissaten completed its first full year as a game studio in 2025, and wowzers was it an adventure![/p][p]If you remember, we embarked on the "5 for '25 Campaign," an effort to work on and announce five different games throughout 2025. In the end, we only released one full game, Winter Heat, and one smaller game, "Life of a Dispatch English Teacher in Japan," though we learned a whole lot in the process. And we really did end up revealing all 5 games as planned![/p][p]Look at all the games we worked on in 2025:[/p][p][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p][p]We ran our first crowdfunding campaign, we attended our first live event and first Steam events, we made three different showcase videos, we did social video marketing... It was a big year of firsts.[/p][p]And so, 2026 will be just as ambitious, but with more targeted, specific goals. I have no clue how many games we'll announce, and how many games we'll release is still in flux (it seems like four, but it could be three or five depending on what gets finished soonest). But I do know we're going to strive for our Six Sapphic Goals for 2026, and I'll share them with you.[/p][p][/p][h2]#1 Release demos early and often.[/h2][p]While we will release 3-4 games in 2026, we're still working on plenty of projects, and we want to at least get demos out for every unreleased game by the end of the year. Store pages are nice, and a really big mark of progress, but demos are best because y'all players can experience them, and it's a lot easier to share. Even for games several years out, we'll try to get a demo out soon.[/p][p][/p][h2]#2 Work on RPGM projects![/h2][p]We've only done visual novels so far, but we had a lot of fun working on the imminently upcoming Oomfie RPG sub-game for Winter Heat. Both of us (Bea and Fruz) have experience making top-down adventure games in our younger years, and we want to bring that passion into Yuri Kissaten soon too. Narrative games in all shapes and sizes are great![/p][p][/p][h2]#3 Collab with new people.[/h2][p]So far, we've worked with extremely small teams in our games, and one of the two of us has led every project announced so far, except for Gay It Loud which is helmed by the admirable Joi Massat. We're looking to expand that roster, though, and work with other creative friends and help them bring their dream game to fruition. We'll probably have one project like that ready to announce in a couple months... So stay tuned for that.[/p][p][/p][h2]#4 Get 10 reviews on launch day for our new releases.[/h2][p]10 reviews is that almighty Steam threshold for your game to not get buried immediately in the new games category, so ideally you want to hit the mark as soon as possible. Steam's algorithm basically doesn't even activate until you've reached 10 reviews! While we got there with Love is in the Airship eventually, it took many months, and the game wasn't very visible until then. [/p][p]So it's a matter of getting more and more wishlists for our games before we launch, and making games good enough that people want to review them on the first day.[/p][p][/p][h2]#5 Post 67 project progress updates.[/h2][p]We’re trying to keep Yuri Kissaten as transparent as we can make it. We want to level-up and keep posting as much as we can–At least to Patrons. 😏[/p][p]So we’ll post at least 67 Progress Updates in 2026. Some short, some longer, some more about life than about projects, but whatever. We have so many games in development that it’s a shame not to show you more about them.[/p][p][/p][h2]#6 Start our first licensed game project.[/h2][p]Ever since we released Love is in the Airship, we’ve dreamed of the possibilities of making Yuri games with existing IP from other companies. We semi-successfully reached out to some groups early on, but now that we’ve made more stuff and have more connections we’re actually ready to take on this kind of project. We already used Squiddles in Winter Heat, but we’re aiming for something bigger… Full Squiddles game anyone?[/p][p][/p][h2]Keep in Touch in 2026![/h2][p]Remember to keep in touch by following Yuri Kissaten on Steam, as well as via these handy places that'll give you immediate updates:[/p]
- [p]Our main site (and its RSS feed)[/p]
- [p]Our Bluesky (you can also follow via Mastodon and allegedly Threads by using Bridgy Fed)[/p]
- [p]Our Patreon (free members get updates too!)[/p]