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[Game] Chapter 191: The New Project Officially Begins
🕑 Added 2025-04-06 13:09:16 +0000 UTCWhether Kō Yagami saved all those fashion show photos of Hifumi on her phone like Ichin told her to, no one knew. But come Monday, everyone had returned to the studio, ready to dive into a new week of work.
At 9:30 AM, once the team had gathered, Hazuki clapped her hands and stood up.
“Alright, everyone. Even though Ichin still has classes today, our work won’t be slowing down. The minor bugs we found in Hollow Knight and Slay the Spire over the past few days have all been resolved. So today, aside from getting ourselves back into work mode, we’ll be starting the first phase of our new project. Ichin has already mapped out the tasks for this week. Rin, hand them out.”
Rin Toyama nodded and began distributing the task sheets to each person.
As they received their assignments, everyone began reviewing their tasks for the week.
“Oh~~ so this is what we’re working on!”
Kō Yagami looked over her weekly tasks and mused,
“I remember Ichin mentioned yesterday that there’d be a lot of work coming up, but this is actually way better than I expected. As expected of Ichin—he’d never load us up with so much work we’d have to pull all-nighters.”
Hazuki smiled.
“Of course not. We don’t have that many people on our team right now, so we definitely can’t afford to burn ourselves out just for some overtime. Besides, this isn’t something that a few extra late nights can finish. When it comes to game development—especially the large-scale project we’re about to start—quality and stability matter way more than speed.”
Hazuki didn’t give a long speech. After just a few words of encouragement, she had everyone start their work.
After all, everyone had been with the studio for over half a year by now, and none of them were the type to waste time on empty talk. Better to get straight into the job than stand around.
---
At noon, Ichin and Utaha went to the Service Club to have lunch with Yukino Yukinoshita and Eriri Spencer Sawamura.
As they sipped their hot miso soup, Eriri asked,
“Ichin-kun, did the studio start development on Persona today?”
“Yeah, today’s the day,” Ichin nodded.
“The team doesn’t really need me to supervise everything anymore. Hazuki just needs to distribute the tasks I’ve planned out, and they’ll be good to go. Everyone’s been dying to get started. By the way, Eriri—this semester’s almost over, you know? There’s only about a month left before finals. Maybe cut back on your time at the studio for now. I don’t want Aunt Sayuri coming after me if your grades take a nosedive.”
“Huh?! Are you looking down on me?”
Eriri puffed up in protest.
“I’ve been studying just fine, thank you very much!”
But before she could argue more, Yukino interjected calmly,
“Last week’s test—you didn’t make it into the top fifty in your year. That’s a drop from last semester.”
“Uh... I can explain...”
Explain? Not likely. Out of the four people sitting at the table, two were ranked first in their year, and one was ranked second. No one was going to let her off the hook that easily. A drop in performance was still a drop.
Utaha smiled sweetly.
“I know you love illustrating more, Eriri, but don’t forget—before you joined the game dev team, you were still a student. Your grades matter. Unless you plan to drop out now and focus entirely on game development—which I highly doubt your parents would approve of.”
“Of course I’m not dropping out! I am going to graduate from college!”
Eriri declared proudly, pumping her tiny fist.
“Don’t be fooled just because my grades look so-so right now. If I really put my mind to it, getting back on top would be a piece of cake!”
“Oh~~ someone’s feeling confident.”
Utaha’s smile widened slightly, and Eriri immediately felt a chill.
“I’m really glad to see you so motivated, Eriri,” Utaha said sweetly. “So, to help you keep that promise you just made—Yukino, would you mind tutoring Eriri more often? We’ll reduce her studio tasks for the time being. What do you think, Ichin?”
Ichin, trying to hold back a laugh, nodded.
“Sounds good to me. The early development stages aren’t that urgent anyway. If Eriri focuses on her studies for now, that’s the right call.”
Yukino also noticed the expression on Eriri’s face—she looked like she was about to crack. Although Yukino’s personality was still as straightforward as ever, being around Ichin and Utaha had rubbed off on her a little. Watching Eriri get knocked down a peg from time to time was unexpectedly entertaining.
Besides, Eriri was one of the few people in their year she actually got along with. Yukino didn’t want to see her grades drop either. So she nodded and said,
“No problem. I’ll handle the tutoring. It’s a good opportunity for me to review and reinforce my own knowledge, too. Two birds with one stone.”
As the lowest-ranked student among the four of them, Eriri had no room to argue. Her schedule for the next month had basically been decided for her, right then and there.
Frustrated, Eriri angrily stabbed a piece of pork cutlet from her lunchbox and shoved it into her mouth like she was declaring war.
---
After finishing lunch and taking a short break, Ichin pulled out his phone. He selected a photo he had saved the day before—a picture of the main mask from Persona—and posted it on Bilibili with a short caption:
“New project begins. Please look forward to it, everyone.”
The moment he hit post, comments started pouring in.
It had been ten days since Hollow Knight released, and the game was still riding a wave of popularity. Many streamers and players had already completed a full playthrough, but even more were diving into second runs, aiming for 100% completion.
Sales continued climbing. After breaking 100,000 copies on launch day, Hollow Knight hit 120,000 units on the Switch in its first week, and the Steam version soared to 350,000.
As of today, total sales had surpassed 500,000 copies.
It was a number that stunned players and developers alike in the industry.
But it wasn’t completely unexpected. With the success of Slay the Spire, Ichin’s development skills were already well-recognized. On top of that, the game had been featured at Gamescom and launched on the Nintendo Switch. The platforming mechanics shown in the demo were top-notch and drew a lot of attention.
Finally, the game was priced affordably. Even the normally pricier Switch version wasn’t much more expensive, and there was even a physical edition available for collectors.
All of these advantages combined led to Hollow Knight’s blazing success. It was already a smash hit—especially impressive considering it had only been out for ten days.
And now they’re already starting on a new game?!
That’s fast! But what did he post? Something from the new game?
Looks like a mask? Never seen that one before.
Gives off a dark, mysterious vibe.
As expected, the comments section quickly spiraled into chaos.
Ichin wasn’t surprised at all. After scrolling through a few comments, he put away his phone and left the Service Club with Utaha, heading back to class.
...
