After giving Aoba a small scare, Ichin returned to his office, quite satisfied with himself.
It had only been two days since his last visit, but finally, he was back.
Sitting in his executive chair, he stretched lazily, booted up his computer, and began checking the team's progress during his absence.
First was the batch of new recruits, who had been assigned directly to a fresh project — Castle Crashers: a 2D side-scrolling action game supporting up to four-player co-op both online and offline.
The art style for this game wasn't very complex. What mattered most was ensuring the combat felt rich, teamwork was fun, and there was room for playful sabotage between players.
Games like this — compact, polished, and stylish — didn't usually require large budgets, but their charm and gameplay always stood out.
From the current reports, the team's progress was smooth. Everything looked solid. According to Sakura Nene's estimate, the project could be completed by April or May next year.
Once this game was finished, these new developers would have gained enough experience to move on to more challenging projects.
On the Dark Souls side, nearly all monster, NPC, and map models were done; only a few final touches and adjustments remained.
The biggest strain was on the programming team, who were busy tuning boss and enemy AI, balancing numerical values, and adjusting weapon stats.
Still, the game was now firmly in its final development stage, with all storylines already implemented.
Rubbing his chin, Ichin muttered to himself, "Hmm… let's announce the release date by the end of the year and start pre-orders."
This version of Dark Souls differed quite a bit from Miyazaki's Dark Souls III. Beyond new maps, Ichin had added a whole batch of weapons, reworked battle arts and magic, and rebalanced the overall combat flow — making every playstyle viable and enjoyable.
The number of monsters and bosses had also increased. Regular enemies now ranged from easy to tough, while bosses were designed to be truly intimidating, whether they were power-based or agility-based. Each one, he aimed, should leave players with a lasting impression after victory.
As always, the Ashen One — the player character — remained physically unimpressive: capable of rolling but still unable to truly jump, only performing a short forward hop after a running start.
But that's the Souls series for you — a weak protagonist facing terrifying, overwhelming bosses with fluid, varied attack patterns and absurd damage. That's exactly what makes victory so satisfying.
Ichin kept the roll-invincibility frames reasonably generous — unlike Monster Hunter, where they were painfully short. Players needed some room to show skill; otherwise, the game would just feel cruel instead of rewarding.
Next came Fall Guys.
It had been several months since launch. While its initial surge of popularity had cooled slightly, the playerbase remained strong thanks to constant map updates, new skins, season passes, and the later-added ranked mode.
Checking Steam, Ichin saw that the game still maintained over 60,000 concurrent players.
And that didn't even include the Nintendo Switch and console versions.
Overall, as long as Fall Guys maintained this level of activity, Ichin was satisfied.
And of course, adding new and creative stages or unique modes would no doubt rekindle even more excitement.
For a live-service game like this, post-launch maintenance was just as critical as the initial release.
After reviewing Tokyo's studio, Ichin switched his attention to the Shanghai branch, which was still buzzing with activity.
TITANFALL had just launched. Though no major bugs had appeared, players naturally found a few minor ones after release. The dev team reacted quickly, rolling out patches and fixes immediately.
Player feedback had been overwhelmingly positive — the storyline, gunplay, Titan combat, and optimization all received widespread praise.
Even the online modes had been well received.
Many players who finished the story jumped straight into multiplayer.
Besides standard PvP, the developers had designed asymmetrical modes, as well as Pilot-only and Titan-only battles for variety.
While it didn't have as many concurrent players as battle royale titles like PUBG, the numbers were solid — and Ichin didn't worry much about it. After all, Apex was the real next step, and that would be the major project.
Once Titanfall got through its launch week and the Shanghai team had a short rest, Apex's development would officially begin.
With Titanfall's systems and assets already in place, making Apex wouldn't be nearly as difficult.
Ichin was also planning to personally fly over and help with the early development phase.
---
After finishing his review, Ichin wasn't in much of a working mood.
Still feeling a bit sluggish from his recent illness, he decided to call it a day.
Leaving his office, he toured the art department, then stepped next door into the animation team's workspace.
As soon as he entered, he saw Shinoda Hajime sitting in front of her monitor — which wasn't showing any animation software, but a browser page displaying the newly released RTX 40-series GPUs.
Walking up behind her, Ichin gently patted her head.
"Doing some window shopping during work hours, are we?"
Startled, Shinoda quickly turned around. "No, no! I just finished my task!"
To prove it, she hurriedly opened the completed final boss — the Soul of Cinder animation module.
It was by far the most difficult boss animation she'd ever made, taking nearly a full month to meet Ichin's detailed specifications.
She stepped aside to let him review her work.
"I was actually planning to show you this later," she explained. "But then Kō told me you were busy checking everyone's progress, so I figured I'd wait and kill some time looking at new hardware."
Ichin nodded — he didn't doubt her explanation.
After all, he'd personally assigned her the Soul of Cinder design, giving her numerous notes and creative directions.
He knew how overworked she'd been throughout November just to meet his vision.
As he watched her finished work, Ichin commented, "So you were looking at the 40-series GPUs, huh? Planning to upgrade again? I thought you already had a 3090 at home?"
"Hehe, well, when something new comes out, of course I want to take a look."
Shinoda grinned. "But that price tag is brutal. Kind of kills my motivation to buy one right away. I'll wait a bit longer."
Indeed, the 40-series was priced a whole tier above the 30-series — especially right after launch.
Ichin laughed. He had no plans to upgrade either. His 3090 was still more than powerful enough to last for years.
---
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