Staring at the huge double bed in Ichin's bedroom, Haruno widened her eyes.
"Oh! This bed is really nice!"
Then she leapt forward and flopped onto it.
"It's so big—you could just roll around on it as much as you want!"
Lying on the bed, Haruno didn't care at all that her safety shorts were visible beneath her skirt as she rolled happily across the mattress.
Ichin said helplessly, "Haruno-nee, even though we wiped the mattress down already, you should at least wait until we've put on the sheets and everything before you start rolling around."
Yukino immediately walked over and pulled her sister up. She was being far too unladylike.
After finishing their tour of the villa, Utaha happened to receive a call from Eriri. The four of them went over to the Sawamura household to hang out for a bit—and conveniently mooch lunch as well.
In the afternoon, they brought Eriri along and went out to play for a while, had dinner outside, and only then returned home. The weekend passed by in a relaxed and pleasant way.
On Monday, after classes ended and he arrived at the company, Ichin opened his computer as soon as he got to his office to check game sales, since he hadn't looked at them over the weekend.
The situation was very good. Although GARO's sales growth wasn't large, it was steadily increasing.
Moreover, the company's other games were also seeing noticeable increases compared to before.
Curious, Ichin browsed a few forums and realized that some tokusatsu fans—people who normally didn't play games much—had started checking out the company's other titles after playing GARO.
Because the company developed many different types of games—turn-based RPGs, card games, 2D side-scrollers, roguelikes, and more—it was able to appeal to players with very different tastes.
Rubbing his chin, Ichin mused, "I did expect GARO to draw in some tokusatsu fans, but I didn't think it would happen this fast. Still, there's naturally some overlap. If it were a completely different circle, it wouldn't be so easy to pull in new players this quickly."
After checking the sales figures, Ichin opened a spreadsheet on his desktop.
It was the company's current development team allocation chart. After the main development of GARO was completed, aside from a portion of the staff who stayed behind to work on GARO's versus mode, the rest of the team had been reassigned—some to the Monster Train project, others merged into the Tales of Berseria project to speed up development.
As for the Fall Guys team, its size had remained stable. Fall Guys already had a well-established development toolkit—whether it was designing skins or creating new stages, as long as there was inspiration, things could be produced very quickly.
When it came to inspiration, aside from brainstorming on their own, there were also many obstacle-course variety shows in several countries. Watching those for a bit whenever ideas ran dry was more than enough for reference.
As for skins, there was even less to worry about. Collaboration skins had already been scheduled, and regular update skins were backed by a long production plan—just follow the plan step by step.
It could be said that there was absolutely no need to worry about Fall Guys' future updates. As long as interesting stages were released regularly and each season's rewards were handled properly, the game's popularity could be maintained and its online player count kept at a solid level.
After reviewing the chart, Ichin muttered to himself, "The card game already has a foundation, so development won't take too long—half a year at most. As for Tales of Berseria, it'll release around September or October. By then, the newly hired staff should be trained well enough, and we can start developing Bloodborne, Salt and Sanctuary, and Phasmophobia at the same time."
Among the three games previously selected from employee ideas, the 2D side-scrolling Souls-like game would officially be developed under the name Salt and Sanctuary. However, its content would definitely be far richer than the version in Ichin's memory, and its combat system would have much more depth.
This year, three games would be released: GARO, Tales of Berseria, and Monster Train. Next year, at the very least, Salt and Sanctuary and Phasmophobia could be released. As for Bloodborne, its development cycle would likely be longer—releasing it next year might be a stretch, so it was tentatively scheduled for the year after.
With plans for Monster Train and the other projects confirmed, the employees' enthusiasm for brainstorming new game ideas had grown even stronger. In the time ahead, even more concepts suitable for full projects might emerge.
Looking at it this way, there was no need to worry about development projects for the next two years. And on top of that, there was still GARO's second game to develop.
After jotting down a few notes in his notebook, Ichin left his office and headed over to the Tales of Berseria development team.
Utaha had gone there today to discuss the game script she had already started writing. As for Yukino, she still hadn't finished classes and would only come to the company afterward.
On the development floor, everyone was working at full steam. The project was progressing smoothly—the entire story flow of the first half of the game, as well as the map layouts, had already been completed. The team was now developing the second half and integrating the game's content.
"Kō, how much of the in-game modeling is done?"
Hearing Ichin's voice, Yagami Kō smiled and gave him a thumbs-up. "Ninety percent complete already. We can finish the remaining modeling within this month, and then we'll move into the final integration phase."
"That's great. Aside from keeping an eye on Monster Train, I'll be focusing mainly on Tales of Berseria from now on. If there's anything you need help with, just say the word."
At that moment, Toyama Rin walked over as well.
"The art team is doing fine, but I think you should spend more time with the programming team. Umiko could really use the help—she's got a lot of new hires to train."
"That's true. Got it."
Ichin nodded and headed straight for the programming team.
There really were quite a few newcomers on Umiko's side. Among all the recent hires, aside from the business department, the largest number had gone into programming.
After arriving, Ichin took on part of Umiko's workload, guiding several newcomers as they worked through a few sections of code together.
At three in the afternoon, Yukino finally arrived at the company.
By then, Ichin had already returned to his office. After failing to find him with the Berseria team, Yukino came upstairs.
Seeing her, Ichin smiled and said, "You're a bit late today?"
Yukino walked in and placed a bag on Ichin's desk. "I saw this on the way back, so I bought some—freshly made roujiamo."
Smelling the familiar aroma wafting from the bag, Ichin said in surprise, "Huh? They sell roujiamo in Tokyo?"
Opening the bag, he saw two roujiamo stuffed full of meat inside.
Ichin instantly found himself craving them.
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