The engine already had a name.
It wasn't an epic decision nor debated for hours.It just happened.
–"We need to call it something," – said Mori, reviewing a tool.
I thought for a few seconds.–"Tideframe." –
No one asked why.It sounded stable. Modular. Flexible.It fit.
After months of work, the project reached that strange point where there was nothing big left to fix. Only details. Minimal adjustments. Bugs that appeared only when someone played for hours on end.
The game was finished.
The Aoi sequel didn't aim to repeat the island. The world was now wider: forgotten coasts, submerged ruins, deserts fractured by civilizations no one remembered. Aoi was no longer an improvised survivor, but a trained explorer. Every movement had intention. Every system, a purpose.
The engine responded.Loads were fast. Animations fluid. Combat, inherited and refined from the original RPG, felt natural even with new enemies. Exploration rewarded curiosity without punishing the player.
It wasn't perfect.But it was honest.
Master copies were sent for duplication. Manuals printed. Covers reviewed one last time. The studio's name now appeared with more confidence in specialized magazines.
Not as a promise.As a real possibility.
The day the release date was confirmed, no one celebrated.Not yet.We were too tired.Too aware of how fragile everything was.
–"Do you think it will work?" – asked Sato, not looking at me.
I thought about the question.The mechanics.The engine.Aoi.The team.
–"I don't know," – I replied.–"But it's not the same game as the previous one."
That was enough.
The night before the release, I stayed alone in the office. I turned on a final version. Played without debugging, without the console open, like anyone would.
I walked through a ruin no one else had designed. Saw an animation Mori had polished to the last frame. Triggered an event Sato had adjusted dozens of times.
It worked.
I turned off the system.
Now it didn't depend on us.The game would go out into the world.
And, for the first time since waking up in this body, I felt something close to real nerves.Not fear of failure.Anticipation.
If the audience accepted it, the studio would survive.If they rejected it, at least we had created something genuine.
We hoped it would be as successful as the previous installment.But deep down, we knew we were no longer repeating the past.We were trying to build something of our own.
And that, by itself, was already a new risk.