Here’s a personal message from me (Nayru) to anyone who’s interested in the current state of NoBreadStudio.

The 13th of December 2025 marks three full years since we released our last project, The Elevator Game with Catgirls, and also around a year since we fulfilled all of our recent Kickstarter promises. Some of you asked if we’ve been up to anything new in the meantime, and the answer is complicated. The short of it is "yes" - but the majority of this year has honestly been bad in a lot of ways.

In order not to make this post 50 pages long, I’ll try to keep things organized and to the point:

• It’s been two years since I picked up a daily part-time job in order to keep NBS afloat. That fact hasn’t changed. While it does give some stability, it also eats quite a lot of my time and energy, so gamedeving hasn’t been going as fast and efficiently as I’d like it to.

• This year I became disillusioned with the idea of making a proper living from video games. If our stuff would continue selling the way it did back in 2016-2017, when we first released SoulSet, we would probably be fine, but the market has changed immensely since then. Sales became so obscure since the pandemic, it’s honestly not a feasible thing to dream about anymore. Some indiedevs are well off, some aren’t. It’s been over 10 years since we started our gamedev journey, and things have been only going downhill, I think it’s safe to say "we didn’t make it".

• Not to say I’m giving up, I’m just changing my approach to some things. Who knows, perhaps alleviating the pressure might be healthier. I’ve always approached my games with love and passion, and saw them more as a hobby than an actual job, and perhaps that kind of approach was right to have all along. I believe the right kind of people will find our games sooner or later - be it a week, a month, or a year or ten from now on. My marketing endeavors are going to be sparse. I’ll continue doing my thing, but I’m not going to be losing sleep over trying to make a living out of this anymore.

• Xolf’s unexpected passing affected me in ways I cannot even properly explain. Doing anything creative this year has left me feeling very empty and depressed, and despite my best intentions, I struggled to get any progress done for literal months. Every time I opened up some script files that Xolf managed to proofread for me all the way back in November of 2024, and kept seeing all of the author notes he left, I ended up having meltdowns. Grief is honestly a weird thing. In a way, not only do I feel like I’ve lost a close friend, but also my creative soulmate. For those of you that don’t know, Xolf co-wrote both Blankspace and EGC with me, and having him as a sounding board for my ideas was an invaluable and heartwarming experience. I wrote the majority of SoulSet on my own, so I know I am capable of doing it again, but things are just going to be different; I have yet to come to terms and accept that fact.

• I lost the ability to talk to people, so if you’ve been waiting for a reply from me, I’m sorry - it’s nothing personal, and not that I’ve forgotten, I’m just currently paralyzed from something I can only identify as depression and/or debilitating social burnout. It’s never been this bad before.

• Despite all this doom and gloom, things have been a bit better these past couple of weeks. We’re been slowly cooking. I was quietly hoping I’d have a small surprise for you before the year was over, but I’ll need a bit more time to get it done, after all.

On a happier note, here are our current gamedev plans:

1. I plan to release the demo of 304 Seconds in Q1 2026, and the full version of the game in Q2 2026. It’s going to be a heavily extended version of the jam project from 2024, and also a prologue to Red Crown Project, a sci-fi death game I’ve been working on and off since 2019. While I was planning to release it for free initially, it grew so much out of proportion, its script is now close to that of EGC, so I’ve decided to make it a commercial release, after all. Thanks to my part-time job, I was able to commission Marcianek for some GUI and logo designs, and Odd for a soundtrack out of my own pocket, so we won’t have to hold a Kickstarter for this project.

2. Once 304 Seconds is released, both Mori and I plan to work on a remastered version of SoulSet. December 2026 is going to be SoulSet’s 10th anniversary, so the timing seems right. We have no idea how long such an endeavor will take us, but since we plan to re-draw all sprites, CGs, around half of the backgrounds, expand on the script and endings, it’s going to be a huge amount of work and effort. 2-3 years are probably realistic, and it’s possible we might try to release this thing in Early Access, working on each route at a time, so that we don’t get overwhelmed by the scope of it. We honestly have no clue how we managed to finish the original SoulSet in mere two years. We plan to hold a Kickstarter for this.

3. After we’re done with the remastered version of SoulSet, I plan to come back to the death game, and dedicate my time to working fully on Red Crown Project. This thing is quite a big one even by my standards (and when I say it’s big, it’s probably worse than it sounds, considering our last two games were supposed to be "short and quick"). If you’re curious what my delusional mind’s been up to these past couple of years with a subtle roster of 20 characters that have been put into stressful situations, I hope you stick around to find out. I feel like my whole gamedev journey has led me here, and it’s going to put everything I’ve learned along the way to the test. I’m excited to share 304 Seconds with you all because it’s going to mark the start of this whole unhinged journey, and I feel like I’ve finally found the courage to tackle it for real. RCP will most likely also get a Kickstarter when the time comes.

TL;DR Tough year. Tough decade, actually. New NBS game coming in 2026. We have more plans for years to come, so it would be cool if you continued to support us.

Thank you for sticking around for so long, we appreciate you being here.

Cheers!

• Nayru

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