After walking over, Ichin looked at the two of them and asked, "Umiko, what time did you guys play until last night?"
"Hm?"
Taking a sip of coffee, Umiko smiled and said, "Not that long—just until two."
"Two isn't late?" Ichin said helplessly, glancing at Nene, who was yawning. "On weekends you can play however you like, but on workdays you should still turn in a bit earlier. This kind of energy level in the morning just won't do. After lunch, make sure you rest properly."
Nene nodded. "Yeah, I'm planning to take a nap at noon. I can still manage in the morning."
After saying a few words to them, Ichin led Utaha and Yukino upstairs to the office.
Sitting down in his boss chair and turning on the computer, Ichin looked at Yukino. "Haruno is coming back in the afternoon, right? When she arrives, is she going straight to the company, or back home first?"
"Actually, the timing changed—it's around noon now," Yukino replied. "My sister told me yesterday that she'll come over here at lunchtime, eat with us, and then go to the company."
Ichin nodded. "Alright, then we'll wait for Haruno and have lunch together."
After that, Ichin grabbed his things and headed to the conference room for the meeting, with Utaha and Yukino following along.
Ichin had already reviewed all the creative ideas submitted by the company staff and discussed them with Hazuki and the others. From those, they had selected three promising concepts, planning to refine them into formal projects and develop them one by one.
Today's meeting was a full-company meeting. Besides updating everyone on the current work and making some minor adjustments to the plans for the remaining half of the year, the main focus was announcing which ideas had been accepted.
When they arrived at the main conference room, everyone from the company was already there. Ichin went straight to the front row and sat down, signaling Hazuki to begin.
Adjusting her glasses, Hazuki smiled and said, "Alright, let's begin. Today's meeting will mainly cover three topics: the progress of our two current development projects, some minor adjustments to the work schedule for the remaining three-plus months of the first half of the year, and—something I mentioned to everyone before—the results of our creative idea submissions."
Everyone already knew about the first two topics. The third, however, had been kept completely confidential, instantly sparking curiosity.
If there weren't any good ideas, it probably wouldn't be brought up in a meeting—so it seemed likely that something had actually been approved.
That immediately got all the employees who had submitted ideas guessing.
Hazuki knew everyone was curious. After letting them discuss for a bit, she clapped her hands to draw their attention back and officially started the meeting.
There wasn't much to say about the first two items. The main point was to update everyone on the development progress of GARO and Tales of Berseria, and to give the GARO team a final push to wrap things up strong. She also mentioned that once the GARO project concluded, some of its members would be reassigned to the Berseria team to expand the project and speed up development.
As for the remaining staff, they would begin work on new projects.
Other arrangements mainly involved the company starting a new round of recruitment. When that happened, new hires would be assigned to each team and go through an internship and evaluation period.
There would also be some adjustments to the Fall Guys team's development priorities—shifting the balance between skins and maps. Since many skins had already been prepared in advance, the next focus would be on developing new maps and stages to further enrich gameplay.
Finally came the segment everyone had been eagerly waiting for.
This part was handed over to Ichin.
After stepping up, Ichin opened the prepared PPT and looked at everyone. "Alright. Earlier, I received quite a few game development ideas from all of you, and I personally reviewed each one. Some were admittedly a bit wild or strange, but there were also some very interesting ideas that could be quickly shaped into proper projects. After discussion among the management based on the ideas I shortlisted, we ultimately chose three that we plan to refine into full projects and put into development. Let's start with the first one."
He clicked the PPT, and the first concept image appeared on the big screen.
The moment it showed up, a guy from the programming team shouted, "Ah! That's mine!"
The people around him immediately congratulated him.
Ichin continued, "Right, I think everyone can see this one clearly. It's a card-based game, but with variations in the combat setting. The battlefield is divided into three layers. On the top layer, there's a crystal—similar to the character in Slay the Spire—with its own HP. Each round, you need to place card units across these three layers to stop monsters from advancing upward from the bottom. In addition to rogue-like elements, it also has some tower defense aspects.
"This is a solid idea. We already have experience developing card games—my very first solo-developed game was the card rogue-like Slay the Spire, which achieved good results and became the first pot of gold that kick-started my career. Of course, this current concept is still a bit rough. Later on, we'll select some members to form a development team. I'll personally lead this project and further refine it, making the gameplay more diverse and interesting. Kimura, you'll be the lead programmer for this game. No problem, right?"
"No problem!"
The man named Kimura—the one who had submitted the idea—stood up immediately, visibly excited.
After signaling for him to sit back down, Ichin added, "As for bonuses, they'll be paid together with your next salary, and once this project officially starts, you'll get a raise. Alright, let's move on to the next one."
The next PPT slide was completely different in style, with noticeably better visuals—it was clearly done by someone from the art team.
Sure enough, a girl sitting behind Eriri and Aoba let out an exclamation. Ichin recognized her as an artist from the GARO team.
Ichin began explaining, "As you can see, this is a side-scrolling 2D game. The art style for both characters and monsters is quite distinctive. The notes on the side mention that it's a 2D side-scrolling action game inspired by Dark Souls. The main reason for designing it is that quite a few players get motion sickness from 3D games. Right, Suzuki?"
"Yes!"
The girl named Suzuki stood up, a bit excited. "I know several friends who love games, but because they get motion sickness from 3D, they basically don't play games with 3D perspectives. Not to mention something like Apex—"
Unexpectedly, she turned out to be a female player who actually enjoyed suffering.
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