The summer has well and truly set in across the world, and a lot of us are feeling the heat right now! And along with it is... the first edition of the Hajimeli newsletter?!
I'm your host, Cheryl, and I'm thrilled to be bringing you news and updates on all the crazy projects I'm working on.
Since the beginning of 2025, we've delivered several updates for vivid/stasis, including the main story finale, and even announced two brand-new projects!
So let's talk about some of that, shall we?
vivid/stasis will be receiving its final major update on July 5th, 2025!
Crazy sentence to be saying, I know.
But, for real, it's surreal to finally have the end in sight. Well, to have the end this close in sight, at least. I've been working on this game every day of my life since April 2021, so putting this project behind me at last (save for a few updates in December to celebrate) is a feeling I still don't think I've fully come to terms with.
But we're ready to go out with a bang! Our final major update is version 5.0, and it changes a lot!
So what's the major new content?
We're releasing our side of the collaboration event between Anarch Entertainment and vivid/stasis! Three songs from Anarch's relentless(ly gay) rhythm game danmaku fever dream NOISZ STARLIVHT will become unlockable through the Soundscan gamemode in vivid/stasis.
But that's not all! Two songs from vivid/stasis will be crossing over to Anarch Entertainment's two rhythm games, NOISZ STARLIVHT and PROJEKT GODHAND (more on that later)! "grode (Wyvren's Remix)" by dandeless and Wyvren will be playable in PROJEKT GODHAND some time soon, and another, currently unannounced song will be crossing into NOISZ STARLIVHT in the future as well!
Honestly, I've played these charts in vivid/stasis and I don't think people are ready... each one is a special brand of hellish. And the same can be said for the next major addition of this update...
About a month ago, we held a vote where all of YOU decided which songs you feel should get an ENCORE or BACKSTAGE difficulty chart in vivid/stasis 5.0. After a lot of votes and some decision input from myself (but mostly votes, promise), you all picked six songs to get new difficulties!
These tough-as-nails new charts will be unlockable through a Soundscan map called Encore Ensemble, and each one is uniquely disturbing...
Although, the sixth song in this image, the hidden song, had to be delayed... it will be added to the Soundscan map in version 5.1, which will exist just to fix any leftover bugs (hopefully not a lot), and add this new song. We wanted to include it in 5.0, but ran into production delays with the composer of the song. Sorry!
Also coming in 5.0 are these three new songs! Don't let the NOISZ Collaboration and new ENCOREs overshadow these songs! They're all really good and really hard!
Sorry that the image still says July 1st... this update got delayed more times than I would have liked. But there's a reason for that...
This update changes a lot. And I mean a LOT. Almost every area in the game has had some kind of bugfix or polish or touchup, and even some of the story sequences have been refined to create a better flow for first-time players.
There's so many changes, I can't detail them all in this newsletter... so I won't detail any of them! Have fun discovering them for yourself! (Or read the patch notes when those release, I guess...)
That's about it for vivid/stasis! There's also the Final Rush Party later this year, but I'll save talking about that for a future edition of the newsletter...
We're making a new game. It's an RPG about robots, eternity, and rebirth.
Truth be told, this is the most excited I've been for a new project in a long time... the idea for Misdecayed and its central theme has existed in my mind for many many years now... but I needed the right time to be able to execute on what I want to say with this game, and I think that time is now.
What am I talking about? I'm not telling! Play the game when it comes out!
A demo for Misdecayed will release sometime later this summer!
I can't really say for sure yet when it'll release... but if I had to estimate, it might be ready in August. Don't hold me to that, though.
This demo will cover all of the first chapter of the game, which is estimated to last about 2-ish hours of playtime.
Currently, the plan is to release the game episodically in an Early Access state starting from when Chapter 2 is completed. This might change.
As new episodes/chapters release, the price of the game would increase slightly. Though, the final price wouldn't be any higher than double the initial price for the first two chapters.
I can't make any comment yet about the pricing, or the amount of chapters... but I want it to feel like an adventure to uncover the secrets of Forgebirth Island. The development time for the final release of every chapter is expected to take around a year and a half.
Honestly, it's hard to stop myself from just repeating how excited I am for this game... but I will! You'll be able to play it for yourself soon enough, anyway!
The team for this game is notably smaller than the team for vivid/stasis... it's just Softy (handling scene art and enemy design), Uni (handling character sprites), and myself (handling everything else). So it might take us longer to work on average than something like vivid/stasis.
That's about it for Misdecayed for now. But I'll have more to announce soon! I promise!
Oh right, we announced another rhythm game...
Honestly, I can't reveal too much on this yet... TaroNuke (the co-director of the project) and myself are still cooking in secret.
But...
...here's a really zoomed in screenshot of the game...
...don't tell anyone...
Development on polymorphite is proceeding! I know we've been basically radio silent on this project since its announcement (and boy did we announce it too early), but the game is being worked on nonetheless.
We've brought on 0thElement and Lumi as programmers to assist our lead programmer, Fumiko. Fumiko is also stepping up to replace me as the Producer for the project! Don't worry, though, it's still a Cheryl Stelli game; I'm still directing it and writing the story.
Unfortunately, though, I do regret to announce that the February 2026 release window initially teased in vivid/stasis' Encore Episode isn't going to be happening. In general, I feel like I've made a lot of promises on release windows way too early, and I'm trying to cut down on doing that as much...
The game will still release in 2026. Just later in the year.
By the way, there's a piece of previously-unseen polymorphite content in this newsletter somewhere. Did you spot it?
A lot of the HEARTLODGED team has been busy on other projects like Misdecayed. So development has paused on HEARTLODGED itself.
But this doesn't mean the overarching media for HEARTLODGED is entirely gone. Olive and Ashley were the focus of this newsletter's art, after all.
And... you might see them soon... although probably not in the way you've been expecting.
You've reached the end of the newsletter! Congratulations!
To end this off, I wanna highlight some non-Hajimeli things that myself and other Hajimeli contributors have been working on as of late.
I've been working on chart design for two other rhythm games, PROJEKT GODHAND by Anarch Entertainment and UNBEATABLE by D-CELL Games. Very different vibes... but each one now has been irreversibly stained by my evil touch. :)
Our in-house musician, A-Saph, has been rolling out content for her third major album, IGNORANT BLISS. It's loud, abrasive, and delightful, and you should listen to what she's put out so far!
Our Japanese community moderator, SawaYoshi, is going to be running a showcase of vivid/stasis at one of the largest speedrun events in Japan! Go show them some love!
A number of vivid/stasis contributors past and present have also been working on EX-XDRiVER, a fantastic rhythm game with a futuristic aesthetic!
You should also check out CHORDIOID, a fantastic upcoming rhythm RPG by an underrated developer! I'm slightly normal about one of the characters in it.
And I'm sure there's more... but writing this page is starting to lag my browser a lot, so I'm gonna call it there.