Happy new year from Hajimeli!

As we usher in the new year of 2026 and put 2025 behind us, I'd like to write this post to update everyone on what you can expect from Hajimeli in 2026.

You can consider it a "mini-newsletter". It's not a newsletter, but it is a letter with news, if you get what I mean.

[ vivid/stasis ]

vivid/stasis has been out of Early Access for about half a year now! And the period of time since then has been... turbulent, to say the least.

A lot of things about vivid/stasis' future have been uncertain during this time, and as such a few things that got announced have had plans changed, cancelled, or moved around. So let's talk about what's coming, what isn't, and when.

First off, the biggest of these is Chapter Alpha, a side-story chapter set in a special cycle within the narrative. This is the main focal point of our big 6.0 update. It's not the length of a full chapter; it's probably closer in length to Chapter 5: last/hours.

The 6.0 update in general is our "grand finale" for vivid/stasis. We're going all out to make sure that we deliver an ending to vivid/stasis as a game experience that's just as powerful as the ending of vivid/stasis' main story, which we released nearly a year ago now. As such, we've made the decision to release the update on March 22nd, 2026, as opposed to the original planned date of March 8th, 2026, the game's anniversary.

To account for this, we'll release a small update on the game's anniversary containing one new original song. Please look forward to it!

We're also planning an update after this; it's an extremely small update, though. It's basically a "loose ends" update. We have some songs from song submissions that were intended to be in FINAL RUSH PARTY but were moved, and they'll release here. We can't give a concrete date for this update yet; it'll be within the spring, though. After this, there will be absolutely no more vivid/stasis content updates outside of potentially required bugfixes.

So, what about Echoed Ascensia? Echoed Ascensia was a community event promised to release in Fall 2025 (which didn't happen). It was going to be a team-focused event where players would choose a character duo and play songs to earn points for their teams, as well as duel other players to steal their points. Unfortunately, this didn't materialize; and it was one of the concepts that fell victim to "announced right after being thought of instead of after being confirmed".

That being said, the idea of Echoed Ascensia is still in my mind, and I'm still fond of it. I'd like to bring something like that to polymorphite or spherene. It will happen one day; I just don't know what form it will take, or what game it will be in.

All of that being said, the incredible team arts drawn by SoftySapphie will be obtainable in the vivid/stasis portrait shop in our next update, version 5.5.0, on January 27th. This update also features our three-song collaboration with fellow SKY HOUR WORKS rhythm game NEODITRONIX!

That's about it for vivid/stasis. I'm sorry the last year has been so turbulent with content releases for this game; I'm looking forward to finally sending it all off in the best way possible on March 22nd, 2026. Hopefully, I'll see you there, too.

[ spherene ]

spherene is still in active development, of course! We announced the game really early; but not out of necessity to rush the PR hype this time, but because we kinda had to to open song submissions. We're still targeting a 2026 release; both for the demo and initial release!

[ polymorphite ]

This is the big one. When is polymorphite coming out? The long-awaited sequel to vivid/stasis restarted development as a PC game last year, and as such, release timelines were torn asunder and basically had to be rebuilt. When we released Encore Episode, it said "February 2026". After re-announcing as a PC game, that was changed to "2026". And the truth is, I'd still obviously love to release a demo for polymorphite in 2026. I'm not sure if it'll happen though.

Gameplay systems and story concepts are being developed for polymorphite right now, which I obviously can't show. It's going well! But a lot of our development time was taken by vivid/stasis unexpectedly in the last year, and probably will for the first few months of this year as well.

I'm so excited for this game, by the way. The ideas I've had are utterly insane and I can't believe I just can't tell you guys all of them.

So, yeah. You'll get SOMETHING from polymorphite this year. It might be a demo, or it might just be a gameplay teaser. But you will get something. Promise!

[ HEARTLODGED and Misdecayed ]

I'm grouping these two together because the team is, for the most part, shared between these two games.

Misdecayed's demo released near the end of 2025, and people seemed to like it! Which is great. I'm very excited to continue developing that game as I think the idea I want to express with it is so absurdly unique and twisty that it needs to exist.

The thing about these two games is that they can't release over time, or in Early Access. We considered doing something like that for Misdecayed, and having a release type akin to a DELTARUNE-type thing; but I don't think we'll do it. Of course, if we get to the end of development of Chapter 2 and think it's warranted, then that'll be another thing, but it's unlikely.

With HEARTLODGED, there isn't even the option for a gradual rollout. That game's branching route structure requires us to work on every route concurrently. The good news is, the structure of the game is fully planned out and right now I'm writing the exact event outline for what happens in the game and when. But it will take quite a while to actually develop that; I can say with absolute certainty that this game will not release this year in any form. That's okay though; art takes time, and I'm sure people will love it when it is out.

[ polymetria ]

polymetria, the mobile game that used to be called polymorphite, is currently on hiatus. We will announce more about it when development resumes. In the meantime, you can check out some of the other projects being worked on the polymetria-unique team, like AstroDX, a fantastic simulator for a certain washing machine rhythm game.

That's all for this new year check-in. I'm looking forward to making 2026 a great year for Hajimeli, even if a lot of work happens behind the scenes instead of out in the open.

With love, Cheryl

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