【076 Studio】2026 Roadmap

Following the tradition that began last year, this year I'm once again publishing the blog and 076 Studio roadmap.
However, this time I'm not attaching any dates to the events.

Half of last year's roadmap items either didn't happen at all or happened at completely different times than planned.
The other half was stuff that was pretty much predictable from the start.

This year's roadmap is completely unpredictable, so it's closer to a "New Year's resolution" kind of post.

Technical Suwako

Let's start with this blog.
(You're reading this article on my blog, not on the corporate site right now)

Game Development Tutorial Series

I'm currently writing multiple tutorial series about game development.

This is proving to be much, much harder than I expected.
Because I'm still working full-time as a web developer, running my own game company, juggling multiple game projects in three different programming languages (Assembly, C, C++), continuously developing my anti-framework in PHP plus tools in C/Go/C#, and almost everything is being done solo except for two exceptions.
So I won't say "when" they will be released.
It might be in a few months, it might be next year, or they might never come out at all.

The goal is to let "game development beginners" and people who have "years of experience with big commercial engines but no low-level programming experience" get a glimpse into the world of low-level game development.
The original plan was very ambitious — I wanted to cover the entire game-making pipeline: programming, design, art, planning, music composition, marketing, and release.
But given the schedule reality, I decided it's more realistic to focus only on programming.
Programming is my strongest field, and it's also currently the weakest area across the entire modern game industry.

Little Beast

I thought I had mostly stepped away from web development and open-source... except for Little Beast. That's the exception I'm continuing.
The reason is that I realized Little Beast enables some extremely interesting things that practically no other web developers are doing.
Just take a look at the library for example.
Last month I completed a completely JSON-based authentication system that doesn't use SQL at all.
Proof that it can be done securely.

Last night I created a pure-PHP, zero-dependency image parsing library that handles multiple image formats.
As a bonus I also implemented a permission system in about 10 minutes, so now I can make pages that are "registered users only", "admin only", "paid subscribers only", etc.

Planned future features include:

Syntax highlighting
Comment functionality for articles
Paid subscription system
Video platform (PeerTube alternative)

...But all of these will be made specifically for 076 Studio and this blog.
It's open-source, but I'm basically not going to consider other people's needs.
This is a 100% DIY-spirit product.

Starting to actively accept contract / freelance work

I'm still continuing full-time employment to gradually increase living expenses and company capital, but the problem is:
In the last 5 years my salary has increased only once, and the raise was a mere 20,000 yen (after tax it's about 4,000 yen real increase — after yen depreciation it's closer to 1,000 yen now).
During the same period taxes keep rising, living costs keep rising.
I had a faint hope that Takaichi-san might at least touch on this issue, but in the end we only got price increases targeted at foreign residents while prices for Japanese citizens remained unchanged.

So from now on I will actively start accepting contract and freelance work.
I plan to take on small-to-medium projects in between everything else.
(As of right now, no one has contacted me yet...)

076 Studio

Next, the plans for the game development company side.

Expanding to more platforms

Currently the only platform we've released games on is Nintendo Switch.
Why?
Nintendo still isn't accepting any Switch 2 development access applications (they're manually selecting only large companies).
Sony also hasn't given approval nor rejection 4 months after we submitted the PlayStation development application.

However, recently a new company appeared that manufactures FPGA recreations of very old game consoles.
The company is called ModRetro.
A Game Boy title released this year even won Game of the Year.
Also, while DRAM prices are skyrocketing due to AI companies hoarding them and most major PC gaming manufacturers are abandoning their entire customer base to jump into the AI bubble... maybe the future of games isn't "more powerful consoles/PCs", but rather "retro game consoles revived in the modern age".

Right now we're developing a Game Boy Color title for Chromatic.
We also plan to release an N64 title once the M64 comes out.

Of course we've already checked with a lawyer.
As long as we don't violate any NDAs, developing simultaneously for both Nintendo and ModRetro platforms is not a problem.
(Specifically: DS/3DS/Wii U/Switch/PS4/PS Vita are excluded; everything else is OK)

Honestly, platforms from the mid-2000s and earlier get me the most excited, so I'm completely fine with this.

New game

Starting today, I + three other people have begun development of a new title targeting Switch 2.
(As of this moment development is being done on Switch 1 hardware — Switch 2 devkits are still not obtainable)

...Yes, while I'm already simultaneously developing two other Switch 2 titles alone (one small-scale, one quite large-scale), now we're adding this one too.

That's all