Developer Update #3 — Happy New Year 2026 & Annual Progress Report

ːsteamhappyːHello everyone

I’m the producer of City God Alice: 城隍愛麗絲. First of all, a belated Merry Christmas to you all, and let me also wish everyone a happy New Year in 2026.

For our team, 2026 will certainly not be an ordinary year. Looking back on our journey so far, we believe we have laid a solid foundation for City God Alice, and we are now ready to move forward into the next stage of development.

From the earliest sparks of imagination to the present day, the story of City God Alice has been in the making for many years — more than a decade, in fact. Beginning in May 2024, we spent half a year distilling these years of ideas into a complete written project plan. Later that same year, in November, we officially began programming the very first lines of code. Quietly, step by step, we continued development until November 2025, when we finally opened our store page and launched our early marketing efforts, bringing the project to the attention of players and the community for the first time.

During the final two months of 2025, we took part in several developer gatherings and community events. Among the most representative were our first public showcases at the G-EIGHT Indie Game Festival and the Bahamut 29th Anniversary Gathering. Nervous yet excited, we presented our story concepts, character designs, and early gameplay slices to as many players as we were able to reach.

Although the playable build shown at the time was still in a relatively early state, with simple systems and limited interaction, I nonetheless told the same story outline again and again — to hundreds of different players — each time with the same passion as the first. Gradually, my delivery became smoother, with fewer pauses, but the excitement never faded. I hoped every listener would enjoy the tale, and fortunately, everyone was incredibly kind and encouraging. Even after telling the story for what felt like the hundredth time, I was still as eager as a child sharing a story for the very first time — much to the amusement of my teammates, who kept teasing me about it.

And it wasn’t only the face-to-face reactions that exceeded our expectations. Even in places where I couldn’t personally tell the story myself, the response was overwhelmingly positive — the number of players adding the game to their wishlist has already grown to more than ten times the size of our social media following.

As such, this phase — centered around “sharing ideas,” “gathering feedback,” and “conveying the story through spoken narrative” — is gradually drawing to a close. At the end of January 2026, we will once again meet everyone at the Taipei Game Show to share the story we wish to tell, and after that, we will shift our focus back toward core development.

From here onward, we will devote more time to polishing and refining the game itself, continuing to evaluate and integrate player feedback so that both the narrative expression and gameplay experience can grow more mature. As an indie team, we may not be able to achieve a flawless 100% perfect experience in a single leap — but we will continue striving toward that goal, step by step, transforming our current slice-based builds into a more complete, playable experience for everyone to test and experience.

We would like to thank every player who spoke with us in depth at our showcase booths, as well as those who continue to follow and support the project even from afar. We are also deeply grateful to all the friends and partners who have supported us along the way — #Kiyu House’s Xianren-kun, TPOP Studio (composer Yu-Huo), #AirBoost producer KO-san, the editorial teams at #Bahamut and #4GAMER, #Aotter Girls, #GAMEWORKS, #GEIGHT, the teams at the #Taipei Game Show, and many others whom we have not yet been able to thank one by one. Because of all of you, we have been able to bring this project forward, one step at a time.

We’ll see you at the Taipei Game Show 2026.

Thank you, everyone. — City God Alice Development Team

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