Studio Terranova

[powerofpridebundle]

Howdy there, streamers and media people! Interested in streaming or covering queer indie media? The Streamer & Press Contact Form for The Power of Pride Bundle is now open! Fill out this form we can recommend you some items from our bundle, going on sale in June this year.

[studioterranova]

For folks who are queer/LGBTQ+ identified streamers or media folks, please reach out here!

[studioterranova]

🤬 new game on censorship and age verification 🤬

Welcome to the Family Friendly Online Museum, or F.F.O.A.M. for short.

We are a safe space for kids and advertisers alike to be free from CONTROVERSIAL ADULT CONTENT. To view any ADULT CONTENT, we ask all patrons undergo an age assurance test.

Welcome aboard and enjoy getting F.F.O.A.M.ED!

[play for free on itch.io]

[studioterranova]

A game about self-acceptance

and big butts.

Get it on Steam | Get it on itch.io

WARNING: This game contains at least 80% butt puns.

Happy New Year! In case you missed it, our game Help! I've been cursed by a Bubble Butt is still 40% off on Steam until January 6th! Get it while it lasts—I promise you it'll be a fantasstic gift to usher in a well-rounded 2026!

🍑 Synopsis 🍑

Our non-binary protagonist, adrift in their life, is looking at online influencers to fill the void. They wish they could be more like them...and then, POOF—their wish is granted—but with a slight caveat...

Help them navigate a world filled with peril and problems as they search for purpose and self-love. Make impactful choices and guide our cheeked up hero to save the world… and themselves.

🍑 Features 🍑

laugh out loud dialog

extremely silly CGs

three unique endings

2,400 words / 10-15 minute playtime

copyright-free music that can be livestreamed

Perfect for streaming with friends or just accompanied by your left and right butt cheeks.

This game was created by CJ, Kyle and Ceren for Global Game Jam 2025. We heard the theme of, "bubble" and kind of…ran with it?

The game was made for this year's Global Game Jam at the Let's Games! Tokyo site in Japan. The theme was "bubble." Ceren was the game designer and lead sprite artist, Kyle was our designer and lead writer, and I was the lead programmer and background/cutscene artist.

When we showed the game at Tokyo Indies in April, a player asked CJ, "How did you come up with this idea?"

They wanted to be clear that the credit goes to Kyle and Ceren. Basically, CJ yelled to Kyle and Ceren, "Butts!" before getting pulled away (they were organizing the site)—so the two were the ones who riffed off each other and came up with the hilarious scenarios. Kyle wrote the script in a night.

To date, we've made about $270, which is way more than we thought we'd make at all! We as indie devs all dream about being able to go full time and make a living off our games, but look at the numbers— Over 5,000 games released this year didn't make the $100 they needed to cover their Steam fee.

That's pretty grim. And EVEN amidst that grim climate, and we were able to make that back two times. That's impressive—so, THANK YOU!

If you haven’t played it yet, now is the time! Until 6 January 2026 Bubble Butt and Terranova are on sale for 40% off. Funds will go to ALL the developers, not just us! It’s a very cooperative work, as you might have seen on our Christmas post.

Comments

Yes. We hear you. There will be a DLC. Stay tuned!

(And please support us on Ko-Fi!)

[studioterranova]

Holidays and Cooperative Families

It's the holiday season once more, and in the spirit of the season we want to talk about one of the things we most value at Studio Terranova. The games we make are very dear to us, but how and why we make them is equally important as what we make.

We're a worker-owned cooperative because we believe the people who create games should be treated fairly—receive fair wages, share in the revenue, receive credit, work sustainable hours, and retain the rights to their own creative IP.

Sounds like a no-brainer, right? Yet the games industry is full of companies that burn out their staff with crunch, fail to credit the workers who contributed to games, and hoard both their creations and the profits they make from them. For example, the creative behind Koudelka and Shadow Hearts (one of CJ and Matt's favorite game series) had to make a spin-off of their own work because the characters and story were sold off to another company.

We practice solidarity. This includes mentioning all the people who contributed to Terranova in the credits, including our translators. You'd be surprised how often games don't credit their translators by name. We always make sure to use art, music, writing, and any other creative work made by people, not AI. We showcase them on our website.

Speaking of translators, thanks to a mix of Ko-Fi subscriptions (!!!) and new client work, we have the funds to pay our localizers and are moving forward slowly with making multiple language versions of Terranova. We have made the first full alpha build of Terranova in Japanese for QA testing. If things go well, we're planning to release the Japanese version in the spring of next year.

We're in the process of balancing client work with game-making, and although we currently have a lot on our plate, our subscribers give us hope that we might be able to make games full time.

Photo taken back in April 2022, when the studio first released Terranova. Having supporters like you is the best present we could ever hope for, then and now 💝

If you want to support us even more, please consider subscribing to our Ko-Fi. Thank you for believing in us, and cheers to a wonderful holiday season and bright 2026! 🎉🥂🎆

***

Thanks for reading! For late January, we'll be organizing mentor talks on making video games which you'll be able to stream, for free on our Twitch. We'll post the schedule sometime in early January. For our local community, we're currently organizing Let's Games! Tokyo, a Global Game Jam site in Tokyo. If you're in Tokyo from Jan 30th-Feb 2nd, we hope you'll join us for a three day game hackathon!

[studioterranova]

On giving back to the community

I have a strong desire to belong—belonging to myself, to someone, to the broader community. During the holidays we focus on this idea of belonging—do we feel like we belong with our blood relatives? In our chosen family? Who is coming to dinner? Do we have to trade a core part of ourselves for the feeling of belonging?

As a nonbinary game dev, this sense that I'm never quite where I'm supposed to be was a narrative that bound my experience for years.

Do I know enough programming to be called a game developer? Is my game "good enough?" Is my art? Is my writing? Do I belong here? When I am friendly with other game devs, do they see me as a fellow colleague or just a "dateable character?" This last one, I know, resonates with people who are femme-presenting and/or socialized as female.

A lot of game dev culture in the 90's circulated around "masculine" likes and preferences and still has some presence today. These are the kinds of things that took up my headspace for years. The best way I've found to combat these voices is by giving back, whether it's knowledge, time or craft.*

For me, it has also consistently been the best way to find belonging in any community: give first, ask later.

An inspiration for this mindset has been Chris DeLeon. He was the co-creator of the Game Creation Society, a game club in Carnegie Mellon where Matt and I met. I joined in Year Two of GCS operating as a "video game club" in 2005.

mabbees made Battery Assault, a race to collect five batteries with lasers and missiles flying about. I made Arbalith, a dungeon-crawling hack-and-slash.

Even as a college student with his own courseload, Chris spent his time and effort growing a community of game devs, which turned 20 this year. It's incredible the large scale effect he's had on the community; he works as an educator and the amount of game developers he's nurtured and sent on their way to nurture others is astounding.

It was also through this experience that I’m inspired to give back in the form of organizing events, since I’ve learned I seem to be good at making an atmosphere that is warm and friendly. I've been running Global Game Jam, a 48-hour game hackathon, here in Tokyo for five years.

Last year, mabbees and I helped our friend Solomar showcase his game Elfie: A Sand Plan at Tokyo Game Show. It was so much fun, and a great bonding and learning experience for us. We got to learn what kinds of indie booths were in the TGS indie area, and also got to hang out with our friend.

His game is a mini-game type game, similar to Tomodachi 8-in-1, and so it was fun to observe who played his game, who hung back and watched and who wanted to wishlist the game on Steam. As it turns out, there's a very strong market for fun, small minigame games!

Our participants tell me how magical our events are because we put a lot of care into making sure everyone has a team and knows what they're doing and feels the right amount outside their comfort zone.

That means a lot to me. If you’ve been a part of this journey, we sincerely thank you.

*Please give back within reason. Do not sideline all of your personal projects to serve others. What is important here is balance!

-----------------------------------------

Hey! Thanks for reading this far! We're currently fundraising for our localization projects, so if you could, please spare a moment to check out our Ko-Fi!

[studioterranova]

Tips and Reflections on NaNoWriMo

Did you know the first draft of Terranova was written over two NaNoWriMos? CJ spent two National Novel Writing Months building about 100K plus words (which is A LOT!). Afterwards, they even doubled the size of that before finally cutting and cutting and cutting and editing down.

CJ always produces more than what we need, so we can pick and choose in the editing phase, which they said was one of the best parts about writing Terranova—that ability to come back and say, all right, we probably don't need this, or we need to add something that links into this.

With their extensive experience in mind, I decided to ask them and Matt for three tips for writers who are starting out, especially those who want to write games and interactive narratives. Here are their answers!

1) You don't have to be precious about your original characters.

No one's going to steal them. When you have this original idea and it feels very special and wonderful to you, don't waste your time and effort trying to protect it from other people.

Just get it out to the world, get it to the people, get into how everything looks and feels and breathes and let yourself be lost in that world. That’s where you’ll produce your best writing.

2) Start writing stuff!

I don't know how to make it easy. I just know that when you have words in your head, they're stuck, and when you have words on the page, you can rearrange them.

No matter what caliber of writer you are, you will always be struggling against demons telling you never to publish it or never to show it to anyone or never to be emotionally vulnerable in your writing. And you just have to accept that that's part of the process and say, I have these, I'm not alone. Everybody else deals with these as well. That doesn't make them better or worse than you.

You should ignore those voices just for a small period of time. Let them come back in the editing phase when they're actually useful. In the editing phase, you can let them come out and say, “Yeah, this doesn't work, this doesn't work, this is bad.” But in the initial writing phase, just ignore them.

3) Download Twine and learn from Em Short!

If you really want to start writing for games, go download Twine and get started. Twine gives you a very easy way to prototype writing stories that have choices in them. You might also want to follow Emily Short. She writes a very good blog about different ways to structure interactive narratives.

* * *

What do you think of these tips? If you're a writer trying to break into games, I hope you find them useful! And do chat with us more on your NaNoWriMo projects — we'd love to hear them over on our Discord. We also post these bite-sized tips and other content on our YouTube and TikTok — go give us a follow!

Thank you for reading this far! While we’re busy developing the final two games for Tomodachi 8-in-1, we’re also fundraising to localize Terranova to Russian, Japanese, and Brazilian Portuguese. Please help us achieve our goal!

[studioterranova]

Dress-ups, Minigames, and More from Tourmaline, Effie, Cherry, and Sendaria

Made your avatars in Spooky Stylin’ yet? Totally missing out if you haven’t! Check it out here — we’d love to see your creations and hear your thoughts!

Originally, Spooky Stylin’ was a game that we wanted to put in Terranova as a minigame alongside Solitaire. Both of us liked playing dress-up games while we were waiting for the next roleplay to come in. Then we’d use them as our LiveJournal or AIM or MSN Messenger avatars.

Right now, this little game is part of Tomodachi 8-in-1, an experimental arcade composed of eight retro games in the spirit of the early 2000s. It has narrative games, mixtapes, things happening on old school cell phones, that sort of thing. We developed it in response to players saying that Terranova was a very long and involved game. So, complementary to that, we’ve developed something more casual and fun that you can play in one sitting.

Tomodachi 8-in-1 takes place in the same universe as Terranova, but here the games are a lot more focused on the characters and their friendship instead of deep roleplay lore. All of the characters that are in Tomodachi 8-1, especially in the narrative games, are the same characters that are in Terranova—Tourmaline, Cherry, Ephemeral Smile, and Sendaria. You can play as each of them, and one game will be focused around a particular issue or subject that they're having difficulty with.

In one of the narrative games, Shall We Dance, Effie is worried about a Valentine's Day dance. She is talking with her friend Sendaria about how much personal responsibility she holds to her family versus to herself. 

INFRARED is from Sendaria's point of view: it’s the feeling that you feel when you make a friend that you think you're going to have a really fun time with but they're also weirded out by your excitement and energy.

Each of the narrative games has somewhere between two to three endings, so you can replay them multiple times.

We also currently have two mixtape games where you can just kind of play mixtapes that your friends have given you. Even though it's not outright said in the mixtapes lore-wise, these are mixtapes passed between friends—made by Cherry for EphemeralSmile, made by Sendaria for Tourmaline. Like love letters from friends.

What do you miss most?

Tourmaline, Cherry, Effie, and Sendaria 💌

Sending mixtapes 📼

Everything about the 90s & 00s 💾

Voting ended onNov 19, 2025

Go check all these games here, and don’t forget to try out Spooky Stylin’ here.

==========

Thank you for reading this far! While we’re busy developing the final two games for Tomodachi 8-in-1, we’re also fundraising to localize Terranova to Russian, Japanese, and Brazilian Portuguese.

Please help us achieve our goal!

[studioterranova]

Dress up your avatar like it’s the 00s: Spooky Stylin’ has been released!

This Halloween, we’re thrilled (pun intended) to announce the launch of our super special minigame, Spooky Stylin’ — available for free as part of Dollmaker Jam! 🎃

The sixth game in our Tomodachi 8-in-1 collection, this game will take you back to those late 90s, early 00s evenings spent meticulously crafting an avatar to use on LiveJournal, AIM, or MSN Messenger—but extra spooky!

- Mix and match your headgear, hairstyle, tops, and bottoms to dress up your avatar!

- 7 outfits to choose from, allowing for over 300 potential combinations!

- Really cute pixel art, if we do say so ourselves!

Take photos of your character and share them with us 🥰

Play Spooky Stylin’ for free

Pay for the Tomodachi 8in1 bundle

We’re super grateful for our community that’s always stuck around, and for their kind words of support for the little piece of universe we’ve created. As with other games in Tomodachi 8-in-1, this fun digital nostalgia is a glimpse of what Tourmaline, Ephemeral Smile, Cherry, and Sendaria would have enjoyed in their days, and we hope you, too, will enjoy it as much as they did.

We’re excited to see what you come up with.

As always, the conversation continues on our Discord.

[studioterranova]

mabbees and I made this!

[studioterranova]

Dress up your avatar like it’s the 00s: Spooky Stylin’ has been released!

This Halloween, we’re thrilled (pun intended) to announce the launch of our super special minigame, Spooky Stylin’ — available for free as part of Dollmaker Jam! 🎃

The sixth game in our Tomodachi 8-in-1 collection, this game will take you back to those late 90s, early 00s evenings spent meticulously crafting an avatar to use on LiveJournal, AIM, or MSN Messenger—but extra spooky!

- Mix and match your headgear, hairstyle, tops, and bottoms to dress up your avatar!

- 7 outfits to choose from, allowing for over 300 potential combinations!

- Really cute pixel art, if we do say so ourselves!

Take photos of your character and share them with us 🥰

Play Spooky Stylin’ for free

Pay for the Tomodachi 8in1 bundle

We’re super grateful for our community that’s always stuck around, and for their kind words of support for the little piece of universe we’ve created. As with other games in Tomodachi 8-in-1, this fun digital nostalgia is a glimpse of what Tourmaline, Ephemeral Smile, Cherry, and Sendaria would have enjoyed in their days, and we hope you, too, will enjoy it as much as they did.

We’re excited to see what you come up with.

As always, the conversation continues on our Discord.

[studioterranova]

Hello! We're Studio Terranova.

We're a queer-owned (specifically, transmasc bisexual and cis-male bisexual) two person cooperative in Tokyo, Japan. We make retro nostalgic games like this and silly games about butts like this.

We work full time and do games. We'd like to work more on games, but we currently can't support ourselves on game income alone.

You might have noticed we've been posting back issues to links of our newsletter on Tumblr. That's where the majority of our updates are going nowadays—I'll try to be better about posting it to multiple channels!

We currently have two tiers; one free through Buttondown and the other $1.50 a month through Ko-Fi to support our work.

We're planning on adding higher tiers but we want to make sure people feel like they're getting something out of them. If you can afford $1.50 a month, please consider supporting our queer little 2-person game studio!

Subscribe to our newsletter (free)

Subscribe to our Ko-Fi ($1.50/month)

[studioterranova]

Hello everyone! CJ here. Apologies for the delayed August newsletter—there has been a lot going on. This summer, I’ve focused a lot on obtai

On August 9-10th, I organized a weekend game jam for the PICO-8’ers, a group of game devs in Tokyo that love PICO-8 called PICOJAM. It took place in Kichijoji at Pico Pico Café, home of Lexaloffle Games.

Read on to hear how it went!

[studioterranova]

An after-report of our time at BitSummit playing funky lil games

This month, mabbees and I went to Kyoto and attended BitSummit, one of the biggest indie events in Japan. BitSummit is a “shop” conference—that is, a good way to meet and greet publishers, localization studios, and other devs, as well as diehard fans of indie games.

We showcased Terranova in 2023, and learned some valuable info about our fans (they are weird and lovable like us) and about Terranova’s publish-ability as a game (we are too weird for them to love us).

In short, we decided to both self-publish and translate our game. With no big publisher to rely on, are using our sales, our Ko-Fi, and our personal savings to pay our localizers.

Read on for how we're going about localizing + BitSummit....

[studioterranova]

Long time, no see

Sorry we dropped off there for a bit. In truth, most of mabbees’ and my time has been spent doing the client work that supports our games, v

A quick recap of our goals for 2025:

localize Terranova in Russian, Brazilian Portuguese and Japanese

finish Tomodachi 8in1

start The Frontier

We put a lot of pressure on ourselves to do all these things at once on top of our full-time contract work, but realistically, we can’t continue sustainably. mabbees has semi-stable employment, and I’m currently doing short-term contracts, looking for longer engagements.

My short-term contracts ended in April, but rather than dig in on games, I made the decision to hustle for more clients. Though I have some promising leads, still no paying work on my end, which makes funding much harder.

[studioterranova]

Doujin event on 2/16 + our work on Terranova

Whew! This month has gone by fast, hasn’t it? I'm trying to keep everyone more in the loop about what mabbees and I are doing as Studio Terr

I love the zine/doujin game scene so I'm extra-proud that this is our first COMITIA.

We’ll be at TOKYO BIG SIGHT, East Hall 2, Booth く40a.

We’re planning on selling…

Screen-printed USB sticks with the Terranova game

Terranova folders for your fanfic!

Limited-quantity postcards of Eytan, Dominique, Isaiah and Hikaru

[studioterranova]

2024 in Retrospective

In 2024, we launched new games and set the stage for an exciting 2025.

It’s almost 2025, so I thought I’d do some writing on how the year went.

In short, we…

Founded the legal entity for Studio Terranova

Collected funds to rehire Ogawa-san to make our Japanese demo of Terranova a full game, AND have the full game text in Russian

Released five games of Tomodachi 8in1

Released a prototype of The Frontier to positive reviews through YuriJam 2024

In 2025, we’ll be…

LQAing and importing game text into Terranova

Finishing up our three final Tomodachi 8in1 games

Digging into making The Frontier

[studioterranova]

Yuri Jam 2024: The Frontier

Posting some back issues of our newsletter to Tumblr because we forgot 🥲 We participated in Yuri Jam 2024 last year—our submission was The Frontier a game about post-capitalist hellscapes and girls kissing at the end of it all.

Premiering... our submission for the Yuri Game Jam 2024, The Frontier.

We do updates monthly! If you’re interested in following our progress as a super indie design and games cooperative, here’s some links:

- Check out our games

- Subscribe to our newsletter (free)

- Become a Ko-Fi supporter ($1.50 a month)

[studioterranova]

Yuri Jam 2024: The Frontier

Posting some back issues of our newsletter to Tumblr because we forgot 🥲 We participated in Yuri Jam 2024 last year—our submission was The Frontier a game about post-capitalist hellscapes and girls kissing at the end of it all.

Premiering... our submission for the Yuri Game Jam 2024, The Frontier.

We do updates monthly! If you’re interested in following our progress as a super indie design and games cooperative, here’s some links:

- Check out our games

- Subscribe to our newsletter (free)

- Become a Ko-Fi supporter ($1.50 a month)