State of Drillimation: Autumn 2026

Welcome back. Tomorrow will mark a massive milestone for Drillimation as we celebrate a major release. Come to think of it, the last time I released a dev log the day before a release was for Chuhou Joutai 2: Paraided! five years ago, and that was my very first dev log. Coming full circle brings back an incredible feeling of how far we’ve come.

The first half of this year was paved by a spectacular development campaign, which I will explain very shortly. Later, I will explain my planned Anime Fest appearances this weekend and the next. Beyond the big picture, this summer was packed across the studio. We’ve reached tens of thousands on Instagram and YouTube through shorts, began experimenting with custom 3D models to prepare for GameMaker’s upcoming 3D pipeline, and started prototyping a new project.

Think of the last quarter of a year like a “Last Five Turns” event in Mario Party. It’s the high-stakes, final stretch where every move counts, the pace picks up, and the momentum built throughout the year culminates in one final push across the finish line. That’s the energy I’m bringing into our upcoming release, convention appearances, and long-term roadmap. It may be chaotic, but I shouldn’t let my chances pass by.

Past Quarter Highlights

Touhou Meishuugeki ~ Cursed Sweeper and Bewildering Parallel

First off, let’s start with Touhou Meishuugeki ~ Cursed Sweeper and Bewildering Parallel. After six months of relentless development and fine-tuning, I am thrilled to announce that the game is officially complete. Looking back at a previous devlog where I projected this timeline, seeing it come to fruition is an incredible milestone. From its initial conceptualization in late 2025 to a weeklong rush to prepare a playable prototype for the Pittsburgh Anime Fest, followed by our March alpha release, this project marks the culmination of a major effort for the studio.

Following our alpha milestone, the game entered an intensive beta testing phase in early August to resolve system errors, polish bullet collision logic, and balance spell card mechanics. With the official Steam release set for tomorrow, we have reached the finish line of this chapter. Cursed Sweeper and Bewildering Parallel stands as the most sophisticated and ambitious danmaku shooter we have created to date, featuring fourteen playable stages and ten unique boss encounters with handcrafted attack patterns.

Beyond its immediate content, the game represents a major turning point for Drillimation, effectively reversing the setbacks caused by the Burgeoning Tresses of Longevity disaster a year and a half prior. When that release suffered from technical instability and strained development resources, the game served as a proving ground for new, refined workflows and rigorous quality-assurance protocols.

By establishing a disciplined production pipeline—moving deliberately from a rapid prototype to a focused March alpha and an intensive August beta—we successfully restored technical precision, rebuilt player trust, and re-anchored the franchise’s standards.

A massive thank you to our alpha and beta testers whose feedback was crucial in getting us across the finish line as we prepare for tomorrow’s launch. With the game officially wrapped up, Phase Two of the Drillimation Danmaku Universe is complete—leaving us with a strong technical foundation as we turn our attention toward the last quarter of this year and what lies ahead next year.

Social Media and Community Reach

Beyond game development, the past quarter marked a record-breaking period for Drillimation across our social media platforms. By leveraging short-form video content, we saw a massive surge in engagement that expanded our community reach into the tens of thousands and brought brand-new eyes to the Drillimation Danmaku Universe.

Our biggest resurgence occurred on Instagram and Threads, where we generated nearly 60,000 views in July and August alone. A standout origin video for a sound effect in a classic game became our most-liked Reel to date after surpassing 1,000 likes. That same short-form momentum carried over to YouTube Shorts, where content exceeded 80,000 total views within a similar timeframe, and a featured Short focused on another sound effect from another game quickly crossed nearly 30,000 views, becoming the channel’s most-watched Short.

At the same time, our broader online community continued to expand steadily. Our Twitter following grew to 8,100 followers behind active dev logs and character spotlights, while our website subscriber base reached 2,613 members. This record surge in community reach gives us incredible momentum as we prepare for the launch of Cursed Sweeper and Bewildering Parallel and gear up for our upcoming convention appearances.

Historically, our viewership was stuck in the single-digit thousands, and our Instagram reach hit an all-time low to the point where we were actively losing followers. However, once we pivoted to short-form video content, we immediately began winning back our audience—much like how we rebuilt trust for Cursed Sweeper and Bewildering Parallel. Today, social media is the single primary driver behind why players buy games, and this organic short-form strategy has proven vastly more cost-effective than spending hundreds of dollars to promote trailers or hire PR agencies.

Ultimately, this surge in engagement proves that our audience is eager for authentic, behind-the-scenes looks at our development process. By doubling down on organic short-form content, we’ve established a scalable, direct line to our community that will continue to amplify our game launches, convention presence, and studio updates well into the future.

Prototyping the Next Project

Now with social media out of the way, I want to focus on our next project. Following the completion of Cursed Sweeper and Bewildering Parallel, I felt it was time to change up the Drillimation Danmaku Universe. Look across our library and you’ll see that every single title has featured danmaku in some form. I am marking a deliberate change of pace, stepping away from danmaku shooters to explore a completely fresh direction for the studio. You may have seen teaser images on our website, but I have yet to discuss it in a video—this project is codenamed Blockstar.

Before diving into what Blockstar actually is, I want to share the inspiration behind it. I’m developing this project to bring an experience from my own childhood to a whole new generation. If you owned a computer during the 1990s or 2000s, one title likely stood out as a personal favorite during the latter decade: Bejeweled. In an era before smartphones, when you came home from school and wanted a quick gaming fix without diving into a long console adventure, those two decades were the golden age of PC casual gaming. 

Bejeweled’s core gameplay was cloned by countless titles over the years, including its spiritual successor Candy Crush, which rose to global prominence after PopCap was acquired by Electronic Arts. Meanwhile, Plants vs. Zombies achieved “Adored by the Network” status—a reputation it still holds today. Blockstar is designed as a direct love letter to that golden era, capturing the addictive shareware magic of classics like Bejeweled, Zoo Keeper, and Chuzzle. 

While Blockstar is a match-three title at its core, I didn’t want to rely on the standard object-swapping mechanic. Instead, I set out to find a unique “verb” for our gameplay. I drew inspiration from the Mario Party 6 minigame titled “Block Star,” where you push blocks toward the edge of the screen. Wait, did I just say, “Block Star”? Yeah, I lifted the name directly from that minigame—the only difference being that our title is spelled as one word.

When developing the game’s world and story, I decided that visual kei would serve as the central visual and thematic influence. Visual kei was already a huge influence on the soundtrack and main antagonists of Cursed Sweeper and Bewildering Parallel, but the initial concept here actually stemmed from a pun on the title: “rockstar” becoming “blockstar.” The plot will center around you becoming the producer for a visual kei band.

Development is currently focused on getting initial prototypes into players’ hands as quickly as possible. Blockstar will debut as an accessible web browser game—mirroring the distribution of classic casual titles—accompanied by a downloadable version for desktop players. Beyond the core classic modes, we are also architecting a full deluxe edition featuring a standalone single-player campaign.

Going to 3D

After spending the past four years creating games with a Super Nintendo-style aesthetic, I’m sure many of you are ready for a change of scenery. Even Hosokawa-san has been encouraging me to step beyond that generation! In a surprising twist, those 16-bit visual standards will soon be a thing of the past for us. Last month, I made the decision to return to Blender—the premier open-source 3D modeling platform. While I’ve previously relied on Tinkercad to build 3D props for characters in VRM Posing Desktop and Clip Studio Paint, moving to Blender grants us far greater creative control and technical freedom. 

If you look at most Blender tutorials, the very first project beginners tackle is a donut and a mug. I wanted to skip Homer Simpson’s breakroom snack and create something that fit our specific vision. Searching online, I noticed a distinct gap: there were virtually no 3D models of humanoid characters inspired by ZUN’s current art direction. Seeing an opportunity to fill that void, I jumped straight into humanoid modeling tutorials to build the actual model you’ll see in upcoming artwork. To ensure the highest quality, I invested $70 to hire a rigger on Fiverr, as standard automatic weight painting fails to handle precise finger and toe rigging properly.

Even as we transition into Phase Three—which will likely feature the first true 3D entry in the Drillimation Danmaku Universe—these ultra-smooth renders will be reserved for promotional artwork and CGI renders. In-game visuals will evoke a nostalgic PS1 or N64 retro aesthetic. While designing a 3D danmaku game presents unique technical hurdles, our primary focus is memory management. To avoid choking VRAM, player bullets and bullet patterns will remain crisp 2D sprites, while enemies, bosses, and player characters will be rendered as full 3D models.

Naturally, this raises a crucial question: how do we bring danmaku into 3D without making the game absurdly difficult? To preserve the spirit of classic gameplay, we are keeping the core mechanics strictly on a 2D plane. Similar to official and fanmade Touhou titles where player sprites dim in opacity when focusing, we will take a similar approach to keep readability clear—the only structural difference being the 3D character models.

In the past, making a 3D game in GameMaker meant wrestling with complex math and custom scripts just to get basic graphics rendering properly. External dependencies were essentially mandatory, and you had to deeply understand how they worked under the hood. However, with YoYo Games officially expanding GameMaker’s native 3D toolkit—introducing features like glTF model importing and spatial scene graphs—developing hybrid and 3D titles is becoming significantly faster and more accessible. While I may explore Unreal Engine down the road if we secure a deal with Nintendo to develop a large-scale title, our immediate focus is leveraging these new GameMaker tools to bring our 3D vision to life without abandoning our established workflow.

In the event that real-time 3D rendering proves unfeasible or overly demanding for certain projects, these 3D models still give us a powerful fallback: generating crisp, pre-rendered 2D sprites. This hybrid workflow lets us maintain the aesthetic feel of traditional 2D games while gaining the consistency, fluid pose variation, and efficiency of a 3D asset pipeline. Ultimately, expanding into 3D isn’t about abandoning our roots, but about equipping Drillimation with a versatile foundation as we step into Phase Three and beyond.

Next Quarter Plans

Release of Cursed Sweeper and Bewildering Parallel and Anime Fest

That wraps up our highlights for the past quarter. Now, I want to turn to what’s happening this weekend and next—starting with Anime Fest! Tomorrow afternoon, I’m heading to Cleveland for the first event. It’s been three years since my last visit during the 2023 holiday season on my way to Orlando. In fact, the last time I traveled to Buffalo, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland all within a single calendar year was back in 2022—visiting Buffalo in May, Pittsburgh in July, and Cleveland in December. 

Unveiling Touhou Meishuugeki ~ Cursed Sweeper and Bewildering Parallel earlier marked the first time I debuted a game outside my hometown, so it feels fitting to return here for its official premiere. Cleveland is world-renowned as the birthplace of rock and roll, and given that all of our boss themes lean heavily into the metal genre, I couldn’t think of a better city to launch this title. While Cleveland might not have been the birthplace of visual kei, it goes to show that anyone can start a visual kei band anywhere—it doesn’t have to be in Japan. 

While this weekend marks my first time exhibiting in Cleveland, I’ll also be at the Erie Anime Fest the following weekend for anyone who can’t make the trip west. It’s been a year and a half since our last show in Erie, so I’m excited to reconnect with the local community. Looking at the event schedules, I’ve noticed a clear pattern forming—the organizers consistently host Pokékon first, immediately followed by Anime Fest. Navigating back-to-back convention weekends like this is always intense, but taking our games directly to the floor, meeting players face-to-face, and seeing their real-time reactions makes every bit of the effort worth it.

Cleveland Anime Fest marks the final stop on my convention tour for this year, but planning is already underway for our 2027 kickoff. In March, I’ll be returning to Niagara Falls for a brand-new iteration of Anime Fest. Much like our move in Erie from the Quality Inn to the Ambassador Center, the Niagara Falls event is upgrading venues from the Sheraton to the nearby DoubleTree. With the recent release of the Touhou 6: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil remake, I’m especially excited for the chance to meet my first Touhou cosplayer in person at one of these upcoming shows.

Between launching our most ambitious danmaku title to date and bringing it directly to fans across back-to-back convention weekends, this kick-off marks a huge milestone for Drillimation. Connecting with players face-to-face gives us invaluable feedback and energy, setting a strong tone as we close out 2026 and prepare for everything we have lined up in the year ahead.

Prototyping a New Website

Alongside Blockstar, I’m also prototyping a brand-new web application. You might naturally wonder why we’d launch another standalone site when our main portal, drillimation.com, already exists—after all, managing a dozen disparate web domains and social profiles can quickly become overwhelming. However, much like my travel plans for Anime Fest, this idea stemmed from an unexpected place: pure frustration.

Have you ever dealt with toxicity on a Discord server, or joined a server only to leave immediately because it was completely dead or poorly managed? If you remember your college days, you likely relied on a website called Rate My Professors to make informed decisions before registering for a class. I wanted that same transparency for Discord communities. Existing public directories only let server owners submit their own listings, leaving real users without a voice. My new project changes that by empowering anyone to review and rate any public Discord server out there. 

My project is Discorank—the world’s first review aggregator built specifically for Discord servers. Functioning much like Rate My Professors, it allows anyone to add a public server, rate their experience, and help others make informed decisions before joining a community. Initially, I planned to code the web app from scratch, but after two days of development, I realized building custom database management, user authentication, and responsive UI components was vastly overcomplicating the project. After exploring modern alternatives, I pivoted to Bubble.io. Leveraging Bubble’s no-code web framework has drastically accelerated our development pipeline, allowing us to focus entirely on building a clean user experience, robust review moderation features, and scalable server discovery tools.

Managing two separate web domains naturally leads to increased overhead. Hosting the main Drillimation website and maintaining its domain currently runs over $100 annually. Discorank will add an estimated $35 monthly hosting fee alongside a $10–20 annual domain charge. To cover these operational costs, Discorank will rely primarily on ad revenue, though users will also have the option to subscribe to a Gold Membership tier to browse ad-free. If you’d like to support the launch of Discorank and our ongoing web development, consider purchasing the Drillimation Danmaku Universe games on Steam or making a direct donation.

The app remains in active development, with ongoing work focused on configuring payment processors, setting up advertisement networks, and integrating Discord’s API. To keep the onboarding process as frictionless as possible, you won’t need to create a separate account—logging in through your existing Discord account is all it takes to start adding and rating communities, in addition to sharing your feedback. It probably won’t launch until early next year, but it should help be a reliable revenue generator for the studio.

Q&A

My two main focuses for this final quarter are my Anime Fest plans and prototyping Discorank, but I want to turn to our Q&A segment before wrapping up the video. I’m always eager to answer questions about Drillimation, our games, our creative direction, and studio history.

Why Step Away from Danmaku in Favor of a Puzzle Game?

Before I get a million comments, I want to address why I’m stepping away from danmaku in favor of a puzzle game. Across our entire library, regardless of genre, every single title has featured danmaku in some form. Given the niche nature of danmaku shooters, it can be difficult to appeal to a broader audience, particularly beginners—even hybrid titles can present high barriers to entry. The only two puzzle games previously in the Drillimation Danmaku Universe were Touhou 1: The Highly Responsive to Prayers NES Demake and Shining Shattering Sky ~ Reverie of Breaking Unreality. Our third puzzle title, Blockstar, will step away from danmaku entirely to deliver an easygoing, casual experience.

How Do You Balance Running a Sole Proprietorship Studio While Managing Game Releases, Convention Tours, and Other Projects?

Another common question is how I manage running a solo studio while juggling game releases, Anime Fest exhibitions, and other side projects. Developing a video game takes time—most quality games require at least a year and a half of dedicated work. Without advanced proficiency in mainline languages like C++, JavaScript, Python, or HTML, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. The key to overcoming this is establishing a structured production pipeline. I use these workflows to develop our projects efficiently: a typical week involves editing videos and shorts, writing code, designing graphical assets, composing music tracks, and handling sound design. Because our games are narrative-driven, I also write screenplays much like a film director.

When You Launch Discorank, How Will You Handle Moderation and Prevent Fake or Toxic Server Reviews?

The biggest challenge when Discorank launches is handling moderation to prevent fake or toxic reviews. A major priority is ensuring review integrity. Requiring Discord OAuth authentication means every rating originates from a real, verified account. We are also implementing automated filtering alongside community reporting tools so fake reviews, spam, and toxic behavior can be flagged and moderated quickly.

Will You Exhibit Different Games at Anime Fest in the Future?

The biggest question is exhibiting different games at Anime Fest events in the future. Yes, absolutely. While Touhou Meishuugeki ~ Cursed Sweeper and Bewildering Parallel is our primary showcase right now, future convention appearances will feature updated builds of Blockstar alongside early playtest prototypes of our upcoming Phase Three titles as development progresses.

Outro

That brings us to the end of this dev log! Looking back over the past year, it’s incredible to see how much ground we’ve covered—from finalizing and releasing Touhou Meishuugeki ~ Cursed Sweeper and Bewildering Parallel to laying the groundwork for Blockstar, exploring 3D workflows in Blender, and prototyping Discorank. Reaching these milestones couldn’t have happened without your continued support, feedback, and encouragement every step of the way.

As we head into this final stretch of the year, our primary focus will be hitting the convention floor at Anime Fest in Cleveland and Erie, continuing early production on Blockstar, and bringing Discorank to an official public launch. There is a lot of hard work ahead, but the momentum built throughout 2026 has set us up for an exceptionally strong finish and an even bigger 2027.

If you’d like to support Drillimation and our ongoing projects, please consider picking up Cursed Sweeper and Bewildering Parallel or our other titles on Steam, subscribing to our channel for future video updates, and joining our official community channels. Thank you all so much for watching, drive safely if you’re traveling to Anime Fest, and I’ll see you when 2027 is rung in!