Happy (late) New Year, everyone
mabbees and I started Studio Terranova with a dream—to make a workplace that would serve community more than capital. We're burnt out tech workers that found a lot of love and community in the indie game community.
To that end, a worker-owned game co-operative just made sense.
Last year, we had to remind ourselves a lot of that dream—like a lot of folks, we were waylaid by both visa and financial instability that terrified us. We spent a lot of time reading about our rights, filling out paperwork and advocating for ourselves.
But we're still here. We are so grateful to our supporters and community. Because of a mix of client contracts and your support, we were able to survive.
We are also beyond burnt out.
We hope in 2026 to re-center our creative work and community to re-energize us.
What we accomplished in 2025
We accomplished a lot last year. What we did falls under three themes: game publishing, connecting with co-ops, and giving back to the community.
Published one game, made one game
In 2025, we became both a publisher and a developer. This year we published Help! I've Been Cursed With a Bubble Butt that CJ contributed to as lead dev as a revenue share project, and released Spooky Stylin', a game that we developed.
Our (human, not AI) localizers have been working hard this year with us to translate and localize Terranova into Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian and recently, Spanish.
Connecting with co-ops and establishing sociocracy
Up until last year we'd been navigating the landscape of establishing a cooperative and deciding governance on our own. When we attended Queerness n' Games in Montreal, we met with the Canadian Co-operative Organization and Baby Ghosts, a non-profit that provides peer-led cooperative education for game studios.
We also established sociocracy as a governance framework at Studio Terranova. Sociocracy is a way of making decisions values autonomy and consent. It's a way of allowing power to flow dynamically through the organization, not allow it to congeal at the top or with a few individuals.
Organized and spoke at community events
We gave a lot back to the community this year, too. We are involved in the Tokyo indie game scene and run hackathons and workshops on game-making for professional game makers in their 40's to kids as young as 10.
These events, while being very fun, also contribute to the flourishing ecosystem of our community and encourages people to share freely their skills and knowledge.
Organized Global Game Jam 2025 in Tokyo with 44 participants, making 11 games.
Organized PICOJAM 2025, a two-day PICO-8 only hackathon at Pico Pico Café. Check out the after report here.
Spoke at the worldwide conference Design Matters on understanding power and hierarchy as designers.
Organized a 2-hour workshop in Japanese for families and kids in Fukui on using bitsy to make a game.
And next year, we hope to do…less.
Wait, what?
Burning out isn't sustainable. These past two years we've learned a lot about what it takes to run a cooperative in Japan. We wouldn't be living by our value of "leaving our space better than we found it" if we didn't apply the same to ourselves.
So this year, we plan to…
Release the Japanese version of Terranova - planned April 2026
If we can find community QA, release Russian, PTBR, and Spanish versions of Terranova fall 2026
Stop working on updates to Terranova
Take a break from client work
Make space for creative work and projects
We organized Global Game Jam this year and are planning to organize PICOJAM this year, with a focus on involving more community members so that it can be something sustainable and co-run.
We think that by doing less, we'll actually be able to do more. Last year, we were scattered, constantly anxious and exhausted about everything, unable to pour our valuable time and energy into making queer games that make people laugh, cry, and feel a little less alone. This year, we hope to have a year where we do things we are proud of.
To everyone who has helped us so far, whether by becoming a supporter of our Ko-Fi or sharing our work with friends, we are so grateful for your support. We are truly lucky to have you.
We hope you have a 2026 that you can be proud of, however that manifests.
See you next month.
CJ & mabbees
Inspirations for the year
Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death. It has a lot to say about how popular media influences public discourse, and is a good anchor for the times.
Baby Ghosts' coop.love — it has a ton of online resources for co-ops, like a budget builder, templates for bylaws, and more.
Devon Price's Laziness Does Not Exist. It was, and continues to be, the inspiration for us to reject perfection and strive for sustainability in our work.
We've started weekly gamedev streaming. Our schedule will be posted on the Terranova Discord.
If you have $1.50 to spare, consider becoming a supporter — it helps us to continue to make games like Terranova and Tomodachi 8in1.
