Nov 4, 2025

How Japanese developer MyDearest turned a crisis into a bold new blueprint for hypercasual VR

At the tail end of 2024, Tokyo-based developer MyDearest found themselves in the middle of a full-blown crisis.

As the studio behind Tokyo Chronos, ALTDEUS: Beyond Chronos, and DYSCHRONIA: Chronos Alternate, MyDearest had built its reputation on premium narrative experiences that felt closer to interactive anime than conventional games. But when their next flagship project unexpectedly fell through, the company was forced to confront a harsh truth: the market had moved on.

A shrinking number of players were seeking cinematic VR epics. The landscape was shifting towards chaotic experiences that were easy to pick up, and shareable with friends. If MyDearest was going to survive, it would need to evolve — and fast. What followed was nothing short of a complete rethinking of how to build and launch games in the modern VR era.

Things fall apart

But let’s rewind for a second and examine how we got here.

In 2016, Shotaro Chida, Kento Kishigami, and Yosuke Kori left their jobs at Softbank, where they’d been selling iPhones and iPads, to start a VR company. None of them had gaming industry experience. But they shared the same conviction that entertainment, and VR in particular, could change lives. Over the next eight years, they delivered on that vision with story-rich, 15-to-30 hour adventures that were critically admired, but far from mainstream.

At the end of 2024, MyDearest was in the thick of planning for a AAA-scale VR game. It was supposed to be the company’s big leap into the mainstream, the title that would elevate MyDearest from a boutique developer into a global player.

However, unexpected market changes forced MyDearest to re-evaluate the studio's publishing roadmap.

The 60-person development team suddenly had no project and no safety net. Years of relying on single, multi-year projects had left them vulnerable. The big bet had failed, and the entire company's future was at stake.

Back to basics

The MyDearest team went back to first principles. They studied the games dominating Steam charts and TikTok feeds and found similar patterns in the form of Gorilla Tag and Animal Company and Spin the Bottle inside Worlds. These games were the polar opposite of what MyDearest had been building. They were hypercasual and chaotic, designed for younger players to pick up instantly. Their appeal was immediately evident in the first 3 seconds of social media clips, making them ideal for sharing short, attention-grabbing videos on platforms like TikTok. If MyDearest was to survive, the team concluded, they couldn’t just iterate on their existing formula. They needed to rebuild from scratch.

Armed with a clearer picture of where the market was heading, MyDearest made the bold decision to pivot to hypercasual games. To make that cultural break visible, they spun out a new development arm — Bazooka Studio.

Changing the loadout: Bazooka Studio

Under the Bazooka Studio banner, MyDearest focused on "one concept impact" — games built around a clear idea that could be prototyped and either refined or scrapped in a few weeks. As Co-founder and COO Shotaro Chida put it, “We focus on one impactful concept that’s easy to grasp. Perfection isn’t the goal. We dare not even consider it.”

That philosophy redefined how MyDearest made games:

Development cycles: Multi-year projects became two-month sprints.

Idea sourcing: The studio held an internal pitch contest open to anyone on the team.

Output: Bazooka Studio released 9 games in 8 months. Seven initial prototypes yielded four commercial successes, namely Crowbar Climber, Chained Escape, Little Thief, and Devil’s Roulette.

Designing for virality

Bazooka’s next breakthrough came in the form of its test-before-you-build approach. The company would no longer build games in isolation. Instead, it began using TikTok as a test market where each new idea had to pass what the team called the "10,000 View Test."

The process was surprisingly simple. For each idea, the team created a new TikTok account with zero followers, then posted clips showcasing the game’s core concept. If a game couldn't organically reach 10,000 views without paid promotion, it signaled that the concept wasn't landing. The team could pivot or kill the project before wasting months of development.

Devil's Roulette, which launched in May 2025, was designed with this validation flywheel in mind. Players spin a roulette wheel in a dimly lit room with a shady, almost illegal aesthetic. The game created 30-second "dramatic moments" with tense spins, unexpected outcomes, and reactions worth sharing. In just a month, those moments had generated over 400 organic user-generated TikTok posts, racking up more than 1,000,000 views without any paid marketing spend.

Then came the team’s big “aha” moment: if social platforms could drive discovery, why couldn’t it also shape development?

The community-driven development loop

The team began monitoring Discord conversations and TikTok comments daily, using AI tools to analyze trends and identify the most requested features. They ran community polls and posted announcements in the Devil’s Roulette Discord that regularly drew dozens of votes and reactions. The devs maintained a steady stream of updates every few weeks to keep the feedback loop active, and so that they could turn community input into new features as quickly as possible.

This approach led to some of Devil’s Roulette's most popular features. The dev team implemented public lobbies based on player requests, and when players began asking for more weapon variety, they added a gun transformation feature that allowed players to modify their weapons mid-game.

But balancing this feedback loop was tricky. Producers kept close tabs to ensure updates stayed true to the game’s core vision, but also left directors with the autonomy to experiment and take creative risks. This balance allowed the team to move fast while keeping the game’s cohesive experience intact. The approach paid off — Devil’s Roulette launched as a free-to-play title, and within months amassed over 35,000 ratings with a 4.8-star average as of writing.

Playing to different crowds

Soon, however, the MyDearest team discovered that not all communities wanted the same things. The studio's Japanese audience skewed older and gravitated toward narrative-driven experiences, but western players, particularly teens, wanted social chaos and sandbox play. MyDearest recognized they needed to design differently for each market.

For Western audiences, the team focused on:

Cooperative over competitive gameplay: Games like Chained Escape, featuring chain-bound penguins working together, prioritized collaboration and silly moments over leaderboards and rankings.

Free-to-play timing: MyDearest saw that F2P was becoming viable on Quest, coinciding with Meta's shift toward a broader user base that expected free entry points.

Social-first design: Features that encouraged voice chat, emergent chaos, and shareable moments rather than structured progression.

For their home market in Japan, the strategy looked entirely different. The team created dedicated VRChat worlds, like The Exit 8 VRChat World, that served as immersive marketing funnels. This approach was unique to the Japanese VR ecosystem, where VRChat has massive cultural penetration. Ultimately, understanding these distinct audience needs allowed MyDearest to tailor experiences without diluting their core development speed.

The free-to-play bet

All this cultural customization raised an obvious question: how do you monetize free-to-play games?

By 2024, the Quest platform had matured enough to support free-to-play models. Since this was what the audience increasingly expected, MyDearest eliminated upfront costs and focused its monetization structure on:

Cosmetics and customization: Avatar skins, exclusive weapons, and visual upgrades that let players express themselves without affecting gameplay balance.

Frequent content drops: New items, emotes, and cosmetics released every few weeks to keep players returning and create ongoing revenue opportunities.

Premium add-ons: Optional content expansions for players who wanted deeper experiences.

The payoff

By mid-2025, MyDearest's experimental approach had produced tangible results. Devil's Roulette became one of the highest-rated social VR games on Quest, driving several million organic views without paid marketing. Meanwhile, legacy narrative titles like Dyschronia and ALTDEUS continued generating revenue years after launch, proving the studio could support both old and new business models simultaneously.

What’s more, the team itself evolved from a narrative-focused studio that developed in a vacuum to a multi-game operation that developed in the open and served distinct audiences across Japan and the West. MyDearest now runs simultaneous development cycles, manages active communities in multiple languages, and uses AI tools to analyze feedback at scale.

Put simply, the studio's unconventional approach challenges traditional VR development wisdom… and it’s working. The next challenge, however, is scaling without losing momentum. The team believes they can, as long as they stick to their core principles and let the community shape what comes next.

Key takeaways

MyDearest’s pivot was the original plan, but in carving out a new path for survival, they gave courage to startups across the industry. Their evolution proves that VR studios don't need a breakout hit (although it certainly doesn’t hurt). Rather, they need a new playbook — one that includes systems for rapid experimentation, community integration, and portfolio risk management that treat development as an ongoing conversation with players.

Here’s what MyDearest’s evolution can teach us:

Build a portfolio. Seven prototypes tested in parallel produced three commercial successes—a 43% hit rate that eliminated single-title existential risk.

Use social media as quantitative R&D. Test concepts with short-form content before full production. Organic engagement provides a cheap, fast go/no-go signal.

Design for shareability.Devil's Roulette creates dramatic moments every 30 seconds specifically to generate social content. The game design itself is the marketing strategy.

Turn community into co-creators. Player suggestions drove some of Devil's Roulette's most popular features. MyDearest uses AI to analyze Discord feedback and implements changes within one to two weeks.

Know your audience. Growth came from pivoting to Western audiences who preferred chaotic, collaborative party games over the narrative experiences older Japanese fans wanted. Cross-cultural research shaped every subsequent design decision.

Your testing ground starts here

MyDearest cracked the social VR market by building rapidly, testing relentlessly, and letting their audience shape the product. If you're ready to follow in their footsteps, the Meta Horizon Start program gives you resources to get started.

Dedicated support: Technical guidance from Meta staff and fellow developers who understand VR's unique challenges.

Development resources: Software credits and early product releases that accelerate your build cycle.

A global network: Connect with creators solving similar problems and participate in exclusive developer events.

Learn more and apply to Start today.

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