Shujinkou's game engine has been upgraded by two major versions. This has led to all-around performance improvements relating to FPS, loading times, lighting systems, animated illustrations and portraits, and more.
Improvements have been made across the board for dozens of user interfaces, enabling a better user experience for players.
Improved writing quality for tooltips in loading screen, lore compilation entries, and other non-dialogue fields.
Added the option to toggle the in-game battle camera bob off.
We are still not fully happy with all of the menus and input logic present right now, and are planning to upgrade the UI later. More on this later in the post ⬇️
Fixed dozens of small bugs and input issues.
Here's a brief look at a few of the many UI/UX improvements made:
It's been 16 months since the launch of Shujinkou on PS5, PS4, and PC (Steam), and 8 months since its release on the Nintendo Switch. During this period, we've released over 20 official patches adding dozens of new features, quality-of-life improvements, player-requested functionalities, and fixed many bugs, UI and input hindrances, and other problems. There were a few slower periods to account for development of the next title in the Shujinkou trilogy, boothing, and other business-related reasons, but we are happy to say that over a thousand commits through version control have been finalized to bring Shujinkou to as good of a state as it can be—it is not perfect though, and we want to do more for our players on all platforms.
As our team continues to develop the next title in the trilogy, which you can actually read more about here (in Japanese), we have managed to finish upgrading Shujinkou's engine to a relatively up-to-date version. This means that we will be able to more quickly add new fixes, improvements, and content to the game over the course of the summer.
Here are a few things to look forward over the next few weeks and months:
‼️ Shujinkou Steam Trading Cards and Points Shop Items
‼️ Further UI and UX improvements to Shujinkou 1
‼️ Integrations of certain fan/player-requested features and QOL.
‼️ Improvements in physics in minigames like Kotoba Kyuugi
We were lucky enough to be able to scout a talented UI artist from Latvia 🇱🇻, who has helped tremendously with preparing an excellent UI/UX base for our Shujinkou 2 prototype. We showcased this at BitSummit (May 2026) in Kyoto, with great feedback from Japanese players and press. Feel free to read more about it here (in English!).
The team will be working with the new artist, Ritvarsさん, over the course of the rest of the year to also bring some more improvements to the UI and UX of Shujinkou. If you have any extra feedback or suggestions, please contact us!
Without your continued support, we would not have been able to get this far. Sales across all platforms continue to remain steady and strong over a year after launch, and it allows us to remain fully independent and able to continue developing and publishing ambitious video games like Shujinkou. We look forward to sharing more exciting news and updates with you soon!
Feel free to join our Discord community if you need assistance with gameplay, want to suggest features or provide constructive feedback, or want to meet and chat with other fans of Shujinkou!
Read more about this update on the official Rice Games website:
https://ricegames.net/2026/06/26/shujinkou-v1-45-patch-notes/
Team @ Rice Games