Four months have passed since the global release of Neverness to Everness (NTE). During this period, Metropolis Etro grew far beyond the standard investigation of anomalies and urban side jobs like driving a taxi or playing mahjong. The developers at Hotta Studio have successfully expanded the game to include the nostalgic Hyuga Island (patch 1.1), the hack-and-slash dimension 999 Nights (patch 1.2), and the summer update 1.3 with beach activities and a huge car zone.
To summarize the first results of the 100-day project, discuss monetization and learn how the team withstands the high cadence of releasing updates, Japan Portal 4Gamer.net Interviewed Zhang Qi, head of Hotta Studio and game producer. We studied this conversation and prepared for you a summary containing the most interesting details and key statements of the developers.
- Hotta Studio’s Neverness to Everness releases globally on April 29, 2026 on PC, Mac, PS5, iOS and Android. Zhang Qi, the project’s producer and studio head, feels sincere gratitude and a great sense of responsibility that the game has attracted global attention far beyond initial expectations. He said that as a service game, if the project wants to be successful in the long term, it needs to continuously invest resources, make adjustments, listen carefully to the opinions of the community, and allow the game world to continue to develop.
- While making the game, the team encountered two major differences from the original plan. First, optimizing for mobile proved to be a much more difficult task than expected, and the surge in users at launch made the problem even more apparent. In response to this situation, developers continue to improve the multi-platform experience and even launch cloud services to provide a smoother gaming experience. Secondly, in order to make the city full of daily activities, the author added some content that would be too burdensome for players. The studio is constantly testing and refining these elements, as the empowerment of urban life is the genre’s main appeal.
- Among the many activities, users most often prioritize exploring the world, managing the shop, clearing dungeons, and the unique mechanics of each update. The character acquisition system with no so-called “50/50 loss” has received the most positive response from the community. Not losing in the gacha greatly reduces players’ anxiety, making it easier for them to acquire their favorite characters and strengthen connections with them to walk around Etro City together. This system is perfect for an overall monetization strategy. Developers believe that if the content is engaging, players will want to support it, and reducing the financial burden will allow them to enjoy the game longer.
- The game has a strong focus on visual diversity, which is reflected in collaborations (such as with the Porsche brand), the addition of color-changing features, and the in-depth development of vehicles and houses. All these elements are designed to provide players with different “life choices”, which is the key to feeling real life in the supernatural open world. In addition, due to the project’s extremely high graphics performance potential, the developers are actively expanding the list of supported platforms and have currently added support for GeForce NOW, Steam, Epic Games Store and Galaxy Store. This strategy has a very simple goal – to give as many players as possible the opportunity to enjoy NTE in the style and device that best suits them.
- The response from Japanese players and the huge popularity of the fan art exceeded all the imagination of the development team. The Japanese community is very active and has contributed greatly to the game’s financial success, becoming one of the most important pillars of the project’s overseas revenue. However, during the offline event for the release of version 1.1 held in Akihabara, the crowds were huge and the souvenirs prepared were quickly sold out. In this regard, the production director apologized to the audience who did not receive the gifts and promised to prepare more carefully for such events in the future and stock up more peripheral products to satisfy all guests.
- Players noticed a significant improvement in the quality of translations and correction of previously encountered unnatural phrases, thanks to a carefully built localization system. This labor-intensive process is handled by specialized teams located in each specific target area. Dedicated local quality control experts play a key role in improving text quality. Thanks to their ongoing work, developers can regularly improve the language design to provide players with the most comfortable gaming experience in their native language.
- The plot structure of version 1.2 is unusual: Chapter 6 is deliberately skipped and starts directly from Chapter 7, showing the consequences of successfully solving the incident. The main reason for this approach is that the developers sincerely want to calm players down after stressful events and create a calm and warm atmosphere for their daily lives. It is for this reason that the awakened Nunari is shown at the beginning, because the author understands what the fans are going through and decides to show a successful result immediately. Details left out of the investigation itself will be revealed later through flashbacks, leftover plot gaps, and a system of foreshadowing.
- Version 1.2 adds a large-scale “999 Nights” mode, which seamlessly combines the elements of casual board games and isometric action with the mechanism of collecting equipment. A dedicated team of dozens of experts involved in level design, mathematical balance, interface and visual effects has been working continuously on this massive mode for about a year. The biggest challenge for the team was to combine the structure of a simple tabletop game with a deep role-playing system of random progression without creating a dissonant feel. In order to maintain balance and freedom, developers completely separate device characteristics and appearance, which poses a huge technical challenge to the data structure and rendering system on different platforms.
- Since release, the development team has continued to update 3D character models, adding the ability for players to remove visual details such as eye patches or masks. The main purpose of these constant appearance changes is to provide the user with maximum freedom of choice, since everyone has different preferences for appearance. The developers fundamentally did not want to limit the hero to a strictly fixed design, so they introduced the option to freely switch the display of various accessories. In the future, the studio plans to further expand the scope of this type of customization, allowing each player to create an ideal partner that completely matches their personal taste.
- From its earliest stages, the game has introduced spatial movement mechanics such as wall running, stopping time, flying, and teleportation. This was done to emphasize the uniqueness of the Supernatural City setting and differentiate the game from other projects. When designing the map, the author decided not to limit these powerful abilities of the hero, but to create dense three-dimensional locations, including high-rise buildings, rooftops, interiors, and alleys. Game balance under these conditions is maintained through skill cooldowns and specific space puzzles and tracks, making superpowers a catalyst for the fun of exploration.
- The main structure of the game consists of three equally important pillars: the combat system (responsible for the character’s progression), city life (creating a deep immersion) and communication with the hero (serving as emotional support). The developers plan to balance these elements flexibly so that players can choose the weight of each content according to their preference. In terms of daily farming and polishing, the team strictly adheres to the principle of respecting players’ time. The studio has introduced a quick exploration feature through dedicated butlers and double reward events, with plans to further reduce drudgery and achieve pure gaming fun.
- In the short term, the studio’s main goal is to deeply optimize performance on all platforms, including consoles and smartphones, and ensure stable compatibility. In addition, the team is also working on reducing the number of software errors, improving the display of multi-language interfaces and improving the smoothness of controls. Long-term plans include maintaining a high release rate of premium city content while tightly controlling the total amount of game data. Additionally, as heroes inevitably gain new abilities, developers will face the difficult task of keeping the combat system’s ideal mathematical balance and freshness over the long term.
- The developer believes that NTE’s main competitive advantage is that it is the absolute pioneer of the “supernatural open world urban role-playing game” genre. Their main uniqueness is the seamless blend of a highly detailed sandbox of modern city life with fantastic action and super powers. Zhang Qi admitted that since the game is taking an unknown path, there are still some rough edges in the details, but this also means that the project has huge potential for further development. The studio intends to listen to player feedback as carefully as possible and make quality improvements in a timely manner, treating feedback as a valuable resource for development.
At the end of the interview, the producer sincerely thanks all the players who love the city of Etro and actively support the project for their feedback. He pointed out that version 1.2 is just the beginning of a new chapter in urban life. In the foreseeable future, developers will add more mysterious areas and original supernatural events.
