This gem surfaces soon
We have it ready, but it is not unsealed yet. Come back when it opens.
Opens on 2026-06-29 (JST)
Don't just clear the wave. Stand at the front line and face down a kaiju the size of a city.
A Japanese indie game built in two parts: a pseudo-3D, pixel-art shooter crossed with a sci-fi yuri visual novel. Set in the nation of N ten years after giant kaiju first appeared, it sends young girls to the front line to defend their country from city-sized monsters. The shooting is made to be gentle and easy to play, with auto-targeting and auto-attack carrying the aim while you layer on bombs and skills, and random drops from each run raise your characters up to two or three times stronger. Each chapter hands the lead to a different heroine, the first to Shirogane of the unit Area81, and the story leans heavily on the bond between the girls. Made by the Japanese solo developer peng under the name PenGames, in the lineage of Ultraman. It already supports English, and the West is only starting to find it.
Published 2026-06-29
01First, the one feeling
- Because auto-targeting and auto-attack carry the aim for you, the shooting never asks for twitch precision; what it asks is that you keep facing the thing in front of you, a kaiju the size of a city, while you choose when to spend a bomb and when to fire a skill, so the weight sits on nerve and timing rather than reflexes.
- Every run rains random drops onto your characters and the numbers climb fast, up to two or three times stronger, so the pull is the visible swell of power between attempts: the same monster that walled you off an hour ago folds, and you reach for one more run to see how much harder you can hit.
- The game is built in two halves, the pseudo-3D pixel shooter and a sci-fi yuri novel, and clearing the fight is what opens the next page; each chapter hands the lead to a different girl, the first to Shirogane of Area81, so the bond between the heroines keeps tugging you past the end of one battle into who speaks next.
02Who this is for (and who it is not)
For you
- You love the Ultraman taste of standing against giant, city-sized kaiju on the front line to defend a nation, here carried by named girls ten years after the monsters first appeared
- You want a shooter built to be gentle and easy: auto-targeting and auto-attack handle the aim while you layer on bombs and skills, with random drops that raise your characters up to two or three times stronger run after run, all wrapped in a sci-fi yuri novel told in two parts
- You want a Japanese solo-dev gem the West is only starting to find, Very Positive at 98 percent over 71 reviews, that already supports English
Not for you
- You want a hardcore, precision shoot 'em up or a bullet-hell challenge; this is built to be gentle and accessible, with auto-targeting and auto-attack and story at its center, so the appeal is the spectacle and the bond, not twitch difficulty
- You expect a story you can fully read in English everywhere, or a big already-popular title; this is a 1,200-yen paid doujin work by the solo developer peng, heavy on its sci-fi yuri novel, and still mostly Japanese-led abroad (about 33.8 percent of reviews are English)
03The roots of this taste
98% positiveonly 71 reviews — yet almost no one has found it
ULTRA0 Buried gem
A Japanese indie game built in two parts: a pseudo-3D, pixel-art shooter crossed with a sci-fi yuri visual novel. Set in the nation of N ten years after giant kaiju first appeared, it sends young girls to the front line to defend their country from city-sized monsters. The shooting is made to be gentle and easy to play: auto-targeting and auto-attack carry the aim while you layer on bombs and skills, and random drops from each run raise your characters' power, up to two or three times stronger. Each chapter hands the lead to a different heroine, the first to Shirogane of the unit Area81, and the story leans heavily on the bond between the girls. Made by the Japanese solo developer peng under the name PenGames, whose earlier work was MOMIBOSU, and released on 2 June 2026, fully launched and not in Early Access. Very Positive at 71 reviews and 98 percent. It supports English and Japanese, and with 24 English reviews (about 33.8 percent) the West is only starting to find it, while the remaining two-thirds are mostly Japanese, so it is not yet saturated abroad. At 1,200 yen it is a paid, fully released game, not free. The pixel art is hand-drawn, not AI-generated.
Give it your first passUltraman The origin
The origin of this taste: Ultraman, a tokusatsu (special-effects) television series created by Eiji Tsuburaya and produced by Tsuburaya Productions, first broadcast in Japan in 1966 as the show that followed Ultra Q. It set a giant silver-and-red hero against a procession of city-sized kaiju, with a human special-attack team fighting the monsters on the front line, and it crystallized the kaiju-defense story: giant monsters that threaten a nation, and those who rise to stand against them at the front. ULTRA0 is a clear heir to that taste, not an official Ultraman work but a doujin descendant of the lineage: ten years after kaiju appeared, named girls fight giant monsters on the front line to defend their nation. But it lifts that core onto a pseudo-3D pixel-art shooter with auto-targeting, bombs, and skills, wraps it in a sci-fi yuri visual novel told in two parts, and tells its own story of heroines who trade the lead chapter by chapter, making it its own creature rather than a copy. There is no official Steam release of the 1966 series, so its origin is anchored to its Wikidata entry.
Give it your first pass04Make this gem shine
If it speaks to you, check it on Steam and give it your first pass. Your push is what makes a buried gem shine.
You gave it your pass. The gem just caught the light.
05The bloodline of this taste
- Ultraman Root
- ULTRA0 You are here
- Read-and-build games another taste