Devil's Roulette Director Details Success and Failure at CEDEC2026
The session shows how a VR game built by a small team in two months reached 1.68 million users by treating VR's limitations, including reduced player thinking ability, as design features rather than obstacles.
Reporting from 1 source: PANORA.
At CEDEC2026, MyDearest game designer Nobuaki Shibuya detailed the development of the VR game Devil's Roulette. The free-to-play multiplayer title reached 1.68 million cumulative unique users by July 2026. Shibuya covered design problems specific to VR, a monetization failure in the first month, and a public lobby design error that cut four-player match counts by roughly a quarter.
Devil's Roulette began as a two-month project by a four or five person team, following the indie boom in Russian roulette games like Buckshot Roulette and Liar's Bar. The director's session at CEDEC2026 focused on three problems that emerged when converting the turn-based concept to VR.
Turn-based gunplay was kept, but item use became real-time. Players hiding under tables was accepted as the appeal of physical improvisation. Reduced thinking ability under a headset was treated as a factor that increased randomness and adjusted game balance.
The talk also covered failures. The game launched free-to-play after a last-minute change from a paid model, leaving a full month without monetization. A public lobby added four months after release split players across tables and cut four-player match counts by about a quarter, until a hybrid private room and public lobby system was introduced.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.