Estella bets a rhythm game can tell a story, and its new trailer gives its heroine a voice

Rhythm games have always had a story problem. The genre runs on repetition, the retry, the full combo, the chart learned by heart, and narrative tends to survive only as a menu backdrop or a cutscene nobody waits for. Estella, a space-bound music rhythm game from the Taiwanese studio Imanity, published on PC by the games division of Shochiku, the Japanese company better known for a century of cinema and kabuki, is wagering the opposite: that a song can be a chapter, and that a run through a chart can carry the weight of a plot.

The new trailer is where that wager first gets a voice. Cut to the theme song “Elina”, written by Kyiku and rinri and sung by Es, it pairs real gameplay with the first spoken lines of the heroine, voiced by Saima Nakano, and offers fragments of a story the studio had so far only described. Shochiku pitches the footage on speed: notes and music locked so tightly together that the lane seems to drag the camera forward.

Notes race down an octagonal lane during the song Fantasia Sonata Estella in Estella — Image: Imanity / Shochiku Games

That lane is the game’s signature. Played with mouse and keyboard rather than a controller or a touchscreen, Estella sends the player racing along octagonal tracks as a comet crossing the cosmos, and each planet stands for one chapter. The first belongs to Elina, a girl chosen by a golden comet. In the synopsis, a purple flower that numbs people’s hearts smothers her forest overnight; she alone notices, is branded a heretic and banished. Two years later she wakes up by herself, her hands turned translucent, and follows a faint golden light to win back the home she lost.

Alongside the trailer, Imanity has pushed a major update to the Steam demo. It reworks the main visual, the interface and the overall feel of play, and adds three songs: PUPA by Morimori Atsushi and enchanted love by linear ring, both first heard at Tokyo Game Show 2026, plus Festival Forever by TAKIO. The partial song list also includes Fantasia Sonata Estella by PYKAMIA, Reblossia by Dadadaizu and Exit This Earth’s Atomosphere by Camellia, a name any rhythm-game regular will recognise.

The Night of Blooming chapter map in Estella, drawn as a constellation of story and song nodes — Image: Imanity / Shochiku Games

The trailer also gives a first look at Multiplayer Mode, in which up to 32 players chase scores while synced in real time, a sign that Imanity wants the comet ride to work as a competitive arena as well as a storybook.

Estella is due in Early Access on Steam this winter, with Chapter 1 and a lineup of about 40 songs; the price has not been announced. The Steam page lists English, Japanese with full voice acting, Korean, and Simplified and Traditional Chinese. The updated demo is available now.

Imanity describes itself as a studio born from rhythm games, founded by players who want to make games people can keep playing for a lifetime. Estella will test whether a lifetime of replays can leave room for a story worth hearing to the end.

Tags: indie games, Steam, rhythm games, Shochiku, Tokyo Game Show, Estella