Midwest 90: Rapid City takes its Malaysian-made monster diner to Early Access and G-STAR

Some game premises arrive in a single image. For Kesh Ganesparan, game director and co-founder of the Malaysian studio Hidden Chest Studios, it came over a burger at Betty’s Midwest Kitchen, a friend’s American-style diner in Petaling Jaya, when he looked out of the window and wondered what would happen if monsters were out there trying to get in. By his own account, he had little idea what the Midwest actually was. Years of research later, that daydream has become Midwest 90: Rapid City, a survival tycoon sim built half a world away from the South Dakota town it imagines.

The premise is a deliberately uncomfortable recipe. A New Great Depression has gutted Rapid City, monsters have moved in, and the player runs a roadside diner where the creatures are both the threat at the door and the supply chain behind the grill. On its store page the studio frames the central tension as a choice between profit and the city’s survival, with the warning that those who fight monsters risk becoming one. It is a restaurant management game with a moral ledger running under the till, and with the kind of story spine that tycoon games rarely bother to build.

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That ambition now has a bigger stage. Unity has picked the game as one of 30 titles for its Indie Showcase at G-STAR, the South Korean games fair in Busan, and the team intends to show up in character: Rising Tide, the Thailand-based publisher that brings Southeast Asian indie games to a global audience, is building a small Midwest 90 diner inside the Unity Zone where visitors can sit down and play. Hidden Chest, founded by Ganesparan with Alex Tan and Tan Yi Ming after a 2020 grant from the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation, describes its mission as making system-driven games, championing ethical employment and putting the Malaysian games industry on the global stage.

The Early Access build opens with a prologue and the first chapter, plus an Endless Mode from day one. The systems are where the dark humour lives: monster recipes and daily specials, dish traits and a substance called Missourite whose side effects, the studio warns, vary; a crew to hire; bear traps and barricades priced from $10 to $150; and a shotgun kept behind the counter for emergencies.

Midwest 90: Rapid City opens in Early Access on Steam for PC on November 10, 2026. The roadmap promises a surprise drop on December 31, a free second chapter on January 28 and the full release in March 2027, with every update free for Early Access players. The playable diner in Busan runs during G-STAR, from November 19 to 22 at BEXCO Exhibition Center 2. Rising Tide also says creators are free to stream and monetize the game without asking first.

It is a long way from a burger in Petaling Jaya to a monster-meat counter in South Dakota. Whether the moral ledger bites as hard as the menu promises is the question the Early Access months now get to answer.

Tags: tycoon games, G-STAR, Hidden Chest Studios, Kesh Ganesparan, Midwest 90: Rapid City, Rising Tide

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