How UNSEEN Iterates As Quickly As If They Worked Side-by-Side in an Office

Founded by renowned creative director Ikumi Nakamura in 2022, UNSEEN is a Tokyo-based studio working on their debut title, KEMURI, a surreal action-adventure set in a retro-futuristic Asian city where players hunt yokai, alone or with friends in 3P co-op. 

With 50 devs across Asia and Europe, UNSEEN crafts rich, atmospheric experiences inspired by Japanese folklore, retro cityscapes, and supernatural encounters.

But with no existing infra and a distributed team, turning that creative vision into reality brought its own challenges that AccelByte Development Toolkit helped them overcome.

The Challenge:

As a new studio building both a game and internal workflows from scratch, UNSEEN had no legacy tools or infrastructure and they quickly ran into operational roadblocks: 

• No server infra to store and distribute builds to team members across the globe
• Builds were uploaded to Perforce repos, which was slow and difficult to manage
• Without versioning or branching, they were limited to one build “track” at a time
• External partners had no streamlined way to access or test new builds
• Limited resources to build and maintain infrastructure themselves

With no time or resources to reinvent their own pipeline, UNSEEN needed a ready-to-use solution that could streamline build delivery, support remote workflows,and remove the friction from everyday development tasks.

The Solution:

To remove friction from their pipeline and enable fast, consistent delivery across their global team, UNSEEN adopted AccelByte Development Toolkit (ADT) for build distribution, crash reporting and playtests without building internal systems. 

• Smart Build Distribution: Syncs only changed assets, reducing build size by 5-15% and improving storage usage and download time by up to 10x.
• Granular Access Control: Easily manage distribution channels and control build access for both internal teams and external partners.
• Crash Reporter: Automatically captures and logs crashes during playtests or editor use, with stack traces and logs in one place.
• Streamlined Playtests: Rapidly deploy new builds for daily playtests, ensuring faster iteration and quicker feedback loops.

The Impact

With ADT integrated into their pipeline, UNSEEN iterates almost as quickly as if they were working side by side in an office.

What was once a fragmented, time-consuming workflow is now a streamlined, repeatable process empowering their global team to stay in sync, move fast, and stay focused on crafting KEMURI.

Looking Ahead

For UNSEEN, ADT has become a core part of their development process. As the studio continues to scale and explore future projects, they see ADT playing a central role.

Whether scaling up internal workflows or collaborating with external partners, ADT has given UNSEEN the confidence to focus on building bold, creative games.