KONAMI revealed the new PROJECT ZIRCON during its September 3 PRESS START presentation. A Steam store page is now live, listing KONAMI as both developer and publisher.

The game has no release date.

The original project was built around co-creation

At Tokyo Game Show 2023, KONAMI described PROJECT ZIRCON as a Web3 initiative where users could own character NFTs and participate in defining names, profiles, abilities and parts of the surrounding fantasy setting.

The company discussed eventual expansion into games, animation and novels. A standalone game was an ambition rather than the product already sitting at the centre of the project.

Free NFT campaigns and auctions followed during 2024 while the community continued contributing ideas around art, stories and merchandise.

A follower target helped trigger game production

By late 2025, KONAMI attached a public condition to the next step. PROJECT ZIRCON would begin producing a trial game if its official X account reached 20,000 followers before the end of the year.

According to KONAMI, the account crossed that target on December 12. Development of the trial version was formally announced in January 2026.

The project now has a commercial Steam page less than a year later.

Steam presents a straightforward single-player roguelike

The newly announced game is built around five-year runs. Players govern a nation threatened by the returning Calamity Dragon of the Abyss and must satisfy an annual target to keep the run alive.

Strategy Phases allow territorial expansion, Character Card acquisition and Facility construction. Admin Phases deploy those characters and combine their effects with the nation's infrastructure.

Commerce, Industry and Culture are distinct resources, while player choices lead toward different events, routes and endings.

The current Steam feature list presents PROJECT ZIRCON as a single-player strategy game. It does not advertise blockchain functionality among the gameplay features shown on the store page.

The old world-building has not been discarded

KONAMI's Tokyo Game Show material explicitly connects the new game to the co-creation initiative that began in 2023.

Names and concepts developed around that setting now sit inside conventional game systems. Zirpowers, the nations and the Calamity Dragon all appear in the deck-builder's design.

For KONAMI, that makes the project an unusual transition from community experiment to a recognisable PC product rather than a completely unrelated game borrowing the same title.

The next step is a live demonstration

Producer Shiro is scheduled to perform the first public demo play of PROJECT ZIRCON at Tokyo Game Show on September 19, in a stage event running from 12:15 to 13:15.

KONAMI also plans to distribute an original promotional card based on an in-game card to visitors who add the title to their Steam wishlist.

Steam still lists the release date simply as To be announced.