Development

Dinghai: The Ocean Pillar is developed and self-published by Justdan, registered as Justdan International Co., Ltd. It made its public debut on June 6, 2026, when it was revealed during the Future Games Show: Summer Showcase 2026 as a new action roguelike RPG. Dinghai is the studio's first self-developed title; Justdan previously operated as a distributor and publisher of other studios' games. The company is headquartered in Taipei, with further offices in Kaohsiung, Tokyo, Nagoya, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia.

Before this the company's business was distribution. Justdan is Nintendo's authorised distributor in Taiwan and an official Pokémon licensing agent, and it publishes, ports, and distributes other studios' games across Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, Xbox, and PC. Its own catalogue of published titles ran to close to seventy entries as of August 2026, none of them developed in-house before Dinghai.

Platforms and Release

The game is in development for PC (Windows) and distributed through Steam. Justdan has stated a 2026 release window; the store listing still carries no specific date. It is planned to launch with subtitles in English, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, with Chinese voice acting (full audio for Simplified and Traditional Chinese). It is a single-player game, and as of 27 August 2026 no price is listed on the storefront in any locale. A free demo was released as a separate Steam application on 25 August 2026, while the full game itself is still listed as coming soon.

The store listing carries the following feature flags: single-player, full controller support, gamepad recommended, DualSense controller support, Steam Cloud, and Family Sharing.

Reveal and Trailers

The reveal trailer went up on Justdan's own channel on 6 June 2026 in three versions, English, Japanese, and Traditional Chinese, cut from the same footage and carrying the same details. A separate gameplay preview trailer sits on the store listing and was not posted to that channel. The five-weapon split came later, in Chinese-language material Justdan put out two days after the reveal.

The Japanese trailer description marks the title itself as provisional, printing 定海 with the reading Teikai and a note that the name is not final. That qualifier is confined to the trailer text: the Japanese store listing prints the same title and reading without it, and English and Chinese material use Dinghai: The Ocean Pillar and 定海 with no qualifier at all.

Demo and Playtest

A free demo went up as its own Steam application on 25 August 2026, and Justdan set out its contents the same day. It is the first playable build the studio has released to the public, and the announcement that carried it is also the first item ever posted to the main store entry's own news hub, which had stood empty since the listing appeared.

The demo runs about two hours, covers a tutorial and two map stages, and names two categories of run modifier that had not been named before. See Demo for the full contents. A separate Dinghai Playtest application had already been listed on 28 June 2026 alongside the main store entry. That application is distinct from the demo and remains closed: one note has been posted to it, a hotfix recording minor bug fixes, Justdan has not said how access is granted, the main store page shows no public sign-up, and nothing has been published about what the playtest build contains.

System Requirements

The developers have published the following PC requirements:

Age Ratings

Three regional age ratings are listed against the game ahead of release, each citing violence as its only content descriptor. The same three carry across to the demo listing unchanged. As of 27 August 2026 no rating is listed for North America, Japan, or Korea, and no pan-European rating is listed.

Production Notes

The development team has stated that generative AI tools were used only to assist with localization and translation, that all localized text is reviewed and edited by the team, and that no art, audio, or code was AI-generated. No game engine has been officially named, and none appears in any first-party material as of 27 August 2026.

Chinese voice work is credited to the voice production house 怪物細胞遊戲藝創, with 惠龍 (Huilong) credited as voice directing supervisor. No wider credits list has been published. The other four supported languages ship as subtitles only.

Return to the main overview for a summary of what is currently confirmed.