After leaving his job as a programmer for an undisclosed game company in 2024, Japanese streamer P-P has been dividing his time between broadcasting and creating his own games. Two years later, he announced that his first full release, Step Theater, will be a story-based rhythm game similar to Nintendo’s Rhythm Heaven series.
With its cartoon-esque aesthetic and catchy beats, Step Theater is a rhythm game in which the world and story evolve the better you synchronize your moves with the beat. As you progress through each stage, the visuals change, unveiling the next part of the story, and the gameplay becomes gradually more challenging while the music accompanying it also becomes more intense.
Step Theater’s stages range from a tortoise and a hare pounding handmade mochi to a cat operating a ramen street stall and a creepy vampire ballroom party. In addition, while some stages feature classic rhythm game-style backgrounds and gameplay, others draw inspiration from other game genres, with one stage in particular resembling a platformer.
Though Step Theater is P-P’s first full release, it isn’t his first game. Back in 2024, he created Kiyo Neko Adventure for his friend and fellow streamer Kiyo’s one-man show at the Tokyo Dome. While that title is more along the lines of a die-and-retry joke platformer similar to games like Cat Mario, Step Theater is a full-fledged rhythm game made for genre fans and newcomers alike. Given P-P’s history of game development and penchant for finding strange ways to play conventional games (he streamed himself playing Super Mario World with a dancepad), making an evolving rhythm game is right up his alley.
Solo developed by P-P under the Pixel Smile studio and published by NB Games, Step Theater is set to release sometime in mid-2026 for Windows (Steam).
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