Rain98 Demo Hits Steam With a Heroine Who Wants to End the World
Rain98 turns the magical girl framework inside out: the seals Reina earns from everyday warmth are the same fuel that ends the world, so the demo asks players to enjoy a cohabitation story whose ending they already know.
Key Facts
- C#4R4CT3R released the Steam demo for Rain98 on October 17, 2026.
- Rain98 is set in 1998 Tokyo, and the player must collect 100 Angel Seals to complete the world-destroying ritual.
- The demo covers the first two chapters of the story and takes about three hours to finish.
- Rio Tsuchiya voices Amahara Reina, and Mamiko Noto voices Yose Kyouko.
- Rain98 is scheduled for release in 2026 on PC via Steam.
Reporting from 3 sources: GAME Watch (Impress), 4Gamer.net, Game Spark.
C#4R4CT3R, a game label based in Shibuya, Tokyo, released the Steam demo for Rain98 on October 17, 2026. The psycho-suspense adventure is set in 1998 Tokyo, where a young man who time-slips from the present day shares a one-room apartment with Amahara Reina, a heroine who says she is Angolmois, the Great King of Terror from Nostradamus's prophecy. Reina wants to destroy the world in July 1999, and needs heat, the stirring of her heart, to do it. The player earns Angel Seals by interacting with her, pastes 100 of them into an Angel Passport, and completes the ritual. The demo covers the story's first two chapters. It adds playable content beyond the build shown at Tokyo Game Show 2026. A hands-on event ran at UKIYO GAME BAR & CAFE in Yurakucho, where a collaboration cocktail called Melancholy Blue was served. The full version is scheduled for release in 2026 on PC via Steam.
The demo adds range beyond the Tokyo Game Show 2026 build, and the development team says that version keeps drawing new content. Director Sean T. and art lead dada told 4Gamer that development started as a game sized for about three hours of play and planned for fall 2025, before event reactions pushed the team to rebuild the graphics and expand the scope.
dada described the art direction as the 1990s filtered through the present, built around director Sean T.'s first keyword, Tokyo as a stagnant fish tank. The palette stays in deep blue, and the backgrounds were constructed in 3D rather than processed from photos, because shooting modern Shibuya would put current taxis in frame.
Rio Tsuchiya voices Reina. Mamiko Noto plays a newly appearing character named Yose Kyouko. One play report counted more than 300 graphics in the demo alone and about three hours of play time, with two side-job minigames confirmed: filling gashapon capsules and making iron beads.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 3 cited sources below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.