Rain98 Director Ties Reina to a 1998 Setting and an IVE Concert
The project's premise, a present-day protagonist sent back to the end of the century, is the developer's stated attempt to match the stagnation of the current era with the atmosphere of Japan around 1998 and 1999, and that framing is what the game is built on.
Reporting from 1 source: Game Spark.
At Tokyo Game Show 2026, the director of Rain98, developed by C#4R4CT3R, described how the psychological thriller romance adventure began around the end of the year about two years ago, when he wanted to make a novel game. A K-pop song he heard at an IVE live performance turned his attention to the late 1990s, and he set the game in 1998 Tokyo.
Reina, the heroine of Rain98, grew out of a K-pop performance. Shawn T said he attended an IVE live show, heard a song themed around Y2K, and started thinking about a novel game set at the end of the 1990s. Seeing Rei sing in a school uniform during that show fed into how he built Reina, a character he wants to work as a symbol of the era.
The setting carries the theme. He said the sense of stagnation in the present day, the feeling that society is somehow about to end soon, matches the atmosphere of Japan around 1998 and 1999, and he asked what a person from today would do if sent back and given the role of destroying the world.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.