A Happy Holidays Homily!*

Hello, subscribers!

We’ve made it to the end of another eventful year, and we bring you tidings from the ghosts of game development past, present…and future.

(Too cute? We’re in a cute mood.)

In this edition of the newsletter: playtests. wishlists, milestones and dev streams, oh my.

* Apologies: we couldn’t find a better word beginning with the letter H.

Playtest sign-ups and 100,000 wishlists

We’re so back! Hello Sunshine made a long-awaited (re-)appearance in the PC Gaming Show: Most Wanted stream with a new trailer — and a publisher announcement!

Back in June, Megabit Publishing swooped in and signed Hello Sunshine to their label, and we couldn’t be happier about the partnership. It’s taken us a while to make it official, but you’ll hear much more from these guys in the months ahead, so go ahead and give them a follow — they’ve got plenty of games cooking!

If you missed it (and we don’t blame you, a lot of games were announced) you can watch the new trailer on our YouTube channel:

Hello Sunshine Trailer | PC Gaming Show Most Wanted 2025

This trailer (and all the positive press coverage and social media posts) helped Hello Sunshine pass the 100,000 Steam wishlists marker!

(Actually, by the time you read this, we’ve probably passed 112,000. Things move fast!)

This is a HUGE milestone for a tiny studio, and we’re super grateful to everyone out there who signed up, wish-listed, shared and commented, and cheered us on. It’s really incredible (and a little bit scary!) to see so many people getting excited about Hello Sunshine. We promise it’ll be worth the wait.

And since we’re already tooting our own horn, here are some lovely words from IGN.com:

If your overall question about Hello Sunshine is “Does it look good?” then yes, it is very promising. And if it’s “Will I melt to death holding a handmade bow?” the answer is still yes – but enthusiastically.

You may also want to check out this Rock Paper Shotgun interview with game director Jonathan Nielssen, and creative director/writer Ragnar Tørnquist.

But we didn’t just release a new trailer: we opened sign-ups for our first Steam playtest!

The playtest isn’t happening this side of the new year, but signing up now helps us out — and ensures you get notified when the playtests begin. And you’ll be in good company: almost 13,000 (!!) prospective players have already signed up. WOW.

You can sign up on Steam, or by following this link:

👉 Sign up for the playtest

Discord stream and 2,000 members!

Our Discord community has officially reached 2,000 members — quadruple the number at the start of the year.

To celebrate this incredible milestone (and the impending Christmas holidays) we’re hosting a Hello Sunshine pre-alpha developer stream on Wednesday 17 December at 19:00 CET — 10am PST / 1pm EST.

If you’re in Hawaii (lucky!) the stream starts at 8am…and if you live in New Zealand, you’ll need to tune in at seven in the morning, during prime breakfast viewing time — but on a different day (18 December). Time is confusing.

👉 Watch the stream here

Our developers will play a very early development build of the game, provide some behind the scenes insights, answer your most asked questions, and probably reveal at least one thing they shouldn’t have.

Since the game is currently in pre-alpha, everything you see will almost certainly change, improve, deteriorate, break, or spontaneously combust before launch — but transparency matters to us, and we’re happy to give you folks a sneak inside peek…as long as it stays between the 2000-plus of us!

The (longest) road ahead…into 2026

And that’s a wrap on 2025! It’s been a packed year for our studio — for reasons known (Hello Sunshine!) and unknown (to you).

Let’s just say: we’ve been listening and talking and working hard to—

Well. You’ll (probably) find out in 2026.

Thank you so much for being here, for cheering us on, and for giving us the courage to make more games. We wish you all a heartfelt GOD JUL* and a Very Happy New Year!!

With love,

Your friends at team Red Thread

* That’s Merry Christmas in Norwegian.