Taiwanese studio Imanity has released a new trailer for Estella, its space-spanning rhythm game published on PC by the game division of Japanese entertainment company Shoichiku, according to Martin Cid Magazine. The trailer pairs gameplay footage with the first spoken lines from protagonist Elina, performed by Saima Nakano, set to the theme song "Elina" composed by Kyiku and rinri and sung by Es. It arrives alongside a substantial update to the game's Steam demo and a first look at a multiplayer mode, with early access planned for this winter.
Why it matters
Rhythm games have traditionally leaned on repetition rather than narrative — retrying charts, chasing full combos, memorizing note patterns until they become muscle memory. Story, when it appears at all, tends to survive in menu backgrounds or cutscenes players skip. Martin Cid Magazine frames Estella as a deliberate wager against that convention: the idea that a single song can carry a chapter, and that one playthrough can bear the weight of a story.
The trailer is the first time that wager has been given a voice, the outlet reports. Rather than describing the narrative in press materials, Imanity is now showing fragments of it through actual gameplay and dialogue.
A comet, an octagonal lane, and a girl with transparent hands
Estella is played with a mouse and keyboard rather than a controller or touchscreen. Players take the role of a comet crossing space, racing down an octagonal lane, with each planet serving as a chapter. Shoichiku's pitch, per Martin Cid Magazine, is speed: notes and music interlock so tightly that the lane appears to pull the camera forward.
The first chapter follows Elina, a girl chosen by a golden comet. According to the synopsis reported by the outlet, a purple flower that numbs people's minds blankets the forest overnight. Elina is the only one who notices something is wrong, and she is branded a heretic and driven from her hometown. Two years later she wakes alone to find her hands have somehow turned transparent, and she sets out following a faint golden light in hopes of recovering her lost home and its warmth.
Demo update adds three tracks and a multiplayer reveal
Alongside the trailer, Imanity shipped a large update to the Steam demo. It refines the main visual, the interface, and the overall feel of play, and adds three songs: Morimori Atsushi's PUPA, first shown at Tokyo Game Show 2026, linear ring's enchanted love, and TAKIO's Festival Forever.
The track list also includes PYKAMIA's Fantasia Sonata Estella, Dadadaizu's Reblossia, and Camellia's Exit This Earth's Atomosphere — a name familiar to most rhythm game players, Martin Cid Magazine notes.
The trailer additionally debuts a multiplayer mode in which up to 32 players compete for score in real time, synchronized together. The outlet reads this as a signal that Imanity wants the comet journey to function both as a picture book and as a competitive arena.
Estella is scheduled to launch in early access on Steam this winter with Chapter 1 and roughly 40 songs. No price has been announced. The Steam page lists English, fully voiced Japanese, Korean, and both Simplified and Traditional Chinese. The updated demo is playable now.
Imanity describes itself as a studio born from rhythm games, founded by players who want to build titles that can be enjoyed for a lifetime. Estella will test whether a story worth hearing out can sit inside years of repeated attempts.
What to watch: whether the winter early access window holds, and whether the full-voice Japanese cast extends beyond the protagonist when Chapter 1 arrives.
