Hello everyone,
This is a message from the leadership team at Joy Way.
The announcement of Catana: Red Flowers went… not as we expected. We want to speak directly to the community to address what happened and clear the air.
We hoped this milestone would mark a turning point. A new chapter driven by everything we’ve learned, from both our successes and our mistakes.
The team has been working toward a redemption arc. But instead, this announcement sparked frustration and disappointment across a meaningful number of players.
Let's be clear: we messed up. And it’s understood that the backlash we’re seeing now is also the result of past missteps that were never fully addressed. That changes here.
This message isn’t about excuses - we’ve had enough of those. It’s about the real actions we’re taking right now.
The immediate trigger for the backlash was our use of AI-generated visuals in the YouTube thumbnail and store artwork.
These were meant to be temporary placeholders during an intense pre-announcement sprint, with the goal of focusing team resources on polishing the actual game before the recently conducted playtest.
But that judgment call was wrong. We thought it was a secondary detail - the community made it clear it wasn’t.
We will replace all AI-generated marketing assets with artwork fully created by our artist team, and this will be done ASAP. More importantly, we're committing that JOY WAY will not use AI in marketing or game development ever again.
We had already ruled it out for production art - after the Stride Fates incident. To make it crystal clear - Catana doesn’t have a single AI-generated element in-game. Now, we’re extending that principle to all areas of our public-facing work, including marketing assets
We also feel that this incident has unfairly stolen the spotlight from the incredible artists who are pouring real creative energy into Catana.
Allow us to begin correcting that.
She started here as a junior, working on environment concepts and story comic artwork for Against.
Since then, she’s contributed to nearly every project we’ve released - including the early versions of Red Flowers.
And now she’s leading concept work on Catana.
And yes, she had already started work on the game’s key art, before that task was postponed.
Creating a piece like this takes about a full week, and we made the call to focus those hours elsewhere.
Here are a few of her early sketches.
To give you a fuller picture of the creative process, here are also some of the current artwork iterations by Sofia Gnedenko, our graphic designer.
It took nearly two dozen hours of real, hands-on work to bring them to this stage. From composition choices to texture selection, asset treatment, and detailed overpainting - Sofia made her own creative decisions along the way.
This wasn’t a case of typing a prompt into Chat Gpt and calling it a day. It was a carefully crafted process, driven by a human with vision and skill.
Bottom line: our intention was to save time on what we mistakenly saw as a low-impact task - one that would have required a significant number of human work hours we wanted to use elsewhere. But now we see it wasn't “just a thumbnail.” It represented much more, and we regret that decision.
Moving forward, we're not just changing assets. We're changing the process.
We’re forming a focus group within the Discord community - drawn from moderators and core players - to review messaging, design, and creative decisions early. We need better reality checks. More transparency. And fewer assumptions about what will land.
As soon as the logistics of this process are finalized, we’ll make a separate announcement.
Understandably, the game's shift in tone caught many players off-guard.
... Especially when compared to the original Red Flowers concept trailer recorded on PC.
From an artistic standpoint, the stylized and more lighthearted approach gave us more room for expression, character, and visual clarity - especially in fast-paced VR gameplay on hardware with limited processing power.
When you’re dashing through enemies and deflecting bullets mid-air, strong silhouettes and bold environments support both style and readability. A stylized world also allows us to lean into expressive animation, surreal moments, and tone shifts - from chaotic action to cozy downtime - in a way that realism often limits.
Also, blending high-speed action with unexpected charm (yes, including the cat) gives Catana a recognizable and ownable identity. In a crowded market, that is crucial for standing out. At the same time, offering players the option to adjust or retain visual grit allows for more personal and tailored experience.
At its core, Catana is still about precision, speed, and flow - values shared with the original Red Flowers. The surface has changed, but the spirit hasn’t.
Bottom line: We hoped the Joy Way community would connect with Catana. While the game is different from other our projects, it shares a core gameplay feeling: fast movement, precision, and flow. That overlap was intentional, and we wanted it to feel familiar yet fresh.
And yet, despite all that effort, we still failed to present it in a way that honored your support. That’s on us.
AND WHAT'S NEXT
Right now, we’re focused on doing the work - not making excuses. And Catana is shaping up nicely. Something we hope you’ll want to play - not because we ask you to, but because it earns your interest.
If you choose not to give it a chance for any reason, that’s your right. But it would sting to see all this work dismissed over an artwork.
This team is pouring everything into this game. If you’ve made it this far in the letter, thank you. For your time, your criticism, your passion about our games.
Now it’s on us to prove we deserve it.
If you care about where Catana is headed, we’d genuinely appreciate your thoughts about the game on Discord and your input as a participant of future playtests.
Thank you,
Joy Way Team
