Developed by 12 UC Irvine students, the video game Japanese Salaryman (JSM) will be available as a playable demonstration through the game platform Steam on June 2.
The pixelated role-playing game (RPG) enables players to navigate through 1992 Japan while working as Issei Ito, a security specialist for METTA Inc. — a parody of Japanese animation studio MAPPA.
“You’re an office worker with a gambling addiction. You’ve lost all your money, and you’re deep in debt and you need to pay it off, and you’re going to pay it off through corporate espionage utilizing your knowledge of computers,” creator and lead designer Neil Ketteringham told New University.
Ketteringham’s big inspiration for JSM was the Japanese RPG series Persona, where the player goes through the everyday life of a character doing thrilling activities. In the case of JSM, these include corporate espionage and hacking.
Ketteringham, a first-year computer science student, created JSM as a personal project in February 2024, after a dare from a friend.
“And basically the original game idea started on kind of like a dare of sorts…And for whatever reason, it kind of stuck with me” Ketteringham said.
Ketteringham taught himself how to program games in sixth grade using RPGMaker, a game design software, and continued to work on personal game projects throughout high school.
“I would say [JSM is] like, my first kind of serious project,” Ketteringham said. “I’ve worked on [smaller projects] before or like a Game Jam here or there.” He added, “JSM was definitely the first, like, big game that I worked on that has also been like coming into fruition.”
After spending his first quarter at UCI being involved in other projects with the Video Game Development Club (VGDC), Ketteringham pitched JSM to the club as a way to gather a team to work on the project in January 2025.
The team behind Japanese Salaryman operates under the production name Antikat Studios and meets every Friday to tackle the game’s programming, pixel art, audio and marketing. Antikat Studios utilizes the art programs Aseprite and Procreate to make JSM.
Art Lead Vivian Hong, a second-year student who double majors in history and game design and interactive media, originally wanted to be a history professor, but became interested in game design after taking a game design class for a General Education requirement.
“I wanted to be a game design in the industry because it’s such a cool, interesting career, I guess you can say. Always loved video games and I loved the art aspects in there, so I wanted to do that,” Hong told New University.
Angel Flores, a third-year game design and interactive media student, was in the original VGDC meeting that Ketteringham first pitched the JSM project and immediately knew he wanted to be involved.
“Video games I feel like are the only one where you can truly be, like, immersed and, what you do is your own, and that feeling of being so enthralled by what’s happening on screen and what emotions and what reactions you can have to that kind of experience,” Flores said.
JSM is set to be released on Steam on June 2 as a playable demo, a trial version with a portion of the game available. Antikat Studios will continue to work on the project until 2026, which Ketteringham anticipates will be the game’s official release on Steam.
Emma Richman is a Features Intern for the spring 2025 quarter. She can be reached at richmane@uci.edu.
Edited by Kaelyn Kwon and Joshua Gonzales