Jyoka -Castle town- launches on Steam on November 15, 2026, at 7 PM PST. Japanese solo developer sfvsoft puts the price at $29.99, with significant discounts for the first month. The store page shows no price yet. The game is single-player, runs on PC only and took three years to build. It ships in English, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Russian, Spanish and Portuguese.
You play a Kunishu, a minor local lord in 16th-century Japan, and the job comes in three phases. First you develop a castle town, then you defend it from your neighbors, and finally you attack until the country is unified. The opening position is poor: a ruined territory overrun by bandits. You grant rice paddies to vassals in return for labor and military service, then manage taxes, recruitment, technology and diplomacy in real time. The building list runs past 190 types.
Seventy-three provinces and 73 castles to besiege
The map covers Japan across 73 provinces, and you can start anywhere on it except enemy castle sites and very small isolated islands. The announcement counts 73 real extant castles to besiege, while the Steam page says 70+. Your own defenses run from fences and moats up to stone walls, turrets and keeps.
Sieges can be commanded in person or handed to a family member to resolve automatically. A strategist in a Palace (Study) shows the probability of victory beforehand, a figure few Sengoku lords ever had. Players who want no part of this can set the difficulty for town-building alone, with low enemy aggression. Lowering the difficulty after starting affects achievements. The announcement does not say what ends a failed campaign.
What a castle town was, and who else has worked this period
The title names a real form. Jokamachi, or castle towns, were the seats of feudal lords' domains, and they only became more common than other Japanese town types in the 1570s. Samurai lived nearest the castle, with higher-ranked retainers closest to it, while merchants and craftsmen lived outside those districts. sfvsoft has not said whether its town simulation tracks that layout.
The period itself has a long record in games. Koei's Nobunaga's Ambition has covered the Sengoku era since March 1983, as turn-based grand strategy played from the seat of a regional daimyo, a ruling lord. Jyoka starts lower on the ladder and runs in real time. One developer is taking on a setting Koei has worked for 43 years, and sfvsoft reports thousands of wishlists within days of the store page going up.
Jyoka -Castle town- launches November 15, 2026, at 10 PM EST, and the first-month discount is the number to watch once the store page lists a price.
