Circle From Dot Unleashes the Wolves After 7 Years

How long does it take when someone tired of waiting for a sequel decides to make it themselves? Circle From Dot, a four-person studio in Haeundae, Busan, has an answer: 7 years. The hardcore top-down shooter 'Kusan: City of Wolves' will be released simultaneously on PC, PS5, Xbox, and Switch on July 30. Pre-orders for the Korean-language physical package are being taken from the 14th to the 29th.

CEO Yeom Jeong-gyu's reason for founding the company was simple. He enjoyed 'Hotline Miami' so much that he was frustrated there was no sequel. He founded the company in 2018, and admits in every interview that the first two years were complete trial and error. Everything was new—what a game even was, design, development process, company operations. What helped them survive that period was their residency at the Busan Global Game Center and help from neighboring developers.

The team started with four friends. None of them had ever made a game. Two of the four stayed for the full 7 years, and even the person who joined last has been there for 6 years. They were residents at the Busan Global Game Center for 6 years. This is a game completed not through hiring experienced staff or securing major investment, but by enduring in the same place for a long time.

The game started from a single sentence: maintain Hotline Miami's one-shot-one-kill mechanic, but let players fight like John Wick. CEO Yeom himself calls it the 'cyborg John Wick' feel. It's a neo-noir pixel action game where former soldier Jin fights to protect a girl in the corrupt city of Kusan. Four people handcrafted all 54 stages. The soundtrack was produced by rapper Labtimist.

We wanted to make a game that maintains Hotline Miami's one-shot-one-kill mechanism but allows you to fight like John Wick.

The core of the gameplay feel is an exchange of risk and reward. As you parry enemy attacks and chain consecutive kills, you accumulate 'volts,' which you use to upgrade the protagonist's combat prosthetic arm to push through the later stages. Each stage has an S-rank challenge, so there's a big difference between clearing a stage and clearing it perfectly. The tension of one-shot-one-kill remains, so if you let your guard down, Jin also goes down in one hit.

Early hands-on reactions testify to the gameplay feel. UK outlet Cubed3 wrote in their demo preview that "what immediately stands out is the surprisingly smooth gameplay" and that "death never once felt like the game's fault." The assessment was difficult but fair, and they compared the final boss fight to "a dance you learn over time." US outlet NoisyPixel described the soundtrack as "sublime" and concluded that "when you play it yourself, you'll definitely know this game isn't defined by the originals that inspired it." Many games have claimed to be successors to Hotline Miami, but few have had their own gameplay feel beyond the original acknowledged.

Kusan Is a Near-Future Busan

The city in the title, Kusan, is Busan itself. In an Inven interview, CEO Yeom explained Kusan as "a port city that mixes the sensibility of various Asian cities with near-future imagination, starting from Busan." A port where materiel and greed flowed into the underworld after the war, and wolves walk above it. The choice to make all characters animals was also calculated. According to the CEO, it was to treat violence lightly and cheerfully as "a fantasy unattainable in reality" rather than with the weight of reality, and he cited Caravan Palace's music video 'Lone Digger' as a reference. The cutscenes are in a graphic novel style inspired by Max Payne. Protagonist Jin's deep-voiced narration plays over rough-textured screens. Jin wields violence without hesitation, but he's a retired soldier not free from that violence.

One Unsolicited DM

The soundtrack story summarizes this team's approach. In 2018, the newly formed team with no game development experience sent an unsolicited collaboration DM to rapper Labtimist's Instagram. There was no response for a month. Just when they thought it was too much to expect, a reply came, and that connection lasted 7 years. CEO Yeom says, "The music played a huge role in creating Kusan's dark and strong city atmosphere."

The numbers spoke first about this game selling in the global market. Over 5,000 people flocked to the Steam playtest, and more than 30% of wishlists came from overseas. With this data, Circle From Dot signed a global publishing contract with UK publisher PQube in November 2024. They won the Grand Prize at Smilegate Future Lab's indie game competition Indigo 2024. The release will be simultaneous in 11 languages.

On the release date of July 30, it will launch simultaneously on PC Steam, PS5, Xbox Series, and Switch. A demo is already available on the Steam page to preview the gameplay feel. The Korean-language physical packages come in two versions—PS5 and Switch—priced at 37,000 won each, with pre-orders available from the 14th to the 29th at online markets like Soprano Mall. Due to the Adults Only rating, the pre-order page requires adult verification.

The release isn't the end either. Speedrun mode and hard mode updates are planned, and side quest additions are under consideration. When asked about his feelings ahead of the release after 7 years, CEO Yeom answered, "Rather than joy, I still feel much more nervous." The goal is modest and precise: a game where the money paid isn't wasted, and "a game that remains as a memory in someone's heart."

What Kusan has proven is not about place, but time. Founded in Haeundae and enduring in the same place for 7 years, the result now reaches global shelves through distribution networks in London and Singapore. BIC will be held in Busan again this year. The team that brought a demo three years ago returns this time with a released title. There's no better rallying cry than this for Busan indie developers.