Sigono and Shueisha Games recently launched OPUS: Prism Peak worldwide for Nintendo Switch 2, Nintendo Switch, and PC. I had a chance to have a chat with Sigono producer Brian Lee about the recent release, challenges involved with the multi-platform launch, the possibility of a Switch 2 physical release for OPUS: Prism Peak, future plans, how the team approaches new projects, the narrative, coffee, and much more.
Nintendo Insider: For those unaware, tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do at Sigono.
Brian Lee: I’m Brian Lee, the producer at Sigono. My role is essentially to bridge the gap between creative vision and a tangible, shippable product. This involves overseeing everything from production planning and script coordination to art, music, engineering, and publishing. My goal is to ensure that even after the many practical compromises of development, the game’s core emotional heart remains intact. Since Sigono is a small team, we all wear many hats; I see myself as the one keeping our direction clear while supporting the personal, sincere details that make our work unique.
Nintendo Insider: It has now been over 10 years since you launched Opus: The Day We Found Earth. This is also how I discovered Sigono. How has the team grown since then?
Brian Lee: When we made OPUS: The Day We Found Earth, we were a very young team trying to express an emotion that felt much larger than our production scale. Over the past decade, we haven’t just grown in headcount and technical capability, but in confidence as well. Every OPUS title has taught us something new: how to tell an emotional story with limited resources, how to build more cohesive worlds, how to marry gameplay with narrative, and how to collaborate with international partners. OPUS: Prism Peak is perhaps the clearest reflection of this growth—it demanded more from every department, yet we worked hard to retain the same intimacy and sincerity found in our very first game.
Nintendo Insider: It feels like each project you release is larger in scope than the prior one, and Prism Peak is a massive step up in production values. What learnings from Echo of Starsong did you bring into Prism Peak?
Brian Lee: OPUS: Echo of Starsong taught us that a powerful resonance occurs when the world-building, character relationships, music, and mechanics all point toward the same emotional theme. In OPUS: Prism Peak, we wanted “photography” to play that same role. It’s not just a mechanic; it’s a way of seeing, remembering, missing, and reconnecting. Starsong also taught us the importance of pacing. A grand emotional story needs quiet spaces to breathe, but it also needs a clear sense of momentum. We spent a lot of time in Prism Peak finding the right balance between exploration, reflection, and narrative progression.
Nintendo Insider: When I interviewed Sigono back in 2022, Prism Peak had the temporary title “Project Mountain”. How was it developing the game during covid?
Brian Lee: The situation in Taiwan was somewhat unique, and we were relatively shielded from the most severe impacts of the pandemic. Furthermore, during that period, OPUS: Prism Peak was still in its very early conceptual stages, so we hadn’t yet entered full-scale development.
Nintendo Insider: When did Shueisha Games get involved and how has it been working with them?
Brian Lee: Shueisha Games joined us during the early development of OPUS: Prism Peak. As the project began taking shape, we received interest from several international publishers. We ultimately chose to partner with Shueisha Games because of their profound respect for creative freedom and the substantial development resources they offered. It’s been a very supportive partnership.
Nintendo Insider: While I expected a PC version at launch, it is good to see a Switch 2 version. How was it working on both Switch consoles?
Brian Lee: It has been both an exciting and a highly challenging endeavor. OPUS: Prism Peak is our most visually ambitious project to date, so bringing it to consoles required significant trade-offs in optimization, memory management, loading times, and controls. Supporting two generations of Switch hardware meant we couldn’t treat them as the same platform. Porting to the original Switch was particularly arduous; for a small team like ours, fitting this level of visual fidelity into hardware from seven or eight years ago was a massive task. We’ve learned a lot through this process and are committed to continuously improving the experience post-launch.
Nintendo Insider: Right now, the Switch 2 version has a lot of technical issues. What are your plans to address the audio bugs, performance issues, and load times?
Brian Lee: We are fully aware of these issues and have made them our top priority. The performance fixes have already been completed; we are currently just waiting through Nintendo’s certification process, which takes a bit of time. As for the other bugs, the team is actively gathering reports and reproducing issues internally to prepare updates for audio stability and load times. Some fixes can be implemented quickly, while others require more rigorous testing since they involve multiple systems. We sincerely apologize to the players affected, and we are dedicated to making the Switch 2 version the smoothest way to experience OPUS: Prism Peak.
Nintendo Insider: I’ve been enjoying Prism Peak on PC, but I was wondering if there are plans to add more save slots? It feels like it would be good to have that option for those who miss some photos in the playthrough.
Brian Lee: Yes! We’ve already pushed an update for the PC version to address this, and it will be coming to the Switch versions in the future. This is feedback we completely understand. We want players to observe the world closely, but we don’t want the fear of missing a single photo to turn into a source of frustration. Improving save management and the convenience of replaying sections is definitely an area where we can do better—specifically in making it easier for players to revisit content and complete their collections. We want the photography system to evoke curiosity, not anxiety.
Nintendo Insider: Speaking of photos, how did you come up with the concept for Prism Peak compared to Echo of Starsong?
Brian Lee: OPUS: Echo of Starsong was about “listening”—hearing songs, following signals, and traversing the cosmos through sound. OPUS: Prism Peak starts from a different sense: “seeing.” We wanted to explore what it truly means to see something, especially when that something belongs to your past. Photography is a perfect fit for this theme because a photo can simultaneously be evidence, a memory, a piece of art, or even a form of escape. For Eugen, the camera is his profession and his way of challenging the world, but it’s also a barrier between him and the people he loves. The heart of the game lies in how to truly see yourself and others amidst that contradiction.
Nintendo Insider: Emotional stories are a staple in Sigono games. When you start a new project, do you first work on the overall narrative before getting to the gameplay loop?
Brian Lee: Usually, the first thing to emerge isn’t the plot, but an emotional “question.” We start by asking: What feeling do we want players to carry with them after the game ends? From there, the narrative and gameplay develop in tandem. If you only write the story first, the gameplay can feel like mere decoration; if you only design the loop first, the emotion might not have a place to land. Our goal is always to ensure that the player’s actions and the story’s themes are speaking the same language.
Nintendo Insider: How was it juggling three different voiceover options for Prism Peak?
Brian Lee: It was a massive undertaking for our team. Voice acting completely changes the rhythm of a scene, and each language brings its own unique emotional texture. We had to be extremely meticulous with casting, direction, timing, and localization to ensure the characters felt sincere in every version. It was difficult, but it made the world feel much more complete. Hearing Eugen and the other characters exist naturally in different languages has been a very moving experience for us.
Nintendo Insider: Are there any plans for a Switch 2 physical release?
Brian Lee: We would love to see a physical release if the right opportunity arises. OPUS players often place a high value on collectibility and like to keep our works as part of their permanent collections, so we fully understand the appeal. While we don’t have anything official to announce at this time, it is definitely a direction we hope to evaluate with our partners.
Nintendo Insider: You previously told me that you would love to bring Prism Peak (Project Mountain) to iOS eventually. Are there still plans to do that?
Brian Lee: We still love the idea. Sigono has deep roots with mobile players, many of whom first discovered the OPUS series on iOS. However, OPUS: Prism Peak is much larger and more technically demanding than our earlier titles. If we bring it to mobile, we want to ensure the experience feels native and optimized rather than just a simple port. We don’t have a timeline to announce yet, but iOS remains a platform we care about deeply.
Nintendo Insider: I’d love to also see Echo of Starsong get a Switch 2 patch. Are there any plans to do that?
Brian Lee: It’s wonderful to hear that players have that expectation. OPUS: Echo of Starsong remains incredibly important to us, and we want as many people as possible to experience it in the best way possible. Right now, our absolute priority is post-launch support for Prism Peak, but we will continue to evaluate what we can do for our previous titles on new hardware.
Nintendo Insider: Going back to Prism Peak, I’m floored by how you managed to intertwine Eugene’s stages of life with a glimpse into how amazing photography is as a whole. What challenges did you run into when working on ensuring the adventure gameplay moments don’t take away from the narrative flow?
Brian Lee: The biggest challenge was making “observation” feel meaningful rather than like a chore. Balancing the number of main and side objectives was a constant process. Photography can be very meditative and quiet, but if handled poorly in a game, it can easily turn into a “checklist” style of collecting. We tried to anchor every photo to memories, characters, or specific locations, so that taking a picture feels like “noticing” something rather than just “collecting an object.” We also constantly tweaked the pacing to give players enough freedom to explore without losing the thread of the emotional narrative.
Nintendo Insider: Did you always intend on having Prism Peak feel like a lovely set of sandbox locations to learn about photography and reflect on one’s own life?
Brian Lee: Yes, that was the intention from the very beginning—to create a world full of surprises and secrets that felt like a place you could wander with your own eyes. We didn’t want photography to be just a puzzle-solving tool; we wanted players to slow down, experiment with composition, and perhaps realize that how they choose to view a place actually reflects something about themselves. That sandbox feeling comes from that intention: it’s not about total open-world freedom, but about giving players enough space to uncover the meaning between the scenes and characters, making their attention feel rewarding.
Nintendo Insider: Now that you just launched a game on 3 platforms, what are your plans as a studio?
Brian Lee: First and foremost, we are fully committed to supporting OPUS: Prism Peak post-launch. For us, the release is just the beginning of a new journey where we finally get to see how players connect with the experience, and we’ll be hard at work optimizing based on their feedback.
Beyond that, Sigono’s mission remains unchanged: we want to continue creating sincere, emotional, and perhaps unexpected stories. While our team has grown, we are determined to keep that “small team” spirit—the kind that allows us to stay personal and experimental. We’re excited to explore even more atypical game concepts in the future, including projects outside the OPUS series.
In tandem with our own development, we are also expanding our horizons by supporting other talented creators. We’ve recently decided to invest in and publish “Project Salon” by Safe Flight Games (the team behind Some Goodbyes We Made). This partnership was born from our shared obsession with narrative; Safe Flight Games just won the Grand Narrative Award at IndieCade 2025, a major achievement for a Taiwanese team.
Having spent years navigating the challenges of getting narrative games noticed, we want to share our resources and apply the same high standards we have for our own games to help this incredibly talented, yet low-profile, team reach a global audience. Whether through our own titles or those we support, we want to keep bringing moving narrative experiences to the world.
Nintendo Insider: Can you comment on when you started working on the Switch 2 version of Prism Peak?
Brian Lee: We began evaluating the Switch 2 version as soon as the opportunity became feasible for the project and our partners. Since OPUS: Prism Peak was designed with higher visual goals than our previous work, we were excited about what the new hardware could offer. However, it required a dedicated development effort; it wasn’t something that could be achieved through a simple, automatic upgrade.
Nintendo Insider: What made you launch it as a standalone release and not a Nintendo Switch 2 Edition cross-gen title?
Brian Lee: This decision involved many considerations across production, platform management, and publishing. We wanted each version to be presented clearly to players and supported according to its specific technical requirements. For a small team, clarity is vital—it helps us manage expectations, updates, and communication more effectively. After close discussion with our partners, we chose the publishing structure we felt best suited OPUS: Prism Peak.
Nintendo Insider: Are there any plans to add touchscreen and mouse controls to the Switch 2 release?
Brian Lee: We totally understand why players would expect this, especially since OPUS: Prism Peak is so focused on photography and observation—touch or mouse controls would feel very natural. Currently, our focus is on ensuring overall stability and performance improvements. Once the core experience is more solid, additional control options are definitely something we can evaluate for the future.
Nintendo Insider: How do you like your coffee? Go into as much detail as possible.
Brian Lee: I’ve reached that age where coffee disrupts my sleep, so I’ve had to let it go. But if I could still indulge, I’d choose a medium roast—something with that signature acidity and a hint of bitterness. It’s not just about the flavor profile, though. It’s about the nostalgia—those university nights spent lingering in a campus café until closing. I didn’t know the first thing about coffee back then, but the atmosphere remains vivid: the staff, the owner, and the endless conversations with friends. For me, that coffee isn’t just a drink; it’s the taste of a memory I can’t quite touch anymore.
