Sakuna of Rice and Ruin Gets a Major Five-Year Update, Steam Test Opens

Edelweiss has brought Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin its first major version update in nearly five years, and Steam public beta testing is live now. Anyone who owns the base game can switch to the open_beta branch and try the new content ahead of release.

The update is not a small tune-up. It bundles a New Game Plus mode called Rebirth, item and equipment carryover, stat inheritance, enemy scaling that raises difficulty alongside the player, new story events, character interaction scenes, quick equipment presets, and a higher rice inventory cap. For a game that launched in 2020, has sold more than 1.5 million copies worldwide, and has held a 92% positive rating on Steam, this reads less like a patch and more like a late cleanup of a reputation already earned.

The studio says a lot of the balancing and quality-of-life work came from player suggestions. Development is now basically finished, with only multilingual translation left, and the goal is to push the full release sometime in 2026. The last major update landed in December 2021, so this is the first big pass in a long while.

There is one important caution for anyone jumping into beta: save data may not carry over to the final version. Edelweiss also says the new story content aside, the rest of the update can be streamed and shared freely on social media. For returning players, the real question is not whether there is enough to do, but whether they want to test it now or wait for the cleaner final build.