Shuttle Hearts Academy Smash Launches on Steam

Shuttle Hearts – Academy Smash, a colorful 2D arcade badminton game from solo indie developer nodaruki Games, launched on Steam for Windows PC on November 14, 2026. The regular U.S. price is $6.99, with a 15 percent launch discount running for the first 14 days, and a free demo is available on the store page. It's the debut title from nodaruki Games, known in Japanese as Gakuen Badoru.

The concept swaps a straight badminton sim for a school-club roster. The playable cast comes from the Go-Home Club, Athletics Club, Art Club, Karate Club, Cooking Club and Occult Club, and each character's abilities grow out of her club. The Art Club turns a lob into a deceptive attack that splits into five differently colored trails. The Karate Club can double jump in midair. The Cooking Club decorates the shuttlecock with fruit, which changes how far it travels.

Under the abilities, the shot vocabulary is regulation badminton: lobs, clears, drops, drives and smashes. Rallies build an SP gauge, and a full gauge unlocks character-specific SP Shots and SP Skills, which is where a losing rally can flip. The controls are built to be approachable, so the skill gap sits in shot selection and ability timing rather than in the inputs.

The mode list covers the bases a $6.99 arcade title needs. Story Mode runs matches between the characters' conversations. CPU matches cover practice and quick games. Local multiplayer puts two players on one PC, and online matches are supported for one to two players. The announcement doesn't specify matchmaking rules, ranked modes or cross-platform play, and it doesn't claim them, which is the honest way to ship a feature list.

The localization is the surprise line on the spec sheet. The game supports 14 languages at launch — Japanese, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Thai, Korean, Turkish, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese — and the developer says Steam wishlist data guided which languages made the list. For a solo developer, 14 languages is a distribution decision, not a courtesy: the dialogue and club banter are part of the product, and they only travel if they're translated.

No player counts or sales figures have been reported, and the announcement doesn't invent any. What exists is a finished, priced, discounted launch with a demo in front of it. In a store that adds dozens of titles a day, that's the whole test: a clear hook, a low price and a free way to try it before the discount window closes on November 28.