The developer of an RPG on Steam wanted to translate the name of his game. However, he made a mistake that made it go viral in Japan.
Which game is being talked about? It is about The Crazy Hyper-Dungeon Chronicles. With its pixel graphics, turn-based battles, and character designs, it feels like an ode to classic dungeon crawler RPGs.
The game was developed by Paolo Nicoletti’s studio Fix-a-Bug, based in Turin, Italy. A demo was released for the Steam Next Fest, and on October 23, 2025, the release followed on Steam. The game costs €12.79. The demo is still available.
Here you can see the release trailer for the game:
Demo accidentally launches under the wrong name
What went wrong with the translation? As Nicoletti revealed in an interview with the Japanese gaming magazine Game*Spark, there was no professional Japanese translation for the demo’s release. So he took it into his own hands and had everything machine-translated.
However, this led to a mishap. The name of the game was translated as “Kuso Dungeon.” This means something like “Shitty Dungeon” in English.
How did people react to that? This mishap was noticed by someone, and a screenshot of the game’s shop page ended up on X (formerly Twitter). In Japan, the game with the funny name then went viral, and news about it spread further.
“Everyone was laughing,” says Nicoletti, “and honestly, I was laughing like crazy too!” What started as an unintentional incident ultimately brought a lot of attention to the game and led many players to add it to their wishlists. “Accidental marketing at its finest!” says Nicoletti.
Reviews are “mostly positive”
How is the game received? Fortunately, players laughed mainly at the name, not at the game itself. So far, the game has 127 reviews on Steam, which are “mostly positive” (as of October 31, 11:20 AM).
- “Awesome little game, went in completely blind and was both surprised and impressed with this one,” writes Swiper in his Steam review
- SolitaryGourmet admits in his Steam review: “I found this game after seeing the ‘Shitty Dungeon’ story on Reddit and grabbed it out of curiosity. Ended up really enjoying it”
Upon release, the developer had the name re-translated. Even though the poor translation helped the RPG achieve some more success, Nicoletti thinks there are more important things: “I can’t tell my mom ‘Hey Mom, the name of the game I made is Shitty Dungeon!'”
Most new games on Steam struggle to reach a wide audience. Mistakes like these, which at least draw attention, sometimes come at just the right moment. A new statistic shows: Over 5,000 new games from 2025 didn’t even manage to earn back the $100 fee for launching on Steam
