Takahiro Miyazawa, an indie developer who has spent nearly 25 years making games, has seen his new title Face UFO selected for two of TOKYO GAME SHOW 2026’s indie showcases at once.

According to the Japanese-language edition of Wikipedia, Miyazawa began making games and websites as a hobby while he was a third-year student in the Department of Design, Faculty of Arts, at Osaka University of Arts. He launched a personal site called SKT products. After graduating, he took a job as a systems engineer at a bank-affiliated company but left after six months. He then continued making games while working part-time at a post office. He takes on work from clients in Tokyo while handling the production work in Osaka. His professional output is said to span nearly 25 years, dating back to around 2001.

Some of Miyazawa’s games involve building the very device used to play them. Ruins Climber is an action game played by physically pulling a rope attached to a dedicated controller. It was exhibited at the Tokyo Game Show in 2018 and drew attention after receiving coverage from online media outlets. The following year, in 2019, it won the Grand Prize in the Entertainment (Applied Industry) category at the Asia Digital Art Award FUKUOKA.

In Bruce and Box, the controller itself is a real cardboard box. It’s an immersive action game in which a man who has lost his clothes tries to make his way home while hiding inside the box; Miyazawa made it together with developer Wataru Nakano. It was released for Nintendo Switch on May 2, 2024.

His award history goes back further still. The browser game “Moai no Su” (モアイの巣; “Moai’s Nest”) won an Excellence Award in the Indie category of the 2006 Japan Game Awards. Draw King, released on February 5, 2026, is a Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive in which players use the mouse function of the Joy-Con 2 to create a drawing based on a given prompt, and a local AI running offline scores the drawing. It supports Japanese and English.

To the left of the crown-topped logo is a bird-like character made of paper; on the right, four people play while laughing.

At BitSummit PUNCH, held in Kyoto from May 22 to 24, 2026, Miyazawa shared a booth with Wataru Nakano. Then, on August 10 (Japan time), when the results of TGS2026’s indie showcases were announced, Face UFO received two honors: the Gold Award in the SELECTED INDIE 80 Excellence Awards, and a finalist spot in SENSE OF WONDER NIGHT 2026. The presentation is scheduled for 15:50 Japan time on September 17 in the International Conference Hall at Makuhari Messe, and it is expected to be broadcast on TGS’s official stream as well. The show runs from September 17 to 21 at Makuhari Messe.