Goodbye 2025, Hello 2026!
Happy New Year from Hidden Door!
January 5, 2026 by Hattie Hayes
Happy New Year! 🥳
Okay, time is fake, but the last 12 months sure have been busy!
From our team here to you, our community, we hope you've had a joyful, restful and restorative end to 2025, and are entering 2026 filled with optimism.
To wrap up the year, here's a quick look back at some highlights, none of which would be possible without you!
Early access
This is the big one! We dropped the waitlist so that anyone can play. Since then, thousands of players like you have brought your imaginations to your (and our!) favorite books, movies, TV shows and comics. Woo!
New worlds
We’ve more than doubled the number of playable worlds since launching early access.
In October, we announced Big Fan, a world of modern romance world based on Alexandra Romanoff’s novels from our friends at 831 Stories. For Halloween we added a vampiric remix, Big Fang, and...launched our Dracula world! Were you the type to succumb to an otherworldly thirst for blood, or try your hardest to cure vampirism?
In November, we launched thrilling three sci-fi titles: Nexus, from the mind-bending trilogy by Ramez Naam; Saturn's Children, based on the novel by Charles Stross; and Dead Man's Tale, a companion to an exclusive new novella from Alan Dean Foster, available only on Hidden Door.
Most recently, we celebrated the holiday season with two wintry worlds:
In A Very Brooklyn Christmas Carol, you play a modern-day Scrooge who learns (we hope!) to let go of your miserly ways after visits from three ghosts. We built this one out of love for both the story and the local neighborhood near where our own Secret Lair (er, office) is located!
We also launched our first Sherlock Holmes mystery, The Blue Carbuncle, modeled after the tale by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle that takes place immediately after Christmas. This trip to 221B Baker Street is our first, but certainly won’t be our last…
Shareable moments
2025 saw a lot of doomscrolling, but what about joyscrolling?
The only thing better than playing stories is sharing the weird and wonderful highlights you create along the way. To help, in December we launched moments, the ability to make and share custom snapshots of your stories including stickers, frames and more.
Click here to check out the feed of other players' moments!
IRL events
Did you get a chance to see us at any in-person events this year? In September, we had so much fun at the Toronto International Film Festival, especially during the AI on the Lot pop-up. In fact, we loved TIFF so much, that we created a playable Film Festival inside Hidden Door! We also loved celebrating Big Fan with handmade fliers at New York Comic Con, inspired by fan zines and DIY culture.
New stories
While we're always bringing you new worlds, we also love creating new ways to play with plot cards! Here's a sampling of the new ones you've been able to try over the past few months:
- Haunted Mansion—You inherit a choice piece of property, but there may be some…strings attached. Like. Uh. Ghosts?
- Fake Dating—You need a fake date to escape a crisis situation. Will you choose your enemy, your frenemy, your platonic bestie, or a total stranger? And will the situationship develop into something real?
- The Nutcracker—You discover an abandoned nutcracker. It’s a little strange, a bit ethereal, and then, you start having strange dreams…Or are they dreams?
- New Year’s Eve party—You have a mission to complete, but the countdown has begun. Will you find love and luck in the new year, or will midnight bring heartbreak?
A new twist on our narrator
You might have noticed that our narrator is sporting a new look! We’ve been inching this new design forward, with new in-game animation and fresh social stickers. They have some bold new fashion statements to make in 2026, so keep your eyes peeled for more.
Cheers to 2026! Every day we are amazed by your creativity and the incredible stories and characters you create. In a real world that sometimes feels like a dystopian fiction novel, we at Hidden Door continue to believe in the power of stories to spark ideas, share joy, and grow.
We also pledge to tell more stories and create more joy. Wanna join us? You can start your best year ever right here, right now.
- Team Hidden Door