Welcome to 2025 ReiHEN PS Vita Homebrew Contest. ReiHEN  靈編  stands for spiritual change.  PS Vita in 2025  is fully grown up. The tools  used for Homebrew Development  are at an all-time high. PS Vita in 2025 doesn't need to prove anything to anybody. It has already done it.  It transformed into legacy handheld phenomenon and this Homebrew Contest is meant to celebrate its uniqueness alongside bringing a bit of rewards to the hard working developers. Viva la Vita !!!

There were a lot of great PS Vita Homebrew Contests in the past with amazing creations like Purified 

VitaHot

or CrashLands 

This year we are sure more quality projects will be submitted because recently the possibility of porting N64 decompilations appeared like Ship of Harkinian 

Plus there are still quite a few, great, feasible Android ports on the table and of course we can't forget about Original Homebrew which can often be more than pleasantly surprising. This all means the stars have finally aligned. The contest is on. Let's get the party started :-)

Contest Details

The Timeline

July 7th, 2025  Filling Up the Prize Pool 

For the first two weeks, our main goal is to spread awareness about the contest and collect donations so that our future contestants can get as great prizes as possible. We are starting with a prize pool of $700. Check the Donation options below if you wish to donate

Submissions Officially Open July 21st, 2025 — October 7th, 2025

On July 21st we start accepting your projects. Throughout this timeframe, you will be able to submit updates or bug fixes too. Any donations made at this time will still be added to the prize pool! 

Judicial Vote October 7th, 2025 — October 14th, 2025

On October 7th, the Submissions will be closed and soon after the voting procedure will start and last for a week. Follow my YouTube and my Twitter  for announcements and check The Vote section below to learn more about the judgment procedure.

Announcement of the Winners October 17th, 2025

On October 17th, we will announce the contest results . We will do our best to make sure that all monetary prizes get to their rightful owners before the end of October. We can not specify exact dates because of the potential issues with different countries’ payment systems, customs, etc. We will pay the prizes out via PayPal or direct bank transfer, whatever suits you better.

Donation options

Thank you! Any support for the contest would be hugely appreciated and all proceeds (after PayPal or other fees) go to the contest winners!

The TOP-7 donators who contributed the most to the prize pool will have their name added on the contest splash screen that will be shown during the boot of all submissions!

You can Donate via Ko Fi or PayPal

The Process

1. After the Submissions are opened, each participant will submit their project(s) into one of the 3 categories listed below.
2. The jury will judge the projects according to the criteria in 'The Vote' section below. Judges' ranking will decide the 9 winners of monetary prizes (1-3rd places in each of the 3 categories).
3. Additional, public vote for a single best homebrew (no matter the category) will be held. 
4. The winners will be announced and shortly after the prizes will be split between the winners.

The 3 Categories

1. Original Game - Create an original game, either from scratch or with an engine of your choice, e.g. GameMaker or Unity...

2. Utility - Create a utility homebrew or a plugin.

3. Port - Port an application or a game from another system.

The Vote

The judges will rank the projects by assigning points to each project based on the criteria below. For each criteria, a submission can receive 0 to 5 points.

This time, we will include public voting. The public can vote through the post on my YouTube channel . This is purely to see what people like the most. Monetary prizes will be awarded only by judges

The Judges -

2Old4Gaming

Zealous Chuck

Skgleba

Frangarcj

WithLogic

The Results

Watch this video for all the winners and for all the points awarded 

The Prizes

We will share the prize pool collected on our Ko Fi (starting from $700 USD thanks to our sponsors). This will be divided amongst the top-3 places for each category. The prize pool will be split in the 45-45-10 ratio. That means Ports Category  will receive 45% of the total amount collected, Original Homebrew will receive 45% and Utility 10%. Then each category will be split for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place - 1st place will receive 50% of the amount awarded for this category, 2nd place 35% and 3rd place 15%.

The Sponsors

Huge thanks to our sponsors without them this contest would not be possible

2Old4Gaming https://x.com/2_old_4_gaming  https://t.co/FXg8S6FxDL

Wololo https://x.com/frwololo https://wololo.net

Zealous Chuck https://x.com/chuckzealous https://www.youtube.com/@zealouschuck

Island Games  Twitter https://www.youtube.com/@SuicidalRobotGames

The Rules

1. Number of submissions per participant is unlimited. However, only one prize at best can be awarded to a participant
2. Updates and “fixes” to an already submitted project are accepted throughout the entire time the submissions are open.
3. Projects must be Vita-exclusive until the contest results are published. Does not apply to ports as they are not exclusive by design. A game previously released on different platforms (e.g. PS4 or Switch) must be submitted in the Port category, regardless of its original author.
4. Projects do not have to be open-source since some of the development tools may not allow that. However, participants must be able to show the source code at judges’ request if there's a suspicion of foul play (e.g. harmful or stolen code).
5. Piracy is not allowed in any form. If the project has to use copyrighted assets or non-free data files, the developer must not redistribute them with VPK or otherwise, and design a way for players to obtain the required data themselves (e.g. copy data files from a game bought on Steam).
6. Projects publicly released before the contest start (July 21, 2025) are not accepted as submissions. If you worked privately on your project before that, it is valid. Source code for your project can be released anytime after the contest start or not released at all according to your wish. Binary downloads (VPK, etc.) for your project must appear first on the contest's website after your submission is checked by the organizers. When the submission is published on the contest’s website, you can publish the binaries on other platforms (GitHub, personal website, etc.). Keep in mind that the rules still apply, e.g. you have to keep the splashcreen present (Rule 9)
   
7. Game mods are accepted as submissions in both Game and Port categories as long as said mods affect their original game in a way they can be considered standalone experiences by themselves. An example would be NZP(Quake mod).
8. There is no "lower threshold" of effort for a submission to be accepted but keep in mind that e.g. YoYoLoader ports that take three clicks to develop or free Unity demos with your logo may very well receive zero points for all criteria.
9.  Your homebrew must show the contest splashscreen during its booting process -  To easen this process, you can even include it as pic0.png in your final vpk. In this way, the PSVita will automatically show it when launching the bubble from the LiveArea. If you're submitting a plugin, you're requested to mention the the ReiHEN contest in the readme file of your project 

Talk about anything related to ReiHEN PS Vita Homebrew Contest on our our Discord

Resources

On this page, you can find a list of things that you can (and probably should) use to create the best homebrew and win the first prize ✨

C/C++ Toolchains

• Vita SDK
  The go-to solution for all things Vita homebrew. The majority of community apps, games, and ports are made with this toolchain. Easy to setup and use, but requires C/C++ knowledge.
• Vita Development Suite
  Extended and enhanced version of the official Sony Playstation Vita SDK. Using it is legally gray area but it may be irreplaceable for some situations where the open source SDK is lacking features.

Libraries

• VitaGL
  Translation layer from OpenGL to native PS Vita (sceGxm) graphics API. Powers most of the homebrew games and ports that require OpenGL.
• PVR_PSP2
  Driver layer OpenGL support for PS Vita. Legally gray area to use. An alternative to VitaGL that may have better compatibility with the standard in some cases.
• libvita2d
  Simple GPU-accelerated 2D library for the PS Vita (comes with your Vita SDK installation by default)
• SDL1 / SDL2
  (comes with your Vita SDK installation by default)
• SDL2 (Northfear fork)
  (use if you want to manage VitaGL GL context from SDL)
• ...And many others on vitasdk/packages.

Game Engines

• Unity
• Godot
• Ren'Py
• ScummVM
• RPG Maker 2000 / 2003 / EasyRPG
• OpenBOR
• Game Maker
• Xenity Engine
  Note: you would need to export the game for Android platform and use YoYo Loader to ship your game to the Vita.

Other programming languages

• Python
• Lua
• LifeLua/Lua Player Plus
• C#/Mono
• PHP
• Ruby

Debugging tools

• Vitacompanion
  Background FTP server + remote commands execution on your Vita.
• vita-parse-core
  Core dumps reader to debug crashes.
• Catlog
  See stdout (logging output) from the Vita on your PC.
• KVDB.
  GDB-compatible debugger for the PS Vita. Buggy.

Other stuff that may help

• VPS (Vita Project Suggestions)
  A catalogue of ideas for your project.
• LiveArea guide by Freakler
  An extensive guide to customizing the LiveArea assets for your project.

Useful Discord servers

• HENkaku (mainly VitaSDK)
• Vita Nuova (VitaSDK, Android ports, YoYo Loader)
• CBPS (mainly VDSuite)
• Vita Forever (mainly Unity)