Maybe it wasn’t a very good idea to play a game about death right after playing a game about death. However, death is constantly looming, either slowly in the background or right before our eyes. It can be but a little diluted concept in the back of our minds, or it can be announced on a visit to the doctor. It can be a gamble because of our lifestyle, or it can be a gamble because of a diagnosis. It can come due to old age or earlier due to unforeseen circumstances. When people say that we should cherish the moments we have with each other it can come as a big cliche, and indeed it is. You can find the most beautiful words to describe the inevitable but, in the end, it’s very much our nature and the nature of all things living.
Try to imagine a world without death. I’ve tried it many times. It’s the realm of the impossible but we can make the exercise. How many would we be? Would we be constant for all eternity, or would more people be born? How could someone come into existence in a world where there’s eternal permanence? Would there be conflict and consequence like punishment for all eternity, without means to alleviate pain and suffering? Would there be eternal happiness in the arms of a loved one guaranteed to live forever? Would we jump into another relationship after those failed 500 years of marriage? Would there be years and the concept of time even? Would we become of another nature to adapt to a nature without renewal? Why would someone want this? There’s someone who wants this.
It’s very easy to spoil a game like Slay the Princess (StP) or any visual novel for that matter. Even games from other genres are a little difficult to write about if we don’t decide to include spoilers. Hold your thoughts about death because they will be a constant while you navigate StP. Not everything is about death, there’s more to the game and its nature, there’s loops and loops, of constant coming and going, and in the process, we witness love, violence, despair and our own reflected image in the mirror. All of it happens inside a cabin, or in another cabin in another time. The memories remain, but the path is another, although the same. StP felt more like a roguelike visual novel than a visual novel with many routes. It is in fact a visual novel with many routes and sub-routes and sub-sub-routes, but I liked to entertain the idea of a roguelike game where I was constantly dying and could come back to where I started now armed with valuable knowledge only to be surprised that nothing was how it was before.
You have to slay the princess; you just have to. And if you don’t, the world is going to end. What will you do? Look, I did everything or so I thought. I played the game for about 6 hours, and I got about three endings. If you decide to play the game the achievement bar is a good indicator of your progress. I’m at 37% therefore I haven’t seen half of the outcomes in the game. The princess is inside a cabin chained inside a basement. Your task is very straightforward, but which cabin you end up in or which princess will you find depends on your choices. It doesn’t matter if you live or die for the princess will always be communicating something. However, how do we know we have to kill the princess? We have a voice – the Narrator – that tells us to do so. But, since we go back and forth (or only forth) in this loop, how many are they?
The game is not only a quest about slaying the princess and preventing the end of the world. It’s also about the player and their journey to find their own identity. After all, we have to find a clue about why we have to kill a princess in the first place, and where to find some answers as to how to proceed towards the conclusion of our quest. It seems more complicated than it is. Even though it doesn’t look like it at first, the game has a start and an ending, and each route doesn’t take long to complete. The help of a guide for the completionists should come in handy.
Slay the Princess was created by Black Tabby Games and released in 2023 for PC. It has great art and extremely good voice acting. It was one of the indie games I looked forward to playing upon release, in 2023, but I only managed to play it now.
A director calls a number of artists to a meeting. No one knows anything about the next project they’ll be working on. After coffee is served and everyone has gotten their share of cake, a commission is laid out along these lines — create a cyberpunk setting in the form of a city isolated from the outside world; a bit less cyber and a bit more punk. Insert stylish anime characters in it, sporting urban and comfortable clothing, wearing artsy makeup and piercings. With everything else, please go absolutely wild. No limits to the imagination, especially inside a dimension called the Mystery Labyrinth. If you want to defy space, time and gravity, you can. If you want to insert random elements in space disconnected from each other, you can. If you want to play with colors, textures, structures and use those assets you didn’t know what to do with, you also can. This game will be your canvas and we will be here to bring those ideas into fruition. In the city, where the story takes place, neon lights must be everywhere, except in shady areas. The color palette must be pink, pink, yellow, pink, purple, blue and pink. In this city it will rain constantly, which is a great opportunity to make the colors blend into the shimmering water covering the ground.
Kunai Ward, the neon cityInside the Mystery Labyrinth
This is pretty much how I imagined a meeting taking place inside the developer’s headquarters. Since I live in a city where it rains at least once every day of the year, I’d give anything for those neon lights. The urban reality of Rain Code is very similar to my own, except we don’t have a shady mega-corporation responsible for the infrastructure, power supply and secret experiments… or do we? This requires a thorough investigation from the World Detective Organization! I will get in touch and will let you know about any further developments! I’ll try to steer clear from Halara Nightmare to avoid more debt. Even though she’s one of the best detectives, very efficient and insightful, her work is extremely expensive to contract.
Ok, let’s not digress any further. Master Detective Archives: Rain Code is a new series (or I hope it will be) developed by Spike Chunsoft and Too Kyo Games. The CEO of Too Kyo Games is Kazutaka Kodaka, the creator of the Danganronpa series, and the designer of Rain Code. Masafumi Takada, also having worked in the Danganronpa series, composed the beautiful soundtrack of Rain Code in his unique atmospheric jazzy style. The game was released last year (2023) and only for Nintendo Switch. Why the game is an exclusive, considering that many Spike Chunsoft games are also available on PC, beats my understanding. It is, however, a jewel on the Switch that risks being forgotten among the thousands of extraordinary games on the platform. In all its uniqueness, I think Rain Code is a niche game, and even on PC it would remain so. I don’t know why that is, or even why such a beautiful piece of art can be so fleeting. There’s not much people in the community talking about Rain Code, at least in the West (you know, that big country that The West is) but I believe it has a strong fanbase, spanning from East to West, with strength in dedication, although not in numbers.
Rain Code tells the story of Yuma Kokohead, a young man who wakes up in the lost-and-found section of a train station. Wouldn’t you know, he doesn’t remember who he is! Where did I hear this before? Ah, Utawarerumono and pretty much every other Japanese visual novel I could think of. As any other amnesia story, everything just goes a bit crazy from here, maybe a bit crazier than we’re used to. The thing is that Yuma has, within himself, something or someone who perfectly remembers who he is. A shinigami, or as we say in The West, a god of death! A goddess, to be more exact, and a beautiful one at it, who takes the form of a cute little ghost when she travels the real world with Yuma. Of course, this realization was very confusing to him. It seems like sometime in the past, he made a contract with this shinigami a la Death Note, and now he’s stuck with it, not entirely aware, if at all, of its consequences. Within his belongings, he also finds a letter with a contract to investigate something undisclosed at Kanai Ward, a city detached from the outside world and run by the Amaterasu Corporation, an all-powerful company with its fair share of secrets. He’s supposed to take the train and meet with the other Master Detectives, hoping that someone would remember who he is. That he did, but things didn’t go as expected.
Shinigami with YumaYuma and Shinigami dancing
From the time Yuma enters the train, we initiate our first investigation. At the end of the trip to Kanai Ward, Yuma is pretty much in panic. He doesn’t find the most welcoming party when he arrives either. He’s actually going to get arrested for a string of grisly murders that happened on the train. He is surrounded by the Peacekeepers, a special force dedicated to keeping peace, enforcing law and administering punishment (usually the latter). The good part is that we had time to gather a lot of evidence during the trip, and in the nick of time the shinigami halted time and opened a portal. Yuma was most likely kicked or punched into it by the shinigami and ended up in a place called the Mystery Labyrinth. The purpose of the labyrinth is, with the help of Shinigami, finding the truth about a murder case by solving a variety of puzzles and battles. Our weapon, the Solution Blade, suggestively taken out from inside Shinigami’s throat, holds the Solution Keys used to solve puzzles, answer questions, and battle with bosses.
Inside a Mystery Labyrinth. I love the random elements floating there!
Don’t expect the Labyrinth to be like the castles in Persona 5 convoluted with rooms, backtracking and hidden paths. The Mystery Labyrinth is very linear, despite being an alternate area called labyrinth, no backtracking and no exploration is necessary. The path is straightforward and in order to unlock a room you need to solve the mystery within it, which is always related to the case itself. It can be Crime Scene Recreations, Reasoning Death Matches (RDMs), Shinigami Puzzles, questions that pop up during chase/platforming sequences, and God Shinigami QTE/questions. There’s some variation to this depending on which chapter we’re in. It is, actually, my favorite part of the game, where I can test my deduction skills with the information I’ve learned during the investigation in the real world. No, my skills don’t work that well (heh), but even the failure is funny and it doesn’t bring any punishment apart from stamina loss. I never experienced what happens when we run out of stamina for constantly failing at challenges but I presume we have to restart the Labyrinth from the beginning.
Navigating inside a Mystery LabyrinthThere’s always a challenge at the end
The RDMs are interesting because it’s where we fight the phantom of a person from the real world. They try to trick us and deviate us away from the truth. We use Solution Keys to refute statements thrown at us, like attacks. We can get damage if we fail the exact match between a statement and a refute, but the shinigami helps us get there by giving hints. So be careful and read her dialogues when you refute a statement with the wrong Solution Key. These statements are sentences and comments literally thrown at you. You have to dodge the white ones, refute the red ones and repel the blue ones. I experienced a bit of jank while moving my character and not only in battle. Since this is not a game with real combat I can’t see any negatives apart from it being a bit annoying. Our character can either run outdoors or walk indoors but we can’t control how fast the running goes. So crossing the districts to find Gumshoe Gabs (memory shards to unlock dialogues with the other detectives) will require a bit of time and legwork. Fortunately, fast travel is available between areas, and each area, apart from the Kamazaki District, is not very big.
A Mystery Phantom is a reflection of a person from the real world
So, after beating the Mystery Labyrinth, we finally enter Kanai Ward, the neon city as I described above. It’s so pretty, with all the reflections of neon lights against the rain water. Yuma meets his boss, Yakou Furio, the one who kept trying to recruit new Master Detectives but kept getting notices of their deaths. It seems like no one wants them there, but why? Yakou needs help finding the Kanai Ward’s ultimate secret. It can’t be more vague than this! Another group of Master Detectives also arrived at the destination apparently unscathed. I wonder how Fubuki pulled that out… They’re the best of the best, and each one will be Yuma’s companions for the next four chapters, being the fifth the final one. There’s one criminal investigation per chapter without counting the five DLC episodes which focus on investigations from the perspective of the other Master Detectives.
A rainbow Shinigami!
So, if Rain Code doesn’t have traditional combat, and it isn’t a visual novel, what kind of game is it? I’d say it’s part visual novel, because there are many sequences that resemble one, albeit with more action and a faster pace. It has a leveling system, skill trees and side quests but it isn’t exactly an rpg. It’s a detective sim, with the deduction puzzles and the Labyrinth sections. It’s overall a big mystery adventure that shouldn’t be overlooked by any fan of Japanese games. Shinigami sent me a memo later today. It reads like this: I’ll curse you if you don’t play this mysteriful game and find the ultimate truth through perfect deduction.
This was quite the long ride. I’ve finished Utawarerumono: Prelude to the Fallen today, not only finished but decided to add some more hours of playtime to get all achievements on Steam. It was very satisfying to 100% complete the game, even though I don’t do it with all the games I play, due to lack of time and some residual sanity I may have.
Utawarerumono is part visual novel, part strategy game, where we control a big roster of characters in combat and get familiar with their stories in detail. It’s impossible to finish the game without knowing the names of everyone by heart because the game is that thorough with character development. It is, after all, a visual novel with a pacing very similar to others in the genre, although a bit more on the slow side. Things take time to develop across many arcs, and the events build up slowly for a reason. What was most unique and unexpected to me was the existence of turn-based tactical combat. Even though it lacked the complexity of a pure strategy game, it felt really familiar to me in terms of unit positioning, skills, equipment, levels, status ailments, maps, etc.
Meet Eruruu!
Utawarerumono tells the story of Hakuowlo, an unknown man, even to himself, who appeared in a small village, suffering from amnesia and severe injuries. After he’s found, a small family takes him in. Aruruu, Eruruu and Tuskur, their grandma, are Hakuowlo’s new family. But what’s with these people in the village? They have normal bodies and faces in addition to fluffy ears and tails. Hakuowlo doesn’t hide his surprise when he first sees them. He also couldn’t avoid an almost fatherly connection with both girls, Aruruu and Eruruu, even though almost everyone he touches is imbued with sexual undertones. Maybe Aruruu is the sole exception, but I digress.
The game transports us to a feudal Japan era, where tradition is queen, and many tribes and countries are at odds. Soon, Hakuowlo’s village is attacked and something terrible happens. He starts a revolution against the owlo of that territory. The rest of the story is a fantasy tale of wars, friendships, conquests and tragedy. There’s magic, beautiful white-winged angels, vengeful gods and greedy tyrants. The slice of life story events focus on the social dynamics in Hakuowlo’s castle, mostly about his women/friends and everything that happens between them. I’m being purposely vague because it’s very easy to spoil a visual novel. The dynamic between the women living with Hakuowlo, Benawi, Kuuro, Oboro and other men is nothing short of wholesome. This is first and foremost a tale about union, friendship, love and desire.
A road trip
It was all fine and dandy until I reached the last 5 hours of the game. Then, under the events that transpired in the country of Kunnekamun, the story shifted to crazy revelations to the point that I was left very overwhelmed and with many unanswered questions. The story didn’t end on a cliffhanger or anything, but my inquisitive nature prevented me from connecting the right dots at the right time maybe because I was so worried about the individual destinies of those I spent so many hours with. I won’t write more about this. Just expect a fierce last battle and maybe some tears afterwards. Those won’t be your first ones either.
The advantage of getting 100% achievements is, as with any visual novel, your collection. You will collect all CGs, items, OST, events and something else in the end. The early 2000s anime art is beautiful and very delicate. By the time you unlock all events in the game, you can read the story again like a print graphic novel, without battles or gameplay. This is one of the reasons I haven’t uninstalled the game yet. Prelude to the Fallen is the first game in a series of three, followed by Mask of Deception and the Mask of Truth.
I feel like I’m drowning in an ocean of games. This weekend has been prolific in terms of new additions to my backlog and new games I started to play. First, I tried Super Mario RPG. I’ve never played it before so I couldn’t take the nostalgia factor into account. There was an element which was a bit concerning to me about the combat mechanics. I heard that Sea of Stars got some inspiration from SMRPG by introducing timed inputs and other elements in combat. When I tried the game I didn’t vibe with the combat at all. Moreover, everything in a fight took far too long and my brain was starting to decay with the pacing of combat animations. I was killing all enemies that could heal themselves and their party first, not because it was strategically relevant, but because it was faster to finish the encounter. I eventually decided I didn’t want more hours of something that was clearly getting into my nerves, despite being remarkable in everything else.
I eventually tried SMRPG and my experience was something else altogether. First, attack and defense inputs weren’t a problem. I felt like I was very in tune with the attack rhythm and I still rarely fail a critical. I can read my party’s movements and react accordingly. At defending I’m not as fast at reading the variety of enemy attacks but I’ve been doing fine. Attack, buffs or defense animations flow seamlessly. I’m really enjoying the game and I see myself engaging more with the combat system instead of going to great lengths to avoid it. Even though I feel that Super Mario was funnier when I was younger, I often find myself chuckling at some dialogues and scenes.
Super Mario RPG: A fight against King Calamari
A few days later I tried a visual novel recommended by a YouTuber I enjoy very much. Her channel is called Milla’s Game Room and she absolutely deserves more followers. One of the visual novels she recommended was Virche Evermore. She created an excellent video about it. I enjoyed the atmosphere a lot and the character art is very pretty. I don’t know how I’ll fare with an otome though. In visual novels I like to immerse myself and reach for some connection with the romanceable characters. There’s no same-sex relationships going on, although I think the story has punch and that shouldn’t be a problem. I want to know the stories of our main character and her love interests all the same, and I think I have enough curiosity to dive into it. The fact that the setting is not in high school is also very refreshing.
Virche Evermore: Our main character in a very dramatic scene right at the start
I’m continuing my playthrough of Utawarerumono: Prelude to the Fallen with many breaks in between. I adore the combat, Aruruu (especially when she says Gachatara!) and Karulau! The story is gripping and the art is beautiful to look at. I already have a collection of screenshots I intend to keep. Every time there’s a new CG I grab it for my collection. I also spend my time repeating some battles in hopes of unlocking achievements.
This weekend I played Cocoon, a game created by Jeppe Carlsen (Limbo/Inside) and published by Annapurna Interactive. I’ve tried a good amount of games published by Annapurna and all gave me unique experiences. Cocoon wasn’t an exception. The puzzle design is god-tier and I can only warmly recommend it. I found it available on PC Game Pass, installed it, and only stopped at the credits. The art is clean and the game plays and runs so well with no issues whatsoever. The puzzle difficulty was balanced with some late sections a bit trickier than others. No boss encounter was approached the same way, but the action perfectly communicated the strategy.
Cocoon: Carrying orbs back and forth between dimensions
After playing Cocoon, I decided to try Sword and Fairy Together Forever. I’ve never played a game in the series and still need to read a bit more about it. The graphics left a strong impression in me, as they are sharp and detailed. With the settings I was running the game at, I got extreme lag in the equipment menu, but only there. I’ve played the first and second chapter until I saved a child from a giant eagle. I’ll continue the playthrough but things are getting a bit out of hand with so many games. I can’t complain!
I was looking forward to finding The Curse of Kudan during the Winter sales on Steam but ran out of luck very fast. I knew it was also available on Nintendo Switch, yet I didn’t want to get it there because I’ve been enjoying my visual novels on my laptop, and I already have a little collection there that I want to keep adding to. I eventually found it for a very good price on Jast. It’s also available on Mangagamer. I never tried the latter, but the former gives you all the files. You buy the game and that’s it. Feels like 1990 again. So, I started reading it and found it very enjoyable. It’s a yuri visual novel from Sukera Sparo, very well written with a gripping story about folklore, hauntings, apparitions, nightmares with slice of life thrown into the mix.
Our main character is called Kudan Sakuya who’s an athletic scholarship student at Kudan Girl’s Highschool. This is the story of her life and the people she meets. In general terms it’s a journey of self-discovery, but at first, we are introduced to a little bit of her story and to her best friend that frequents the same school, Azuma Karen. Sakuya is on the kendo club and Karen is on the softball team.
Sakuya talking about her love for retro games.
I don’t remember quite well the exact chain of events, but it doesn’t take much before we dive into a mystery about an ominous veiled woman missing a hand, who happens to appear to random people, announcing their misfortune on the seventh day after her arrival. Her name is Kudan, the same name as our main character, even though they appear unrelated in a strict sense.
We are then introduced to Touko, whom our main character happens to randomly bump into, and the story catches up from there. Touko is a central figure in the plot, and she’s always seen in the company of her assistant Iwai-san. The first folklore tale Sakuya will try to solve is the one involving the curse of Kudan and Touko herself. For that she engages the help of the president of the Occult Research Society, Akinashi Koto.
After solving the Kudan mystery, Sakuya moves on to the next urban legend called the Fortune Message, which is a chain mail that grants wishes if performed in certain conditions. This case will involve the sports team headed by Azuma Karen and it’s a self-contained story. The Yauri Hundred Tales is the third folklore/case which is also an outlet for granting wishes involving telling a story in a group and writing a wish to be fulfilled by someone else. Said wish could be good or bad, yikes. This mystery paves the way for a much bigger development in the story, involving Touko and Koto.
Since the start of the game, we see Sakuya having recurrent nightmares about a girl falling from a cliff. Sakuya grabs her hand to save her but then the girl’s panicked expression transforms into an elongated evil smile. As if that smile wasn’t creepy enough the girl tries to weigh herself down and pull Sakuya off the cliff with her. The last part of the story involving Karen, Touko, Koto and Iwai is somewhat correlated with this nightmare.
Sakuya on a date with Touko. This was my first route.
However, there’s much to explore and since this is a yuri visual novel there’s routes and romance. The decisive plot point unravels according with the route of our choosing with some variations. If we choose Touko’s route, we can romance her in the end, and we unlock the respective CGs. Then, we can try Koto’s route (or do Koto’s route first) and unlock new dialogues while unraveling a bit more of the story from her perspective. The true ending route comes after completing the first two. This is where the story gets a bit crazy, not in a negative sense at all, it just appears formulated a bit differently and with much more detail. Since it involves more characters, it also produces a different chain of events leading to an ending with elaborate twists.
The art on this visual novel is absolutely gorgeous, full of color, movement, and soul. It’s also part of why I completed the entire thing. It’s not a long game, so it shouldn’t take long to do a natural playthrough, saving when we’re prompted with a choice, and then go back and choose the other options for the remaining routes. By skipping the dialogue and only reading the new unread lines we can save a lot of time. I had to use a guide to point me toward the true ending and it wasn’t time consuming at all to set it all up properly and then follow the story naturally. There’s also two remaining CGs right at the start that can be unlocked later in the end, completing the collection.
By reaching all endings we are presented with some warm words from the voice actors themselves, talking about their experience working in the game and voicing their opinions about their characters! It was an amazing way to end the game!
Sword of Seiros 
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