Oh no. You've been convicted of murdering 21 people and sentenced to 999 years in prison. Now you've been kidnapped by a super-rich megacorporation so you can take part in a series of games against other teams and the ultimate prize will be your freedom. You're fitted with a collar that can inject you with lethal poison at the touch of the button, and the person in control of the button is your team-mate who is also the only survivor of the kill-crazy rampage you were sent to prison for. Wowzers.
Yurukill: The Calumniation Games has a glorious premise. It's a visual novel in which you get to know a mostly entertaining cast of characters and learn how they came to end up in the games with you. You'll have to solve puzzles to progress and these should give you pause for thought for a minute or two, but if you ever get stumped there's a hint system to help you move on.
For reasons we don't have a high enough word limit to get into, there are also bullet hell shoot 'em up sections with power-ups, boss fights, and a radical J-Pop soundtrack. If bullet hell ain't your thing then you can lower the difficulty, but even on normal, you're given so many lives per stage that it's quite hard to fail if you've played a shooter before.
The only issue we had with Yurukill was that it never felt like it went far enough. It's a compelling tale and it moves at a brisk pace, but it lacks the malicious edge of a Danganronpa or the brain-breaking narrative of a Zero Escape. By the time it's all said and done, we'd enjoyed our time with it, but we were a mite disappointed that it didn't push us harder.
Related Products
Please note that some external links on this page are affiliate links, which means if you click them and make a purchase we may receive a small percentage of the sale. Please read our FTC Disclosure for more information.
Comments 5
A visual novel bullet hell shooter? Every once in a while a game comes along that feels like it was made just for me.
Does the shooter/VN balance improve as the game progresses? I played a few hours of the demo, and outside of the initial boot-up, the game was almost entirely talking.
It does seem like at least one of the shooter bits are heavily inspired by Danganronpa's logic surfing minigame.
But yeah, it does sound like the sort of game I'd dig, so I'll definitely be springing for it at some point.
I'm looking forward to this
@Ralizah It's pretty much the same throughout. It's like a third talking, a third solving puzzles, a third shooty bits. I don't think the ratio really changes all that much that. But I did think that compared to most visual novels the talking was relatively brief. The whole thing only took me like fifteen hours or so.
I enjoyed the demo a lot. You get to play the first hour of the game which is really appreciated. As a fan of Zero Escape, Danganronpa and visual novels, this game ticks all the boxes. The voice cast is really good too, with Yu Kobayashi being particularly notable as Binko. Can’t wait to play it when it releases in a few days.
Tap here to load 5 comments
Leave A Comment
Hold on there, you need to login to post a comment...