Banshee's Last Cry / Kamaitachi no Yoru

An app came out on iOS a few weeks ago called "Banshee's Last Cry", it's published by Aksys and is described as "a thrilling visual novel that takes readers on a deadly thrill ride of murder and deception". It's a free download where you pay £2.49 as an in-app purchase to unlock the full game.

It's actually a localisation of an old game by Chunsoft for the Super Famicom, called "Kamaitachi no yoru", or "Night of the Sickle Weasel". I guess they primarily called it "Banshee's Last Cry" to make it look a little bit related to "Virtue's Last Reward" - well, enough to lure fans into spending their £2.49.

They've changed the location of the original story from a ski lodge in Japan to a ski lodge in Canada, made some technological changes to bring it into 2014, re-recorded the soundtrack (some music is the same, some different - some so it doesn't sound so traditionally Japanese, I suppose), gone to an actual Canadian ski lodge to take pictures to replace all the original background images, changed all the names of the characters, and changed the folk mythology from Japanese to Irish.

I've been reading it, and here's what I have to say:

The story is perhaps more "Choose Your Own Adventure" than you might expect from something described as a visual novel. It's what they used to call a "sound novel" - basically a light novel with atmospheric background images, music and sound effects. No character portraits or voices.

The main story really feels like a murder mystery from the 1990s. The murders and descriptions are really quite gruesome sometimes. The plot actually seems really familiar to me, perhaps similar methods were used in some Kindaichi manga I read, or some Detective Conan anime I watched. As such, it was fairly easy for me to pinpoint the correct suspect and details about the initial murder (though I certainly didn't get it on my first play-through). The main difficulty for me was finding the choices in the story where I could express my thoughts in order to trigger the ending.

Another comment on the 1990s feeling of the game - the attitude of the male protagonist and other characters is pretty much that females in the story only exist to be protected. They're rounded up together, and the way they don't seem to be suspects seems dismissive. Any attempt by them to be useful on their own ends up disastrous. I don't think they really even notice.

After my first play-through, certain new options appeared in the game, which is an interesting way of doing things. Your reasoning in previous play-throughs brings you closer to being able to solve the mystery. However, the player does not know - if I use this option it appears to be a short cut of a few pages, but is that relevant to any in-game path change?

Having said that reasoning brings you closer to the correct mystery ending... it's also the case that some endings completely diverge; one ending you can trigger very early in the story has you leaving before any murders take place - and so in that timeline the murder doesn't take place that night (why is that?). In the very worst ending (which is also the first one I saw), I still don't fully understand who committed all the murders at the end.

After I solved the main murder mystery and the credits rolled, a lot more options open up in the game. They lead to far more light-hearted stories, joke endings, and a lot of puns on the word "banshee". It is clear why they are not present when the game is first started. Two of the new endings also had end credits rolling, so they must be the "Occult" and "Spy" endings mentioned in the Wikipedia article on Kamaitachi no Yoru. One is just funny, the other a secret code message which I managed to decode straight away (but it was still fun to read the story). There's also a path with a reference to Chunsoft's "Mystery Dungeon" line of games. Oh it would have been nice if there really was a roguelike built into the app, hahaha.

Issues I have with the localisation - very few. One comment near the beginning about how silly it is to say "cheese" for photos because people end pulling an "ooh" face only really works if you consider the Japanese pronunciation of "cheese" ("chi-zu-"). There are some errors; in the "Snow Maze" path, there's a mistake where they give the incorrect name for one of the characters, accidentally marrying her to the wrong character ("Colleen Buchanan"). In the end of the path with the secret code, the font size messes up and you're left scrolling the page left and right to read.

It would have been nice to have something telling me which endings I've seen so I know if there's anything left to aim for. It would have been nice if like the original Super Famicon version, we could see silhouettes of each character in order to feed the imagination. It would have been nice to unlock some sort of diagram of branching paths for the after-story so I can see the last few things to do. It would be nice if there was a "clear data" option in the menu so I could compare the options available at the start to the ones available after many play-throughs.

Best of all, it would have been nice if it was on Android so I didn't have to borrow an iPad to read it! (I think that's "coming soon").

But overall, it's been a fun read, it was a good price, and it's been a pleasure to experience this little piece of sound novel history so long after the game originally came out. I hope they decide to bring more visual / sound novels out in English on mobile / tablet devices, because it's a very convenient platform for reading interactive fiction.

Virtue's Last Reward (3DS) coming to the UK

Earlier today, I put a preorder in for a 3DS game called Virtue's Last Reward, via Amazon.co.uk.

It was originally called "Kyokugen Dasshutsu ADV Zennin Shibou Desu", and is the sequel to "999: 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors"... which I haven't actually played yet. I was going to make myself wait until I'd read through another path in Ever 17 first...

Original Japanese trailer with English fansubs

It comes out on the 16th of November 2012, and is being published by Rising Star Games. I wish they had something to notify me when they announce these things; it was announced back in August and I didn't know until today. It also comes out on Vita (but I don't have one of those). It'll be Japanese voices and English subs, according to the sales blurb.

It also starts off "Everybody dies… …can you escape the inescapable?" so, thematically consistent and ever optimistic, yeah. :)

Mystery Dungeon Shiren DS game heading for the US

I found out that the Nintendo DS "Shiren The Wanderer Mystery Dungeon" game is being translated into English to be released in North America at the beginning of March, so I placed a preorder. ^__^

Shiren is a "graphical roguelike" game which I've heard a lot about but haven't actually played. I could have, since there's an English translation patch for the 2nd Shiren game on Super Famicon released by Aeon Genesis. But, I haven't gotten round to trying it. I'm fond of roguelikes like Angband and games like "Izuna: Legend Of The Unemployed Ninja" and "Azure Dreams" (and to a lesser extent, it's sequel Tao's Adventure for DS). My first was "Sword Of Fargoal" for the Commodore 64 - I think it was one of the best games out at the time! Randomly generated dungeons and the drive to fight all the way through, challenging and unforgiving, I like it.

I bought another 2nd hand Gameboy Advance SP over the weekend, a battered old 2nd hand Charizard flame red one, scuffed everywhere on the outside and with "KYLE" scratched into the back, presumably by its previous owner. Cute. But, it has a perfect screen and that's what's important. It came with a copy of Advance Wars, but I started playing my copy of Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team instead. ^_^ I bought the game a few months ago (when I got into the Izuna game) but never tried it out. It's by Chunsoft, same as the Shiren games, and I have to say it's lots of fun, I'm really enjoying it. This game blends Pokemon and roguelike gaming together pretty well. You can recruit friendly Pokemon to join you on your quests, and I haven't played any roguelike where you take a party into the dungeon before; that's new to me. I also like that you can collect friend pokemon - I don't think there's an actual pokedex so you know how far through you are, though.

It's pretty easy compared to most of the roguelikes I've played, but it is a Pokemon game after all. There's a personality test to decide which Pokemon you will be throughout the game, and I turned out to be a Charmander. ^_^ I tend to be fire type in personality tests...

I haven't played any Shiren games before, but I've played "Izuna Legend Of The Unemployed Ninja" for DS, and I was amazed how much the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon game looks and plays like Izuna. The Izuna game looks graphically very similar (including the size of sprites how much you see of the map), plays almost the same way (just the weapon / armour / scroll powering up system is different), and even assigns the same buttons to commands - right trigger to easily maneuver diagonals, left trigger for easy access use your projectile/trap weapons, B button to dash in a direction until you bump into something interesting.... So I guess it's a complete rip-off of Shiren. But, at least that means it's a rip-off that's complete. ^_^

I also only found out today that a game I bought on Play Asia years ago super-cheap (like, a fiver or something) - Dragon Quest: Shonen Yangus to Fushigi no Dungeon - is another roguelike. I never even took it out of the box yet, though, hehe. You see, I heard that the Dragon Quest game it spins off from wasn't too great, so I didn't start that, so I never looked into the spinoff game...

I'm really looking forward to Shiren DS. Shiren is famously good and infamously difficult and unforgiving. There's a 50 second trailer for it here. It starts off "From the makers of Pokemon {R) Mystery Dungeon"... ^_^;;