I'm not a fan of N1 at all, so I've pretty much been ignoring everything they put out lately. But I was bored today, so while checking out the Japanese Playstation Store, I saw some PSP demos for various games. I grabbed the Infinite Loop one, which was a whooping 119 meg, simply because I was wondering what kind of ADV N1 would make. I finally got a chance to play the demo, and this has to be a pretty huge demo. It feels like the entire game, since I'm not sure what limitations the demo has. I've played it for over 40 mins, and there's no sign of it ending.
Here's a basic rundown on what the game is like:
- It's a 2D first person graphical novel adventure like most Japanese ADVs, if you're not interested in reading/listening to dialogue for most of the game, stop reading now.
- For the 6 of you still with me, here's when it gets interesting. You play as the prince of a kingdom, but on the day before your wedding, a shinigami peaks through your door and kills you.
- What happens after this is that you're a ghost that is attached to the back of the first person that found your body, the maid Aisha. From here on everything you see is from her perspective as she goes around talking to people. Until....
- After a few days of shock, your fiancee eventually kills herself because she can no longer live on without you. This shocks your spirit into reversing time, and you resume from the moment Aisha finds your body.
- This time round when Aisha visits the medium, you realize that it is not all as it seems. You gain the ability to move from one person to another while other characters are in the same area involved in a conversation. This means you can now attach yourself to other characters if they talk to Aisha, and you can then follow them around to see what they're up to and then transfer yourself to other people they talk to!
- The next mechanic introduced is that of dreams. When you are attached to a person, when the person goes to sleep at night, you can influence his or her dreams with whatever keywords you have picked up so far. Keywords can be anything from characters, objects, events or places. If there is no connection between the keyword and the person, there is no dream, but if there is, you can influence the person to do things the next day that they would not otherwise have thought of doing.
- Armed with these mechanics, you can then proceed to influence events that prevent your fiancee from killing herself. Once you succeed in that, time will continue forward from that point, meaning you have conquered a fatal event. There are many other fatal events throughout the game's timeline, and as you experience them and get thrown back in the infinite loop, you are forced to discover more and more about the going ons of your castle and you also begin to unravel the mystery of the shinigami and your own death.
- The game provide a Time Table display as well, where you can see which persons you have followed on what days and who they interact with at which points throughout the game's timeline. The entire timeline shows 28 days, but I've only made it through like 10. Basically, as you loop through time, the events themselves will remain the same but you get a chance to swap around to follow different characters and unlock more and more of what's going on during each of the days.
- One element which gets introduced last is the Shinigami. Apparently it also attaches itself to other people, and if the character you are attached to happens to meet a character with the Shinigami attached at the moment, you start losing 1 HP per text box turn. This HP carries over, throughout, and if you get to 0 HP, you die and get looped again.
It's really refreshing and interesting to be playing a ADV with such unique new gameplay systems. It reminds me a lot of Yu-No, which I really, really liked. I'll probably eventually pick this up later on, when there isn't so much to play. The demo was an eye opener and I encourage any other ADV fan to grab it from the JPN PSN Store.
Official Site: http://nippon1.jp/consumer/infiniteloop/
Here's a basic rundown on what the game is like:
- It's a 2D first person graphical novel adventure like most Japanese ADVs, if you're not interested in reading/listening to dialogue for most of the game, stop reading now.
- For the 6 of you still with me, here's when it gets interesting. You play as the prince of a kingdom, but on the day before your wedding, a shinigami peaks through your door and kills you.
- What happens after this is that you're a ghost that is attached to the back of the first person that found your body, the maid Aisha. From here on everything you see is from her perspective as she goes around talking to people. Until....
- After a few days of shock, your fiancee eventually kills herself because she can no longer live on without you. This shocks your spirit into reversing time, and you resume from the moment Aisha finds your body.
- This time round when Aisha visits the medium, you realize that it is not all as it seems. You gain the ability to move from one person to another while other characters are in the same area involved in a conversation. This means you can now attach yourself to other characters if they talk to Aisha, and you can then follow them around to see what they're up to and then transfer yourself to other people they talk to!
- The next mechanic introduced is that of dreams. When you are attached to a person, when the person goes to sleep at night, you can influence his or her dreams with whatever keywords you have picked up so far. Keywords can be anything from characters, objects, events or places. If there is no connection between the keyword and the person, there is no dream, but if there is, you can influence the person to do things the next day that they would not otherwise have thought of doing.
- Armed with these mechanics, you can then proceed to influence events that prevent your fiancee from killing herself. Once you succeed in that, time will continue forward from that point, meaning you have conquered a fatal event. There are many other fatal events throughout the game's timeline, and as you experience them and get thrown back in the infinite loop, you are forced to discover more and more about the going ons of your castle and you also begin to unravel the mystery of the shinigami and your own death.
- The game provide a Time Table display as well, where you can see which persons you have followed on what days and who they interact with at which points throughout the game's timeline. The entire timeline shows 28 days, but I've only made it through like 10. Basically, as you loop through time, the events themselves will remain the same but you get a chance to swap around to follow different characters and unlock more and more of what's going on during each of the days.
- One element which gets introduced last is the Shinigami. Apparently it also attaches itself to other people, and if the character you are attached to happens to meet a character with the Shinigami attached at the moment, you start losing 1 HP per text box turn. This HP carries over, throughout, and if you get to 0 HP, you die and get looped again.
It's really refreshing and interesting to be playing a ADV with such unique new gameplay systems. It reminds me a lot of Yu-No, which I really, really liked. I'll probably eventually pick this up later on, when there isn't so much to play. The demo was an eye opener and I encourage any other ADV fan to grab it from the JPN PSN Store.
Official Site: http://nippon1.jp/consumer/infiniteloop/
