You're Really Somethin', Kid.

[rionaleonhart]

I saw that futuresoon was posting about a game called Your Turn to Die, and my response was, 'Well, this sounds likely to be up my street from the title alone.'

I investigated.

It was up my street.

Your Turn to Die is a game in the strangely populous 'a bunch of people are abducted and put through traumatic, murder-filled trials for mysterious reasons' genre; it feels very inspired by Zero Escape and Danganronpa, with a little more emphasis on horror. (I don't know why there are so many games on this theme, but I'm not complaining for a second.) Mechanically, it's closer to Ace Attorney, although there are various minigames. The game is available at no cost, but I've been watching a Let's Play by ManlyBadassHero instead. A lot of Let's Players can get a bit loud and overexcited, so I'm enjoying Manly's style; he's engaged with the game and reacting to things, but he's also relaxed and soft-spoken. (This works extremely well when he's reading Keiji's lines.)

Frustratingly, the game is episodic and as yet unfinished, but there's a solid amount out already. It's remarkably high-quality for a game that was released for free and translated unofficially!



Poor Joe. He was a good kid. I like that, given the options 'you die, everyone else survives to continue the killing game' or 'you and your friend survive and escape, everyone else dies', he aimed for the option that meant he could live rather than going for self-sacrifice, but he took the trouble to tell everyone that he didn't harbour any bitterness towards them when they scuppered that plan. He didn't want to die, but he didn't want people to be haunted by his death either.

(I also enjoyed how extremely fucked up his execution was. Poor Sara, given a button and told 'if you press it fast enough, it'll slow down; maaaaaaybe it'll stop?' I love that she's still desperately pressing it long after he's died.)

And then Sara starts being haunted by horrible hallucinations of Joe! I'm so in favour of this.

Riona: FUTURESOON WHY WOULD YOU GET ME INTO ANOTHER DEATH GAME
futuresoon: ahahaha YOU WERE EXACTLY WHO I WAS HOPING TO GET INTO IT. "the protagonist having hallucinations of her horribly-murdered best friend is an actual game mechanic," i thought, "riona absolutely needs to see this." but i didn't want to spoil.

Sou's backstory is really interesting! He's such a survive-at-all-costs lying little shit because he learnt that this killing game's been simulated countless times with AIs, and he never survived the simulations, and he desperately concluded, 'Well, if I have a 0% chance of survival, I'm going to have to make myself into someone else who maybe can survive.' (Are we the real people this time, or is there a chance this is just another AI simulation?) I also love that, despite his efforts to pretend otherwise, he genuinely cares about Kanna.



I'm shipping Keiji/Sara and it's going to bring the fandom police down on my head (Sara is seventeen; Keiji's age is unspecified, but he's definitely over twenty; parts of Tumblr are convinced that so much as thinking about these two fictional characters kissing is an Actual Crime). I just really enjoy the ambiguity of Keiji. Is he actually flirting, or is he just playing around? Is he untrustworthy, or is he the most trustworthy person here? He's so cagey (no pun intended) about his past and his motivations. He's probably my favourite character, and his interactions with Sara are really interesting. Maybe I should write slightly unsettling Keiji/Sara-tinged fanfiction.

My favourite response I've seen to anti-Keiji/Sara sentiment: 'oh no, someone call the poli... oh wait.' Keiji is a police detective.

There's a character in this game who's mockingly addressed at one point as 'Cubetaro Hamburger', and his real name (Q-taro Burgerberg) is genuinely sillier than that.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I like Werewolf, but I haven't played too much of it due to a) lack of opportunity and, relatedly, b) it's hard to play evil roles early on in Werewolf when you don't know the other roles well enough to lie effectively. I'm a huge Town of Salem fan, and I know all the roles well enough to lie effectively. It doesn't always work - for instance, Jester is the Sacrifice-like role of Town of Salem, and I play it very subtly as opposed to the brazen way most people play it which immediately marks them as that role, but sometimes it's too subtle for less experienced players to notice - but I love the strategy element and it drives me crazy when people forget that it is supposed to be a strategy game. I got so annoyed when they altered the spy role as it was "too powerful" when you just had to be strategic - a smart mafia could weed out spies and other town members by throwing about fake information and names or pretending to be blackmailed. It could be powerful for both sides, you just had to use your brains about how to play it.

Ahem. Sorry for the Town of Salem diatribe, don't get much chance to talk about it and Werewolf is similar enough that you might appreciate the explanation. :P

And yes, I originally read that person as being the sacrifice. I did let go of that very early, though - but then when I realised they were just being a bit of a wind up, I wondered if they were actually the Sage and knew the Sage wouldn't counterclaim because it was them, and wanted to see if they could needle the keymaster into revealing - it's the sort of play I might do if anything could be achieved more easily that way, not that it was in any way clear in this case that it would achieve anything. (I'm not sure the Sage could actually do that, but it says they can't lie about the results of their divination, not their role. Or would claiming to be the keymaster count as lying even though they weren't actually saying they'd divined anything? Hmm, wording.)

[graveexcitement]

i do appreciate the town of salem info! it makes me kind of want to try it out, though i don't know anyone else who plays it -- all my Werewolf and One Night Ultimate Werewolf experience has been IRL, and while i've played a decent amount of Mafia online (on epicmafia) it's always been with online friends/acquaintances, not randoms.

subtle/less obvious/strategic plays are fun! my heartrate always shoots up whenever i'm an evil role, but i like to think i'm at least decent at it anyways. my favorite testimonial i've ever received is, "it's always the quiet ones that are mafia. unless grave is mafia then it kinda gets fucky."