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

[batman]

Oh no, another game in the "people are put into horrible situations and have to do terrible things to survive" genre. And you can play it on mobile devices! What a terrible (delightful) thing to discover the day before I have to go away for work.

[graveexcitement]

i’m playing yttd too! i’ve finished chapter one, barely into chapter two so i didn’t read the spoilers section of this post. i’m enjoying it so far, and i’m enjoying how large chunks of the Danganronpa and Zero Escape fandoms have seemingly all jumped onto YTTD in the last like, week and a half. it is, of course, extremely on brand for both fandoms. (i don’t know why this is a genre now, but i love it?)

[(Anonymous)]

YES, I HAVE ALSO BEEN WATCHING AN LP OF THIS, AND HAVE BEEN WAITING TO TELL YOU. I am afraid I can’t respond directly to your post because I’m having to go LALALALA CAN’T READ because I’ve only seen up to the end of chapter 1 (my LPer is taking a little break before chapter 2). So I will come back and reply to the main body of the post when I have finished it. But I can’t wait to post this, because I’m inpatient, so here’s some thoughts on chapter 1 and in general.

Funnily enough, I described this as a blend of Danganronpa/Zero Escape/Ace Attorney to my friend just yesterday via text! The Main Game sections also borrow heavily from Werewolf and, to a lesser extent, Town of Salem with the card roles. Town of Salem is one of my favourite games that I have hundreds of hours and victories in it (I –love- that style of strategy game, and I play opposite the ‘regular’ strategies and try to be subtle when I’m taking on ‘evil’ roles), so right up my street to be having to read the room into who is what role.

I think one thing that fascinates me is that despite its similarities, there are also notable differences across the Main Game segments. So, while it’s stylistically similar to, say, Danganronpa, there you’re shooting down theories of a murder that has already happened when people are mistaken. In Your Turn to Die, a lot of the time you’re looking at people who are outright lying – either to protect people, to just be a terrible person, to hide their card role or make themselves look suspicious, or because they’ve been threatened to etc. And the fact they’re lying is, in a way, more interesting – because can you then trust anything that character says or take it at face value, especially if the motive for their lying isn’t especially clear? Between that and the votes being kept anonymous, it creates that atmosphere of anyone could be against you in some ways far more effectively than the games it is inspired by. Take Virtue’s Last Rewards similar vote system; the voters are up on the board, so hostility is created between various sets of people. But when you don’t know who’s screwed you over? Who do you trust?

I will have a look at the Let’s Player you’ve been watching when I’m all up to date (I’m planning on playing through chapter 2 myself, but also chapter 1, to familiarise myself with the controls). If I like something enough, I’ll watch numerous LPs as long as the LPer doesn’t annoy me. I’ll also recommend the LP I’ve been watching – The Nyancave (presently my favourite LPers). They get quite into the story and because there’s 3 people there (well, 2 for 2 episodes when one of them is sick) you also get them actually discussing, and having 3 people for voicing purposes works quite well in bouncing off eachother. I’m actually very curious to see ManlyBadassHero’s voicing for certain characters (Keiji, Kai) because I’m very curious if different readings of certain voice lines will impact on how you read a character. (Also, they’re actually youtube streamers, so you can also read the live chat while listening if you’re into that sort of thing. Many of the chat are blind, so it works well for this one.)

My favourite character is Gin, because I’m a sucker for the little kid archetype apparently. Naturally, this means his death sentence is assured at some point. Sorry, kid. I’ll try to death glare at you a bit so you can stay alive.

-timydamonkey

[adelate]

In my country the age of consent is sixteen, so my head is like hey, ship away! Ahaha.

[dracothelizard]

Shouldn't antis be more worried about all the murdering and killing going on?

[(Anonymous)]

Well, chapter 2 part 1 is done and dusted! This was written stream of conscious style during the chapter (and consequently may seem to contradict itself), but I’ve also added some stuff occasionally to prior theories. Much longer than chapter 1, huh? Also, sorry, still can’t respond to your main post due to not being at part 2 yet.

SPOILERS ABOUND (also please don’t spoil me for chapter 2 part 2, ty)

I told you I’d also play through chapter 1 to get a hang of the controls. This means I’ve been able to have somewhat of a retrospective look at chapter one, and in doing so, I have clearly found the funniest line of the first chapter:

Gin [to Sou]: “Just make up some lie, meow! You’re honest to a fault, woof!”
Yup, that Sou. HONEST TO A FAULT.

So the intro scene with Kai was fairly enlightening. So Kai works for Sara’s father, and seems to have been appointed as something along the lines of a bodyguard but from the shadows? Hence, why Sara sees him as her stalker: he’s not done a very sleuthy job of following her around. Of course, this beggars lots of questions about Sara’s family, and why this is necessary. Interestingly, it also reminds me of the kidnapping scene in chapter 1: Sara’s father is absolutely nowhere to be found, but I noticed on my playing it that when Sara gets yanked into the room for the First Trial, there are three hands. So even if you count Kai as being involved on this part (and that’s not a given as we clearly run into him on the street), there’s someone else, too. Possibly Sara’s father is involved…? (Later edit: Or is this part of the running plan – knock her out and run! Although, er, it obviously went wrong if that’s the case. Or Kai wasn’t involved at all in the knockout – I can’t remember whether Sara inferred the one who knocked her out was her stalker, or stated that she actually recognised him as her stalker and therefore it was Kai.)

Attractions: I took along people I liked, with an extra side of who I thought might not pick up other clear chips as others might find them less useful. So, I like Keiji and Gin for example, but if both were options, I’d typically go for Gin as I figured less people will be willing to partner the kid as they’d think they’re gonna have to carry him. Other times if I thought somebody seemed particularly suited for an attraction, I’d team with them.

Tokens: This was so hard. That chapter intro with Gin made me super wary of the effects of tokens, especially since the kid is literally handing them out like candy but won’t take anything in return. Then I thought it might actually be a double bluff, and anybody who isn’t trusted by not having traded away any tokens might be in trouble too. So I took some and I felt terrible, because I JUST WANT TO TRADE, Gin. No freebies! Also, it occurs to me that I don’t necessarily have control of my own tokens. I don’t remember how the rules were phrased, but say if I swapped 20 tokens with Kanna, and 20 with Sou, could Kanna then use my own tokens as currency and trade them to Sou instead of her own…? (I use Kanna and Sou as the example as they’re the two who explicitly work together, even if Kanna may be doing it in a spy capacity currently.)

-timydamonkey (with more posts incoming)

[(Anonymous)]

So I had to play through the first few minutes of this chapter twice, due to going back and reloading after running out of time. What’s interesting is that the ‘out of time’ version actually gives Sara more useful info than the saving Reko version – though I’m going to stick to the Reko alive version, I think. I’ve also left myself a save for the other route if I choose to go that way.

Looking back at the list of names, now that it isn’t 1AM, brings another fact to light. We’re operating on the assumption there should be 20 names, but we’re missing Sou, Joe, Kai and potentially Nao. But assuming these are supposed to be referring to people kidnapped or part of the game, we’re also missing Kanna’s sister. There’s no other Kizuchi on that list – so unless they have different surnames, that’s odd. I also assume that Megumi is the one from the victim video. (Later edit: I’m doing alright with these!)

As suspect as Keiji is, he has to trust us to some degree. Even if you ignore that he’s always stuck up for us inexplicably even from the beginning (more so than even Joe sometimes), doing a trade in the manner he did is opening up himself to retaliation since he’d be an easy pick. It’s one thing to trade anonymously, but doing it that way and relieving yourself of the most powerful card too does confirm that he genuinely does trust us in his own way.

I’ve finally hit on what Sou reminds me of! He’s the guy who in playing Secret Hitler you want to be a fellow fascist. Generally speaking, he argues logically, and tells unpopular truths, but he uses these tactics to drive the argument in the way he wants it to go (in this Secret Hitler analogy, that would be using the foreknowledge of who your teammates are and who you need to clear of suspicion/who it’s safe to cast doubt on – and doing all of that while playing similarly to how Liberal plays look) and does it effectively enough that some people will follow along. He, er, actually reminds me quite a bit of me in Secret Hitler games (though I’d like to think I’m less of a douche about it).

I am really curious why nobody noticed the visual similarity to Sou. Kanna noticed the scarf, but dude, it’s the face. Puts a very interesting spin on that chapter opening too.

-timydamonkey