The Season of Books and Keys Opens Its Trial Chapter on PC
The trial puts Yonezawa's novel in front of players months ahead of a winter launch, with the mystery design outsourced to a Liar-soft writer and full-screen text staging that departs from the character-sprite visual novel format.
Reporting from 1 source: GAME Watch (Impress).
Shueisha Games has released a trial version of The Season of Books and Keys, a PC adventure game built on Honobu Yonezawa's novel. The trial covers Chapter 1, "913," in which library committee members Jiro Horikawa and Shimon Matsukura take on a safe left behind by their deceased grandfather. iMel handles development, with mystery design by Nozomu Unabara of Liar-soft. The full version is scheduled for this winter, price undecided.
The trial runs Chapter 1, titled "913," and frames the puzzle around an "unopenable safe" left by the pair's deceased grandfather, which the two approach from their respective perspectives. Jiro Horikawa is voiced by Kazuki Ura and Shimon Matsukura by Yuichiro Umehara.
Shueisha Games calls the genre "drama-like adventure," described as fusing the experience of reading text with the experience of watching it. The game has no character sprites; text is displayed across the entire screen instead. Keywords are applied to text in important scenes to solve mysteries, and some passages play closer to a point-and-click adventure. iMel develops, and Nozomu Unabara, credited on Evening Maiden and Adabana Odd Tales at Liar-soft, designs the deduction sections.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.
Sources
- GAME Watch (Impress) 「氷菓」を手掛けた米澤穂信氏の小説を原作とするADV「本と鍵の季節」体験版が配信