428: Fuusa Sareta Shibuya de

Description

428: Fuusa Sareta Shibuya de follows five main viewpoints through a ten hour story set in Shibuya, beginning with a kidnapping and expanding into a chain of events involving a detective, a former youth group leader, a virus researcher, a freelance writer, and a person in a cat costume. The story is told through still live action images, text, music, and sound effects, with each protagonist’s choices changing the path of other protagonists elsewhere in the city. Its structure connects it closely to Chunsoft’s earlier live action sound novel Machi: Unmei no Kousaten, while keeping the main story focused on one event rather than separate parallel stories.

Gameplay is the classic sound novel: reading each scenario, make choices at key points, search for important keywords in the text. The game also includes a JUMP command to move between protagonists when the story blocks further progress. The timeline advances in one hour units, and when a route reaches a dead end, the player can move back through earlier times and change another character’s actions to open the blocked path. The Wii version includes bonus scenarios by Takemaru Abiko of Kamaitachi no Yoru and TYPE MOON, and these sit alongside the main suspense story as additional material unlocked through play.

Contemporary Japanese reception was extremely strong. Famitsu four reviewers each gave the Wii version 10 out of 10, praising the ending stretch, the volume and timing of the crossing scenarios, the JUMP structure, the text, the sound, and the visual direction. The game also received an Excellence Award at the Japan Game Awards 2009, where the committee praised the sound direction, the branching scenario, the five minute plot movement, and the Shibuya location shooting. It is now remembered as one of the clearest examples of the sound novel form, because every choice, time block, and viewpoint change pushes the player back into the same crowded day in Shibuya.