Type-NOISE: Shonen Shojo

Have you ever heard the expression 'misery porn'? In an era where the dominance of backstory as a plot driver is no longer completely sacred (see 'The Case Against the Trauma Plot'), Type-Noise dares to tell a story that is explicitly about trauma and composed of almost totally of backstory. Can such a thing still be forgiven and can there be a point to it that isn't obvious? [h3]Presentation[/h3] Type-Noise is an actually anime-styled escape room game. The character designs all have a cel-shaded look with thin, grainy linework. There are also some small animated vignettes of the characters moving as well as a hand-animated opening cinematic. It's a really distinctive look and what initially drew me to the game. The background art, however, is somewhat problematic. It has an oily, psychedelic look that makes it difficult to organically recognize objects of interest in an escape room game, although a highlight feature mitigates this somewhat. It's definitely not wrong to suggest that an escape room game be legible on its own, though. The translation is difficult. It's one of those extremely literal scripts where you can just about hear what the line was in Japanese, but it doesn'…

This game wants to talk about love, scandal, rape, public judgment, the value of negative memories, and more, but it feels too scattershot to really handle any of those topics. I think the devs should have chosen one thing to write in depth about.

Type-Noise is an escape game and visual novel hybrid (a la Zero Escape) that has mostly fun puzzles and a good, but somewhat disjointed story. Soto Ochibana awakens in a sewer with a girl his age named Zena Yugamizora. After a quick escape sequence, they exit to a strange version of Shibuya where everyone, except for four other teens, seems to be a mindless drone. After discovering that all of them have no memory of how or why they got there, and exploring the city for a bit, they are chased away by those drone-like people and forced to hide in either an arcade or a karaoke bar, depending on your choice. As Soto and Co make their way through the city, he and his current partner find themselves in a series of escape rooms relating to the latter. As they investigate the escape rooms for a means of escape, they also find "Noise" that represents their past trauma. After collecting enough pieces of Noise, Soto and his partner see a scene that reveals a key aspect of the latter's trauma. From a gameplay perspective, the escape rooms were pretty great. There is a nice variety of puzzles (even an homage to Ace Attorney at one point), and they do a good job of showcasing their respective…

I think that the game is good for what I assume to be a small team or a team with limitations. As an English speaker, I feel like the localization could be more fluid, I have a hard time believing these are teenagers with the words and sentence structure they use, but it's passable enough to get through and it seems to have been improved recently. These are just my initial thoughts on it. I read VNs and foreign media often enough that I don't mind it sometimes when the English translation is not perfect, but I think if it had a better translation, it would be more enjoyable for others as it is to me. I think it would benefit from a more casual tone for most of the speakers and maybe more thought into how a certain character would speak when translating. That being said, I like how ambitious it is and it has touched me, and that alone is something I find worthy in a game experience, and so, I am happy with it. I think if you're forgiving and used to imperfect translation, it's worth it to play.

A visual feast of a game with alright story. If you enjoy games with great visuals, then it's worth the price. The visuals are absolutely amazing, ranging from the introduction sequence to background. You can tell how much effort was put into both the main menu and the movie/animated parts/character sprite. The character designs are fairly well-put together. You can tell the personality/general background of a character from a glance of their appearances. The concepts of characters and story is fairly intriguing and is one of the main reason why I got it. You can clearly tell what games inspired the story and characters [spoiler] (ahem, looking at you Danganronpa). [/spoiler] The game also has a lot of references to different games [spoiler] (Needy streamer overload, street fighter, etc) [/spoiler] . However, I found myself fairly disappointed with how they executed said concepts. Some of the characters' stories are poorly paced (at least in my opinion) [spoiler] , especially Endo's (the sudden reveal of being twins with her horrible of a brother threw me off-guard and confused) and Honoka (I feel like Akari is mildly out of character from how she was portrayed but that might be…

Zero Escape meets The Caligula Effect. This is a visual novel that alternates between room escape sequences and a story about six people trying to escape from a city while regaining their lost memories. The room escape sequences are a lot of fun and make the game worth recommending on their own, but the story is hit-and-miss; it attempts to cover a myriad of different topics and traumas that people face, but some are handled with more grace than others. Overall, a decent game, but rough around the edges. If you've played Zero Escape or other similar visual novels with a focus on exploring lots of different locations, it's worth at least giving it a try.