New Project: SHINRAI Saku - Blooming Beyond Despair

If you've been following us on social media or kept an eye on our development blog, you probably already know that we've been eagerly at work on our next visual novel project for a while now.

But given that, today, we're celebrating the release anniversaries of SHINRAI - Broken Beyond Despair and GENBA no Kizuna, we thought it's about time to make an official announcement post here as well and not only share some more info on it, but even go ahead and publish its store page.

There, you can now check out some first screenshots, read a bit about what to expect and, in case it does strike your fancy, add it to your wishlist!

Over on our website, you can also find some intro cards for some of the cast, including both old and new faces, with the remaining characters getting revealed in the coming weeks.

But with all that out of the way, let's talk a little more about SHINRAI Saku, shall we?

• What is SHINRAI Saku - Blooming Beyond Despair?

As the note at the top of the store page says, rather than a full-fledged sequel, Saku can be considered more of an additional "epilogue episode" to the original SHINRAI. It takes place a month later and primarily deals with the aftermath of that dreadful Halloween night.

We really want to stress that this is not going to be another murder mystery (although there will be some very light mystery elements to it). Instead, it's a character-focused story revolving around the difficulties and struggles Raiko and her classmates are facing, while trying to move on from that horrible experience.

These were all things that were originally intended to be included in the actual sequel Withering Without Hope (WWH), anyway. However, after careful consideration, we've decided to splice them off and turn them into a separate mini project instead.

Because this will allow us to address them in a little more detail, while then being able to fully dedicate WWH to its new story, characters and murder case. It would've just felt a bit too bloated if we had included the BBD aftermath in it as well, so we figured that this would be the best course of action.

• Scope of the project

As a result, SHINRAI Saku will be a relatively short project. While still in need of a bit more polish, the script is fully written already and adds up to around 40,000 words, so it's a little less than a third of the length of the original SHINRAI.

In general, we're trying to keep this project very small and simple in order to release it ASAP.

• A visual novel in the truest sense of the term

As you might have already seen on the store page, one decision to help keep the development cycle short was to make SHINRAI Saku a kinetic experience. This basically means that there won't be any interactivity. So no choices, investigation segments or evidence presentation this time around.

While there will be need for Raiko to use her deductive skills again and players will be encouraged to ponder along, you can think of it as more of one of those situations where Sherlock Holmes or Conan Edogawa deduce the truth purely through observation rather than full-on investigation.

• Conclusion

SHINRAI Saku is certainly going to be a bit different, but even if there won't be another murder case for you to solve this time, we still hope that