So I was surfing around yesterday when I happened upon a new upcoming visual novel collaboration by Nitroplus and 5pb. named CHAOS;HEAD.

My perceptive readers will probably quickly notice that the characters look surprisingly like those of Myself;Yourself, the Futakoi series, or the Memories Off series. The obvious response to that of course is because it is by the same character designer, Mutsumi Sakaki.

Nitroplus has always had a reputation of making dark and suspenseful games and CHAOS;HEAD is certainly no exception. After some further research online about the game and its plot, I decided to give the game a go and downloaded the trial version yesterday. It didn’t want to run on Wine so I ended up booting into Vista this morning to give it a whirl.

I did not understand as many of the lines in the script as I did with ef’s demo but I still really enjoyed playing through the game. It gets pretty freaky at times and you can really feel the main character panicking when it seems like someone’s out to get him. The part where the protagonist confronts Yua near the end of the demo is particularly creepy. Although much of that scene’s credit probably has to go to Chiaki Takahashi who has really done an awesome job voicing that yandere. The other seiyuus also do a very good job. You folks will probably recognize Hitomi Nabatame, Daisuke Ono, and possibly Hiroyuki Yoshino. The score of the game, while matching the scenes quite well, is subtle enough to not divide the player’s attention and thus, does not detract the player from the gaming experience. It kind of reminds me how the music “works” in Final Fantasy XII in a way.

CHAOS;HEAD will be released in about three weeks on April 25th. Check out the usual suspects online if you’re interested in purchasing this visual novel.