gamescom Root Letter Preview

We had a sneak preview of the western version of Root Letter at gamescom. The visual novel has already seen a release in Japan, but we will be getting an English language version in the fourth quarter of 2016.

Described as being “Professor Leyton meets visual novel”, the game adds a whodunit type element to the traditional fodder of the visual novel. As you might expect from the title, the game is centred around a series of letters. Your nameless protagonist was pen pals with a girl named Aya 15 years ago, before she mysteriously disappeared. After no contact for a decade and a half, you set out to find out just what happened to her, and stumble upon a letter that was never sent from all those years ago. In it, you come across a stark revelation from Ava: “I killed someone, I'm in trouble”.

This sets you off to find out just what did happen to Ava, and to do that, you’ll need to follow clues from the letters that she sent you, and her classmates at the time. With seven of her classmates in the frame for being involved, your investigative powers will be tested to establish who did what and why.

The game is not purely decision based as a traditional visual novel, taking on as it does a more point and click adventure style of play. As you’d expect though, conversations between characters are of the utmost importance, with dialogue and plot being the key focus. There are multiple endings to the game depending on what information you uncover during your investigations, so as to add some additional replay value to the game.

As you’d expect from a visual novel, animation is at a minimum and the game is largely based around stationary artwork in a classical Japanese style. It’s all very crisp and well-drawn. LovePlus character designer Tarō Minoboshi is in charge of planning and character designs and the influence is evident in the drawing style which is very similar to that game. Unlike LovePlus, however, we will be seeing Root Letter in the west when it releases later this year