AI Somnium Files

[Seeka 12,372]

I really wanted to share this game since I finished it recently.

A.I. Somnium Files is a game by Spike Chunsoft, and is sort of a successor to the Zero Escape series in themes, but almost Danganronpa in humor (both games are referenced) 

You play as Kaname Date, an investigator for ABIS, and his eyeball, Aiba. Yes, his eyeball. It'll make sense later. 

The game starts with the murder of your friend, Shoko Nadami, whose body replicates an M.O. of a serial killer from six years before, the Cyclops Killer, who removed the right eye of all his victims.

From there it's a downspiral as you meet the large cast of characters and figure how they interact and are related to each other and this new crime. Iris, the Shovelforge LPer and Net Idol, Mizuki, your adopted daughter, Ota, the brattish otaku, and many more.

Most of the gameplay takes place in Somnium, when you make choices that effect the amount of time you have in a person's dream, and how you figure parts of crimes and gain truths otherwise unavailable to you. 

The game is amazing. Outside of some slightly tropey, silly stuff, I highly recommend it. 

Also, three of the cast members are LGBTQIA. I can't tell you about two of them, but the third is the minor character known as Mama. An information dealer, she's the bartender of a bar known as Marble in Golden. It's a little bit iffy on exactly what she is. Official, canonically, Mama identifies as gender neutral and is transgender. Her name is Osamu  Oishi, but everyone calls her Mama, probably due to her drag queen tendencies to dress, and her ownership/tending of a bar (in Japan, it's expected to call a drag queen who tends bar "Mama". In gay bars this extends to men outside of drag tending bar) and her being in drag may be the main way she gets recognized as a woman (it's Japan after all)