Games Like Shadow at Noon

An interactive sound novel for honkaku mystery fans

No cutscenes, no flashy spectacle. Just pages of text, over 260 illustrations, and music and ambient sound for every section. Every clue you need to solve each case is written on pages you have already read. Nothing is held back — the answer is yours to work out. (Honkaku: the Japanese school of fair-play detective fiction.) In every case, someone confesses. Across the interrogation table, you and they go through the statement line by line: any line may be true, or only half true. Press them, present evidence, turn back to the page you read — until they take it back. Exposing the lie isn't the end. You still have to understand why someone would tell it. What's buried under a lie is often the best thing about the person who told it. Amesaka, December 2015. In a house on the Yamate hill, the eldest son falls down the stairs and dies. The next morning, the family's housekeeper walks into Furumachi Precinct: I pushed him. The case is closed fast. Only Makoto Kuga, the patrol officer on night duty that night, writes down a few things that don't add up — the soup in the bowl was still warm, but the man had been dead two or three hours. Soon after, he is moved to the registry. For the next eight years he sits behind the registry window, watching people come in to register births, marriages and deaths. Every form slid under the glass, he checks line by line.

How to play

The line you need — you've already read it

Every page you've read stays in the case file. In the middle of an interrogation you can turn back and read the passage aloud to them. After one wrong answer, have a sip of coffee — Kuga will remember which section to look in.

What's inside

Contains written descriptions and illustrations of murder, the death of a child, and suicide. An Interactive Sound Novel Series by NN STUDIO