A series of crimes believed to be caused by Silent, a worm created from emotions like hatred and sadness, is at the core of Lux-Pain’s story. Silent infects humans and coerces them to commit crimes. Takeo Higashino, Producer at Marvelous, tells us social problems in Japan such as school refusal, group suicide, mental abuse on Internet, and animal abuse affected and inspired him to create Lux-Pain.
At the center of madness is Atsuki Saijo, a teenager whose parents were killed by indirectly by Silent. “His family was killed by silent-infected patients just in front of him. Then, having feelings of hate and sorrow, he got to think of silent eradication as his mission,” Higashino clarified. Atsuki undergoes an operation to gain Lux-Pain, a power that lets him eradicate Silent inside the minds of the infected.
Players do this by tracking down irritated residents, a sign that Silent could control them, and scratching the screen to find the worms in Sigma mode. “I came up with this idea to express a realistic sense of searching for human’s nature, which is unable to find easily,” Higashino explains. Find all of the worms before the time runs out and the game progresses. While the story is a key element of Lux-Pain Higashino stresses there is more gameplay. “Gameplay makes up one and half to double time compared to reading the story.”
Once the story is complete Silent seekers can look forward to post game content. “It [Lux-Pain] has multiple endings and scenarios along with the game. After clearing the game, users are given fun bonus such as special scenarios and unique mails.” Marvelous translated Lux-Pain internally, but were unable to keep the original voice acting in the game.
Outside of a few rare hits like the Phoenix Wright series visual novels, even those with lengthy gameplay intermissions, tend not to perform well in North America. Higashino is aware of this and has reasonable expectations. “I don’t think it can be a mainstream game, but I hope it spreads by word of mouth. We want Lux-Pain to be a great hit in the USA and prepare for the next project.”
