Closed Nightmare, Nippon Ichi’s upcoming horror game with live-action video segments, recently got a ton of new info on how the game plays, as well as several more screenshots of the gameplay in a Chinese demo version. [Thanks, Bahamut!]
The game starts off with the female protagonist, who wakes up in a foreign room with no memories and a paralyzed arm. She receives a call from a mysterious young girl who calls herself Chizuru, and Chizuru informs the protagonist that her name is Maria Kamishiro, and that she doesn’t have her memories because she is “incomplete”. According to Chizuru, Maria must complete an test, and that the first thing she needs to do is find a way out of the room.
While the use of live-action footage is quite unusual in this day and age, gameplay in Closed Nightmare is actually quite basic. The game is split into video sequences, visual novel portions, as well as playable portions. The playable portions are the escape room-like puzzle sequences that are quite common in horror games.
By completing puzzles, Maria will receive items, such as keys and other clues, that can help her escape.
Because the game follows one of the traditional structures for a horror game visual novel, Bahamut noted that the live-action sequences didn’t seem out of place, and could even enhance the horror experience for people.
The game has various options for the movie sequences, such as being able to pause, stop, restart, and toggle subtitles on or off. There will also be an event timeline so players can jump back to previous parts of the game to try different paths, and players can easily tell which choices were previously made as the game will mark it out for them. There is also a Character List for players to refresh their memory.
Otherwise, players should expect a story-based horror experience… and of course, that includes endings with Game Overs.
By the end of the demo, the story map looked like the above picture, giving some scale as to how much content is in the game.
Closed Nightmare releases in Japan on July 19, 2018 for PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch.
