Operation Backlog Completion 2025

New Trailer for No Sleep for Kaname Date Shows Returning Characters and More

 Video games  2 Responses »  Tagged with: , ,
Apr 232025
 

There’s a new trailer out for No Sleep for Kaname Date, providing a general introduction to the game.

One thing that stands out to me is that partway through, the trailer describes the game as “Somnium x Escape Room.”

The addition of the escape room features is definitely something they’ve been highlighting, and this trailer makes that more evident than ever. From everything we’ve seen it seems like you’ll play as Date during investigations, Aiba in the Somniums, and now also Iris for the escape room parts.

We get to see a quick glimpse of new scenes not seen in the previous trailers, as well as several more returning characters, like Ota and Boss.

It also starts with a look at a UFO, but I’m not convinced the whole “Iris was abducted by a UFO” premise won’t turn out to be a trick in some way. An actual alien abduction feels a bit too out of line with the rest of the series.

(I can only imagine how random the part at 1:12 must seem to anyone who isn’t already familiar with Date.)

You know, the more I think about this game being set in between the two main games, the more intrigued I am. I enjoyed Nirvana Initiative, but it never fit together with the first game as neatly as I would have liked. My ideal hope is that No Sleep for Kaname Date makes use of its place in the timeline to smooth things out between the two games a little better.

In the meantime, we’re one day away from the release of The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, and it’s gotten excellent reviews. I can’t wait to start it. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 also comes out tomorrow and got fantastic reviews, so my backlog is crying. I’m sure I’ll be all caught up in time for No Sleep for Kaname Date.

…Right?

Anyway, what are you thoughts on the latest trailer for No Sleep for Kaname Date?

New Trailer (and Steam Page) for No Sleep for Kaname Date

 Video games  2 Responses »  Tagged with: , ,
Apr 092025
 

No Sleep for Kaname Date: From AI: The Somnium Files was my favorite surprise announcement from March’s Nintendo Direct, so let’s talk about the latest details!

Spike Chunsoft released a new trailer for No Sleep for Kaname Date, along with an official game description that confirms the new escape room segments the first trailer implied.

In addition to the “Investigation” and “Somnium” gameplay sections from the previous games, there will now also be “Escape” sections where the player must solve puzzles to escape locked rooms.

It also confirms that it takes place only one day after the resolution of the first game, which raises certain questions for me (you know what I’m talking about), but since it also says Iris has been abducted by a UFO, I have to question what’s going on in this game in general.

The trailer itself doesn’t show too much besides what was already in the Nintendo Direct trailer.

In addition to the trailer, thhe official website has been updated to reveal two new characters, one being an ABIS engineer named Hina and the other being the host of the escape game, Akemi.

The Steam page is up as well, with some new screenshots.

Preorders are open now, too. I’m a little disappointed that there isn’t a limited edition this time, but you do get a couple holographic stickers plus an exclusive Mizuki sticker if you order from Spike Chunsoft’s store. The store page also confirms that the Switch 2 version is a Game-Key Card rather than a regular game card, so even if I intended to get a Switch 2 at launch, I’d still be going for the Switch version.

Anyway, although I have some criticisms of Nirvana Initiative’s story compared to that of the first game, I’m excited for this new game and I can’t wait to see where it goes. What are your hopes for No Sleep for Kaname Date?

May Mystery Game Madness: AI: The Somnium Files Review

 Celebrating All Things Mysterious, Reviews, Video games  5 Responses »  Tagged with: , ,
May 312022
 

Today is the last day of May, bringing our mystery game celebration to an end! This post should have gone up yesterday, but Internet trouble got in the way.

(Apologies for any formatting strangeness; I’ll fix it as soon as I have proper Internet again. Update: fixed.)

We’ll be closing out the celebration with AI: The Somnium Files.

I’ve heard good things about this one and intended to check it out for a while, especially since the sequel is coming out soon.

You play as Kaname Date, a detective who is part of a special division that makes use of advanced technology to enter people’s minds in a dream world called Somnium. A murder soon puts him on the trail of a killer who gouges out the victim’s left eye.

Date’s own eye is also missing, but it’s been replaced by AI-Ball, or Aiba, an artificial intelligence that acts as your partner and also gives him special skills to use in his investigation.

While everything is conducted in a 3D space, the majority of AI: The Somnium Files has a lot in common with visual novels. You spend a lot of time talking to characters. You also can investigate by inspecting objects in the room. Sometimes it’s completely unnecessary, but it’s well worth it for the funny dialogue, which is often so off-the-wall I never knew what to expect.

Despite that humorous side, it’s a fairly dark story overall, with grim murders and a twisted mystery that keeps piling on more layers.

The Somniums, which I mentioned earlier, provide more gameplay-focused segments. You enter a character’s dream world as Aiba and search for a way to unlock the subject’s mental locks to see the secrets they’re hiding. It gives you a clue about what to do, and you need to figure out how, using the strange logic of the characters’ dreams.

There’s a 6 minute time limit in these sections, but don’t panic. Time only passes while you’re moving or performing an action.

Each action takes a set amount of time to complete, and you can gain optional “timies” that let you reduce the time used, so the time limit really just turns it into a puzzle. How can you manage your actions and timies to bypass the mental locks without running out of time? (And if your final action would go over the time limit, it lets that slide.)

Believe me, I was worried when I first saw that timer appeared, but I ended up enjoying the Somniums.

I was less crazy about the other gameplay segment, occasional action sequences that have you perform QTEs or line up a shot within the time limit. I could have done without those.

The game also has a flow chart, which immediately brought to mind the Zero Escape series, since it’s from the same creator. However, the flow chart is much more straightforward here. Some Somniums have branching paths that lead to different routes, and certain routes are locked until you’ve made progress on others (I only encountered two locks, but I don’t know if that’s because of the order I went in).

Each route leads to different discoveries and pieces of the truth, which makes the story confusing at times, but it’s once the pieces finally start to come together, everything that didn’t make sense before falls into place.

I loved AI: The Somnium Files. The story was fantastic, the oddball humor was a good way to temper the dark mystery, and the Somnium gameplay was pretty clever. I hope the sequel is as good as this one, because now I can’t wait to play it!