Shuten Order

Whatever the opposite of writer's block is, Kazutaka Kodaka has it.

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The co-founder of Too Kyo Games has only just emerged from creating The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, a strategy-RPG/visual-novel hybrid with 100 alternate endings and about 150 hours of storytelling to get us to them. Across those arcs, the tale morphs to become a romance, a survival horror, a murder mystery and a battle royale, all achieved with subtle shifts in narrative framing. Now comes Shuten Order, another sprawling story experiment — albeit at a more polite 30 hours — but one that takes genre shapeshifting to the next level.

As you venture through its world you're served five self-contained games, all working towards a common goal.

The narrative split follows a dissection of a more gruesome kind. The spiritual leader of the Shuten nation is found chopped into parts and scattered across a park. Somehow this doesn't prevent her from waking up in a nearby hotel room and being tasked with bringing her killer to justice. The culprit is one of her inner circle of five ministers, and each ministry has a different way of doing business. In justice, expect Ace Attorney-style detective work, sniffing out evidence and the contradictions it illustrates. But in security, the fight's more urgent. Here you're trapped in isometric mazes trying to outrun and outwit an unstoppable pursuer. For each strand, you pick a path and see it through to earn the facts that will put the whole sorry mess to bed.

These two examples are the most mechanically diverse. Like the detective game, the remaining three are all variants on text-driven adventures — unsurprising given the narrative pedigree at Too Kyo.