The Sekimeiya is a game I've been looking forward to ever since 2019, when the echoes of the name "Secret VN" began floating through the various Discord servers I've been in. Thanks to my work on the Remember11 improvement patch, "Gestalt Edition," I landed myself a spot among the beta testers, so as soon as the game was unlocked, I began my climb of the mountain.


It is now late April, and while I just finished up my playthrough, it still feels like it isn't over. The Sekimeiya is an incredibly complex mystery, so much so that there are still things that remain unclear to me, and I'll likely be brainstorming them for a good while. The meticulous labyrinth this game spins is insanity, and while I will argue that some of it dips a bit into convoluted territory, it's still extremely impressive and well put-together. The sheer amount of thought and detail put into every nook and cranny of this Visual Novel is staggering, and it's frankly incredible for the writer's first official go in the medium.

Keeping up with the positives, one of my favorite things about this game is this: everyone is SMART. It feels like everyone in the game is thinking and responding to their environment, and I live for it. I've read so many VNs where the characters are completely insufferable because they don't stop and think, but that's far from a problem in The Sekimeiya. In fact, the sheer walls of text coming from the protagonist—Atsuki—alone could fill an entire chapter. He thinks through everything, and he's constantly building on his theories, only for them to be torn down by the game's narrative. I would kill for other VNs to have even a fraction of what Atsuki has. Another character, Sai, is the other standout. He's also incredibly smart, but he's also partial to screwing with people, a trait I very much enjoy in VNs.

These positives are at their best in the first chapter, which makes up the first third of the game. The introduction is incredibly intriguing, and while the game is fairly slow, it is DENSE. For this very reason, I don't think this game will be for everyone. There's lots of information, and the game expects you to pay attention. There were days where, even though I was extremely interested, I didn't end up reading, because I knew I had to be perfectly awake and in the right state of mind to process everything. There's no speedreading in The Sekimeiya—if you forget things, they'll come back to bite you. Luckily, however, the game supplies you with another great feature: the summary and notes section.


Not only does it provide you with great summaries of each and every scene, but it provides what characters were present, specific scene titles, and a spot to write down your notes and thoughts on the scene as well. I've never seen another game do this, and I really hope this will be adopted in future games. The QoL in general is just incredible. You're able to search for specific keywords and sentences, copy text, jump to various points in dialogue, switch text fonts and colors around... It's glorious.

The OST, art, and presentation in general are also pretty great. I enjoyed the character sprites quite a bit, and it was a pleasure whenever the odd CG showed up. Despite this, a few of the CGs weren't placed as well as they could've been, which is disappointing. There were a few scenes that would've benefited quite a bit from the extra art, but instead just received a red filter on the screen. I'd like to call specific attention to the title screen and the BGs, because they're all GORGEOUS. The OST is also quite nice, even if it is dominated by mostly EDM, a style I don't typically listen to. Even so, I found it to be very enjoyable, except for two songs that were so incredibly distracting that they actually kept me from being able to read properly. Luckily, this game allows you to mess with the volume of the music and sound effects independently, so I just muted the music until the next scene. There were some standout tracks that I loved, to the point where I even used the game's detailed UI to find the songs outside of the game.

I was practically in heaven during the first chapter of this. It's been a long time since I've been so engaged with a game, and my notes went on for longer than the summary sections themselves. I was so incredibly into everything that was going on, and the ending of Chapter 1 drove that home. All the game needed to do to be one of my new favorite VNs was to keep up that energy and intrigue...


As much as I really enjoyed my time with The Sekimeiya, not all of it was great. The mystery in the game is fantastic, and I can't express enough how impressive it is... but the same can't be said for its characters, and, in some cases, its pacing. I previously mentioned that every character was smart, and while yes, this is a very nice change of pace from other VNs, this does not inherently make them interesting. The cast in The Sekimeiya exists to move the plot forward, and while there are some character moments, I can't say they're anywhere close to the focus. The stories I tend to resonate with the most are character-driven, and as such, I always look for characters that scratch that itch for me. Unfortunately, however, this game doesn't achieve that much at all with its cast. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that the vast majority are pretty bland. I would still say some are entertaining and fun to watch, but the mystery is definitely what you're signing up for here. This actually ties in to what I said earlier—how this game isn't for everyone. There aren't really any characters that'll carry the game for you; the mystery is the main draw, so you better be ready for that.

In regards to the pacing, I would say that Chapter 1 is perfect. It starts off quite slowly, but the build-up is steady, and its increasing sense of intrigue kept me hooked from start to finish. The chapters after the first one then wavered quite a bit, from fairly speedy to quite slow. I don't have an issue with slow pacing—some of my favorite works are built upon it. The issue comes, however, when the pacing is all over the place, or when the player's time is spent on things that aren't worth the investment. There is one main section at around the midpoint that fulfills this criteria, and it was the lowest point of the game. And while the story did pick back up again eventually, my enthusiasm never quite reached the same heights.

After the midpoint, the game picks back up, and the last few chapters are very good. I do still have one small gripe with them, though: while the mystery is incredibly detailed, some of those fine details are... a bit much. I ended up just focusing on the main gist of things and not worrying about the finer details in order to save my sanity, but that just goes to show how incredibly intricate the game is.

The last thing I'd like to mention has to do with the game's UI. While it is normally fantastic, there are a few instances in which the text becomes difficult to read when on certain backgrounds, especially white ones. There are quite a lot of text options, but none were able to solve this issue for me during my playthrough, so I was forced to use the backlog in order to read during those sections.


The Sekimeiya is very well worth your time. While there were a few dips in quality, it's safe to say that this is one of the best VNs I've played recently, and it's a monumental achievement for the community as well. Trinitite Team has proved that they're a developer to watch out for, and if this was their very first VN, we've got a lot to look forward to.

...Not recommended.
Or at the very least, you should be careful before buying this game.
If you think you know what you're getting into from the games people are comparing it to here... you will find that you're gravely mistaken.
I'd recommend looking at the beginning of a playthrough or something.

While those 'similar' games mentioned are stories with puzzles, this game takes it to a point where the story is just the puzzle.
The game starts without doing much work to set up its premise. The pacing is all over the place and seems to depend entirely on how many relevant details need to be conveyed at any given time.
The characters often don't seem to act like they really care about anything except the mystery.
There seem to be no overarching themes, arcs, etc.

This by itself does not mean it's a bad game.
People just think of different things when they hear "compelling mystery".

The effect is the same as going into a bookshop and asking for "entertainment", then being handed a sudoku puzzle.
The problem is a mismatch in expectations.
It does not mean the sudoku is bad, or not entertainment. It's just not what you expected to get, making it more of a coin toss.

So, why not just call it a day at that point?
Because there are probably two kinds of people that should be able to enjoy this regardless.
Sudoku puzzles exist because some people like to solve them, believe it or not.
Not gonna talk about the other kind.

I adjusted.
If you manage to make that shift, a lot of the "problems" go away.
If mysteries could be put on a spectrum, this one probably sits at some extreme.

Characters?
As said, there is not much to them, they got pretty neglected.

They mostly just keep doing one of four things:
1. Giving testimony.
2. Making theories.
3. Movements to deny existing theories or set up the next mystery.
4. Being Sai. (I'll let you figure out what that means)

As far as setting up a compelling mystery, this is sufficient. You get the facts, and your way of thinking is guided.
They are very good at exhausting all possible explanations for every single happenstance, and good at taking action to confirm/deny what they deduce this way.

I ended up liking some of them, mostly the ones that eventually got a bit of backstory.
In later chapters, they don't always feel like they're just moving pieces, and there's some entertainment factor to some of them.
But yeah, not gonna dwell on characters.

The presentation is amazing.
This game legitimate features the best backlog ever, with the option to take notes and basically Ctrl+F the entire thing.
At the beginning of the game, this felt like effort spent on something pointless.
Turns out, they're absolutely essential.
There's too much to keep track of, which is an issue I might come back to later, but the ability to drop some notes as reminders and double check if things happened that way in the script mitigates this.
If you want to have any hope of finding some solutions here, I recommend making use of them. Even just silly meme notes might help you keep a couple details in your mind, at least.

Music? 10/10 stuff and on point.
The only thing that bothered me was that it sometimes kept playing when a pause or change in music felt warranted.
There are parts in the narrative that are so dense that a lot of mysterious stuff is dropped on you in a short span of time.
Some of these are not more than one sentence, and the characters go back to theorizing so quickly that I often had to do some double takes upon realizing that "that just actually happened".

While we're at it, I'll shift to talking about the writing in general.
It's dense and sometimes a bit awkwardly worded. This is because A LOT of details are slipped in.
There are some different segments, but you're dealing with the same style for the most part. That's why I said you should look at the start of a playthrough to see if it's something you can deal with.

And now for the most important part since pretty much everything here is driven by it.
As a puzzle, it starts off working very well.
However, even there I felt it sometimes reached points where it was 'overdoing it'.
Things just got too dense, there were SO MANY things happening that they started losing impact, and several factors made me worry it would turn into too much of a complicated mess in the end.
I mean, you can see people here praising it for its complexity. But complexity for its own sake is not always good.
To SOME level, it is satisfying to untangle a knot, or navigate through a labyrinth.
But most people reach a point where something looks too complex to bother.

There were actually some factors that gave me hope that, once certain things were understood, the pieces would fall into place neatly.
And chapters 2-4 gave me hope in that regard. They seemed to gradually "overdo it less".
The way they do dramatic reveals that turn your understanding of the situation on its head is certainly some of dat good stuff.

The final chapter's concept is actually pretty satisfying in the instances when it works, but...
Turns out, it really was as complex as they said.
Even more than I feared.
It's not like there's a couple things you need to understand and then everything else that happened will be self-explanatory.
No, this one has to walk you through the entire thing.
If you're looking for a puzzle that has some essential simplicity or elegance, this might be the wrong one.
This one's going all out.
There are also some factors in play that make it a necessity to rely on inductive reasoning, and...
Let's say while deducing what happened in some events is perfectly reasonable, trying to figure out what caused them to happen that way requires you to assume some things that are... unintuitive.
A lot of the individual happenings are possible to deduce or make a very educated guess on, but some require you to recall details that may have only been mentioned in a single line.
Furthermore, when it comes to actually linking the events together, things get... tedious to the point where even after you've gone through the entire solution, you may find it difficult to visualize the sequence of events in your head.
I kept thinking of a quote by Raymond Chandler: "Above all the explanation must not be merely a long-winded assembling of minute circumstances which no ordinary reader could possibly be expected to remember." and now I feel like I finally understand why he said that.
The plot could probably be cut in half and still be one of the most complex ones I've seen. The point could still have been made that way.
Let's just say that, to me, it failed to completely justify itself in that regard.

With all those issues being mentioned, there were parts of the beginning of chapter 5 where its concept worked and was very satisfying.
It just... kept going for quite a while, and just like the mysteries showing up in chapter 1 started losing their impact at some point, so did my eagerness to hear the explanations gradually fade.
Still, when it worked, it worked. There were definitely some "Oh I see" moments. to somewhat balance out the "Bruh" moments.

Speaking of...

Despite it not working as a story for me, and me being very mixed on it as a mystery/thriller, I still picked "Recommended".
Why? Three reasons were the tipping point.

1. I asked myself "Would I recommend this to me?". The answer is yes, because I didn't feel like my time was wasted here. I got some interesting takeaways from this game. Even the flaws seemed like good lesson. If there's someone similar to me out there, they might find it useful for the same reasons.
2. I can't help but respect the insane effort that must have gone into this.
3. Games like this are pretty damn rare. That by itself gives it a big boost. Even the games it is compared to are a very different flavor from this.

I have high hopes for the mind/s that managed to produce this game, and would be looking forward to anything else they may decide to make.

What an incredibly difficult game to rate. From a mystery design perspective, this game is unparalleled in its complexity and depth. The creative team should be lauded on their ability to somehow craft a perfect labyrinth of interweaving narratives. There's no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ here; these guys have really thought of everything, and it shows. There will be times playing this game where you'll be so deeply confused that you'll 100% certain that there's no way they'll be able to explain it all. But they do, albeit in ways that I still struggle to fully comprehend. If you're looking at this game at all, it's almost guaranteed that you've played Zero Escape. To put it into perspective, this game is literally 100x more complex than 999 and VLR (both of which I greatly love). I wish I was exaggerating but I'm really not, and I have to reiterate that it's incredible that they were able to put this all together.

Unfortunately, from other perspectives, the game struggles. The characters are some of the least interesting I've seen in games like these; it's disappointing because some of them show promise, but it's rarely capitalized on. Simply put, these people don't feel like people, with character dialogue often lacking personality, which has the downside of making it difficult to connect with the emotional core of the story that it tries to build. The main duo is serviceable, and I actually came to like them decently by the end, but it took way too long to get there. Beyond them, only Sai stood out for me, mostly because he acted so much differently from the others that there was at least something to latch onto.

To the same point, the prose is often extremely dense and difficult to parse. Characters spend a long time discussing theories, almost to an obsessive degree, especially at the beginning of the game. This is weirdly refreshing in some ways - it's nice that characters act smart - but I simply don't buy that anyone would be quite this smart in such a situation.

Perhaps one of the most challenging aspects of the game to judge is the structure of its final chapter. Essentially, the game systematically walks through the previous events, asking you to solve many of its core mysteries. In total, it asks almost 100 questions over the course of about 5-7 hours of play. Being correct is not necessary, and the game definitely doesn't expect you to be all the time, so don't worry about it too much. Conceptually, this is extremely awesome, and I genuinely think this is very bold and innovative. But it's simply too much. Not only are many of these questions extremely specific and difficult to parse out, even if you're trying to solve them, but because this part takes so long, you're bound to take a break in the middle, which almost certainly will make you lose much of your mental image on very specific events that are very hard to keep track of. To the game's credit, it provides a robust search functionality and notes tool, but even that's not enough. The game provides a timeline once it's done to make sure you can really put it all together; I can't help but think that this (or at least parts of this) would have been really nice to have during this section, simply for actually understanding it all. Given the statistics the game shows you about how many answers other users got correct once you're complete, I feel confident in saying that narrative is presented in such a way that makes it too difficult to easily grasp in full.

The result of all of these downsides (the characters, prose, and finale structure) is that the game often feels like it lacks oopmh. There are a lot of twists in this game, but honestly they rarely hit hard in ways that other games like 999 or VLR do. Reveals rarely were treated with gravity, and spending 30 minutes trying to parse through text to answer a specific question left me too tired to feel impact when I finally answered them (often incorrectly). Several times something would be revealed and then the story would just move on to answering the next question, leaving little time for me to both understand what was just revealed and resonate with it emotionally. On the flip side, there are even two specific cases where a mystery is left to the reader to solve; these happen to be two of the most interesting moments in the whole story, and it's very frustrating to end this game without answers to those.

I can't help but imagine a game that took all of the best parts of this mystery, trimmed it down to comprehensible levels (maybe about 30% of what's here), and wrapped it with an emotional core with interesting and varied characters. That said, what's here is still incredible, just in ways that are more awe-inspiring than anything else. If anything about this game still sounds interesting, I would definitely encourage you to play it. But don't be surprised when you feel similarly to how I do.

As someone who plays every excessively convoluted visual novel they can get their hands on, the plotline of this one is absolutely unrivaled (as far as I know). If this story is a 2000-piece jigsaw puzzle then something like Zero Escape is a 9-piece.

Although it sounds intimidating, the story is very well-written, easy to read and engaging. Plus it comes with a page for taking organized notes to help you remember things, and a cool search function that lets you re-examine parts of the story, dig up specific quotes, look up interesting keywords, etc. They did a great job of making the story as digestible as a story like this could possibly be.

The reviews warning that the characters get little focus aren't entirely wrong; the plot is definitely the central masterpiece here. But the two main characters were extremely enjoyable and well-written, better than the vast majority of characters in other stories in my opinion, and I'm really going to miss them now that it's over. The rest of the cast felt a bit more like mere plot devices sometimes, but they were at least fun and interesting and given extremely consistent, well thought-out motives and character developments.

The sheer complexity of the story means you won't be able to wrap your head around every detail, but it won't hamper your experience much. Everything is abundantly foreshadowed, and the major twists and mysteries (and many of the more obscure ones) aren't too hard to predict if you're paying attention and taking some time to think. If you really want to understand it all, there's great replay value; the knowledge you get later in the story makes the earlier parts of the story infinitely easier to understand, and the game gives re-players many secret hints/explanations and extremely useful timelines to search through.

If you like elaborate sci-fi/supernatural mysteries, you absolutely can't miss this one. I've never found anything even close to being on this level and I won't be surprised if I never do. The creators were insanely ambitious and they somehow had both the will and the brains to actually pull it off without a single plot hole.

In other reviews for Sekimeiya you can often meet with the opinion that characters, dialogues, pacing etc are bad, but complex mystery really good and worth it... well, I disagree with that.

So let's jump straight to the mystery part without spoilers.

What the main problem with mystery explanation in Sekimeiya? The way it is presented .

First of all, when you are making visual novel, you can use visuals to explain things. I'm not asking for some manga frames like in Danganronpa series, just some graphs and diagrams made in paint, at least(and Sekimeiya really needs it, and no, a couple of schemes in the 5th chapter and tips are not enough). Instead, you will almost always get walls of poorly written text, as if the main idea was to make part of the explanation as difficult as possible for the reader.

Another thing that bad is a systematization. There's not much to say without spoilers, just keep in mind that you will have problems forming a coherent picture of the events in this vn, their structure, and this could have been avoided. No, notes and search not gonna help much. Lots of events are in the same space, so it's easy to get lost in the plot; overwhelming theories; very bad pacing(especially in chapter 3 with huge slice of life part) and lack of good tools and visuals, all this makes your final exploration really troublesome.

And you know, in other works with much weaker mysteries, I always have at least some kind of emotional response, but here all I felt was: "so this is how it happens... k."

So if you think you just need to endure poorly written(in terms of how interesting it to read, idc about style and other things like this since I'm not native english speaker) vn just to get some blow-mind mystery in the end... maybe you are right. Maybe you will like it, like many other people in reviews, or maybe you will feel nothing, just like me, I don't know.

Sekimeiya feels more like some draft for visual novel rather than actual one. It could have been top-10 on vndb if it was written properly, but as for now it's just another bad vn, imo. And there were a lot of moments, when this vn really could have been great, but almost all of them was wasted. Writer\director simply had no idea how to handle tragic scenes, characters' motives, how to represent events to make you feel immersed, how create atmosphere, so instead of great thriller that could be made here, we got a puzzle that exists only for the puzzle.

And about the characters. I want to add that this is anime visual novel. One of the reason why I'm still in anime despite being 29 yo is because in anime characters matter the most. Some might say that characters in Uchikoshi's works are also weak, but Uchikoshi characters are on fine level in my opinion: they have personalities, past, they are different, dialogues aren't bad. The problem with Uchikoshi is that his characters just don't have some deepness like in Ryukishi's works. But in Sekimeiya characters are way worse(except Sai) than in Uchikoushi's works, so I don't get what is the point to make Sekimeiya in anime style, when you completely don't care about characters.

But still I can't say that Sekimeiya is some kind of trash. Like I said, it could have been top-10 vn on vndb, but instead we have some pretty niche vn for crazy Nakazawa and Uchikoshi fans. I would like to read new works from devs if they are gonna make something in the future, and remember Sekimeiya as their pilot project in "students gathered together and tried their best"-style.

5\10.
Or 6\10 if you like ost like I do. I recommend to check Sekimeiya playlist on youtube even if you are not gonna read it.

P.S. In case you are wondering why I have so many hours, well, mostly because I usually read vn's while I'm at work and sometimes don't turn off the game when I go to bed, but also because Sekimeiya was really hard for me to get through, I didn't even switch to other vn's while reading this one because I was affraid that I will never back to Sekimeiya if I left it once. Started April 24, and finished only today.

while the mystery might nice the game suffers from terrible character writing and dialogues,

characters react and talk like robots or maybe bored actors playing a role,

parts of the cast seem to start investigating for no discernible motivation or reason at a point they have no reason to do anything more then wait a few hours with far more focus and intrest then makes sense.

so far twice reasoning was partially based on basically
"as a utility maximizing automaton if this character did X then Y must be true as a perfectly efficient and rational actor would not X without Y"


the mystery might still be intresting as long as you accept that it is the entire purpose of the with no attampt at writing characters to play it out let alone recognizably human ones.

If steam had a neutral rating this is what I would rate it as. At it's core, there is a fairly solid ontological mystery to unravel and if that's the only thing you're after, great, get this game.

But for others, the core of the game is also the same problem--there's only the core. It's trimmed of any form of real characterisation, humour, or drama. In it's place is walls upon walls of monotonous text as characters theorise back and forth on things that are happening, could have happened or may happen in the future. Most of this (imageless) conjecture could be removed and have no impact on the story. Characters aren't likeable--which isn't to say that the characters are unlikeable-- rather, they exist as props to propel the mystery forward. Motivations aren't explored. Character development doesn't happen.

And that's the end of the game.

It's like a stew that's missing spices. They've made a good base, but it's really missing that kick to make it great.

This visual novel is a mess from the get-go. It's excessively wordy with many sentences having mostly correct grammatical structure, but filled with imprecise language and awkward wording and sentence structure. It's very difficult to read because of these issues, especially considering this is a mystery/logical deduction game that really needs precision. I feel like in some cases, the author went through a thesaurus, picking words that technically work but sound unnatural, compounding the problems.

The author could have written half as much prose and still get the same meaning across to the reader. For example: "Usually, that would be the case, but the local internet connection is also something that the alarm shuts down, precisely to block all communication methods." How about rewriting this as "Unfortunately, the alarm blocks all exterior communication, including the internet." Less than half the words, same meaning.

The way the characters speak is similarly unnatural - written in the same way as one would a description. For example, Erina speaking to Isla: "We were waiting for that in this very hallway when the smoke came out. Do you not remember?" Does this sound like natural speech to you?

Or here's another one: "I can't be sure of this, but before the time I heard the alarm, I did hear the sound of a body falling, and given all three of us were already down on the floor, it must've been Naomi's. On top of that, the glass hadn't been opened, so if she opened it while I was on the floor and triggered the alarm I think I would've hear it." Holy moly word spaghetti. No one talks like this and it makes things more confusing than it should be. And to think most of the VN is written with this type of sentence structure.

I know this probably isn't true, but the way this visual novel is written reminds me of a high schooler trying to meet an arbitrary essay word limit. It desperately needs a professional editor to come through and really give the script a good scrubbing to trim off all the word bloat. This game might have the best mystery story of all time, given what all the positive reviews state, but I just couldn't get into it due to the writing.

I don't think any review can make this absolute madness of a VN justice. All I can note is that all negative reviews are from people who dropped an hour in, and everyone else praises it as the best of its genre. It picks up faster than you might expect, don't miss out. Still looking for my jaw, but losing it was worth it.

This game tries to encorage players to solve the mystery themself, or at least to put in some effort into figuring things out before they spell it out for you.

It allows you to scroll through text to the very beginning, to search for keywords, take notes. During the final chapter they will quiz you on your understanding of the story

On paper this game sounds beyond amazing, however in practice It's a massive slog. The mystery is ongoing till chapter 4, and during chapter 5 the game throws massive infodumps in attempt to explain everything to the player.

During 2nd playthroughs the game will offer tips, explanations, flowcharts, detailed map for an even better understanding of what took place.

It's roughly 40 hrs or so, I fell asleep while playing it a few times so my time is slightly higher than that.

It's a murder mystery with time travel story. The setting takes place in one place for the most part, the tower where everyone is trapped

Even tho I finished this game I don't know to feel about it. It was both boring and interesting at the same time. I'm also not sure how much of it I actually understood.
It felt like reading through a textbook and then being tested on your reading comprehension skills.

I would reccomend it, however It's definately a niche title that not everyone will like.