#wato hojo

[beearcheops]

[luv4lain]

[art-is-kayos]

Number 3! Doing these are actually really fun

[chatot]

two of them!

[femmeslash]

listen to me young man i am speaking directly into your ear now. doleful has never been truly loved or cared for before. doleful needs someone to love and trust who is IMMUNE TO THE DANGER MAGNET ABILITY, SUCH AS SOMEONE WHO CAN FORESEE AND PREVENT DEATHS,

this, too, is yuri.

art by my dear friend @heartbondage posted with permission ❤️

[confusedpaladin]

so @aibafiles got the sprites working

[paranoodle]

you ever think about how renegade's intro looked like from ideal's point of view. poor wato

[jay-ig]

brain rotted too hard

[fragments-of-despair]

So the demo of “Process of Elimination” dropped today and so far, my thoughts are.....

[yoshi-self-ships]

Waking up in another locker and receiving another tablet that has everyone's info on it...

Shuichi can't catch a break...

[hopeymchope]

Danganlike, Ahoy: Process of Elimination

As we wait for the team behind the Danganronpa series to finally release the game they've been working on for almost five years now next month, why not fill the time with another recent release that's inspired by their work?

I've just started playing it myself.

Process of Elimination just came out in April, and the team behind it has been open about the fact that Danganronpa was one of their primary inspirations. As such, we once again we have a situation where a group of eccentric anime-style people are trapped in an isolated location where murders ensue! (At least this time, the cast isn't being forced/encouraged to all murder one another. ... Well, not YET.)

And the player character? We play as a detective-in-training with extremely low self-esteem who wears an all-black uniform and sports an ahoge sprouting from the black hair atop his head.

In other words: Shuichi.

We play as dollar-store Shuichi Saihara.

"We have Shuichi at home."

In all seriousness, his name is actually "Wato Hojo." But far as I'm concerned? This motherfucker is Discount Shuichi until he earns his own name. But make no mistake — I'm legitimately hoping our protagonist will manage to come into his own. I wish you the best of luck, D.S.!

Before we get any further, know this: There's a free demo available for this game! You can try out the early parts for free on your Switch, PS4, or PC! So there's very little reason NOT to do so if you're at all interested in a new Danganlike mystery Visual Novel-esque game with puzzles to unravel!

With that out of the way... if you're still here, I'll happily give you more info on the basic setup/backstory of the prologue and how the gameplay generally works.

Unfortunately for Discount Shuichi, he's far from the only detective on the premises when deaths start occurring. In fact, he's but one of MANY. But to explain why that's the case, we need to dig into the setup/backstory of this thing.

Here's the setup/backstory of our adventure: A serial killer who goes by "The Quartering Duke" appeared roughly a year ago. Since that time, he's committed more than 50 double murders, racking up an heretofore-unprecedented 100+ kills. To make matters worse: The fact that he's been on such a successful spree without generating any clear leads has led to multiple copycats springing up in his wake.

The citizens are living in fear, requests for bodyguard and private detective services are at a historic high, and the government has resorted to leaning on the Detective Alliance (or "DA") for assistance with the crime wave.

"Who dat," you ask? The DA is sort of like a detective union: A loose alliance of 100 private detectives who are given a numeric rank based on their skills and experience. So kind of like the Detective Library made famous to DR hardcores by Danganronpa Kirigiri, albeit with fewer members.

They're officially free agents, but they're largely contracted by the government as of late. Also: The members of the DA can't reveal their real names/identities. Instead, they only go by an adjective that describes them and the word "Detective."

A group of quirky detectives that each have a noteworthy trait? Is this taking inspiration from Rain Code BEFORE Rain Code is out?!

For example:

Gourmet Detective is an excellent chef in addition to her detective bonafides.

Rowdy Detective is typically aggressive and ready to throw down.

Techie Detective prefers to rely on technological tools for his work.

Posh Detective is... posh.

And as you no doubt see in the above image, our own character is dubbed the "Incompetent Detective." I wish I could say that was undeserved, but... nah. It check out.

When we first meet Discount Shuichi, he's botching a job he was assigned as an assistant at a smaller detective firm. He's brought into the Detective Alliance at the lowest rank of 100 JUST in time for he and another 13 sleuths to wind up isolated at DA's island headquarters with their communications out. And he quickly proves that he's not very swift on the uptake when it comes to the clues around him. I actually joked to my S.O. that maybe they'd dub him the "Inept Detective"... and two minutes later, he got the "Incompetent" label. And I laughed. It's harsh, but for now? It's fair.

Oh, and he even gets knocked out and wakes up inside a locker that is within his new murder-prison. +1 Shuichi Point!

Anyway, back to the story: To the surprise of everyone who isn't the player, a quartered dead body is soon discovered. It appears entirely likely that the Quartering Duke has made his way to Detective Alliance Island and is now trapped among them! Pretty soon, we're collaborating with other detectives to examine the crime scene and determine what went down.

I just started playing last night, so I don't have a lot more to report than that. I've only completed the first chapter/mystery so far. At the moment, it looks like we might only have ONE culprit throughout this game who commits all the murders... but given that we're already set up that there's a ton of copycats during the prologue/backstory, I wouldn't be too shocked if we encounter one or two others as the game goes on.

The bulk of the game is a visual novel experience with occasional binary choices that can lead to (minor/short) branches in events and/or impact your end-of-chapter score/grade. The balance is similar to a Danganronpa so far: You're mostly reading, but there's still one important segment where gameplay takes center stage and gets much more involved than merely reading the text. That core "gameplay" comes in the investigation sequences.

Isometric Investigative Action!

This is when we use our "dPad" (an iPad parody, not a directional pad) to direct all the titular detectives around the building. I'm not going to get into the story reason for why Discount Shuichi has this authority, so let's just talk about what he can do with it.

See, there will be "Mystery Points" that require a certain level of "Intellect" to unlock, and you can assign detectives with various numeric Intellect rankings to investigate them. If you put another detective beside such an investigating detective and assign them to "Assist," you get a significant boost in their Intellect skill that will help you break down the Mystery Point faster, revealing the clue underneath. Most Mystery Points will only take a single "hour" or "turn" to identify what the relevant evidence is, but some take multiple turns. Furthermore, once you identify a piece of evidence at such a point, you'll find that some of them require closer analysis to reveal all of their secrets. And each of our detectives ALSO has a numeric "Analyze" ranking. If they meet or exceed the rank needed to analyze the evidence, they can do so in a single hour/turn, revealing whatever additional info it holds.

Detective stats include a numeric Move rating, too! it controls how far they can move during a single turn. Usually, each turn lets you move a character and then assign them an action — but you can also choose to give a character full access to traveling the ENTIRE map if you need them to get very far very fast. Doing this means that moving will be ALL they can do for that particular turn, though.

Starting get the picture? The game is one of time and resource management. You have a limited number of hours/turns before you must complete an investigation, and each detective on hand has set numeric ratings that limit how much they can move and what they can successfully complete within a single turn. Your mission is to complete the analysis of the crime scene and all its evidence before your time is up, leveraging your team's unique stats to carve the most efficient path.

The first investigation is 50% tutorial, so it's pretty easy to complete it within the allotted hours/turns. For that reason, I don't yet know what happens if you take too long to find everything in an investigation. The game only threatened that doing so would cause "ANNIHILATION." ... Which sounds bad.

I think that's enough of an introduction to Process of Elimination. I'll just close by noting that it only contains Japanese voiceovers (no dub) and, although I found some elements of its story to already be super-obvious, they've been reasonably quick to reveal the most obvious elements during the first chapter rather than lingering on the mistaken assumption that we hadn't already figured their crap out. So I'm optimistic that they won't make this narrative TOO obvious or simple in the long run.

Looking forward to uncovering more!

[beearcheops]

Idk what to put hereee ( /・・)ノ

[luv4lain]

keep describing peoples eyes in detail king!!

[art-is-kayos]

Chibi Incompetent!

[call-me-yin]

replaying the Ideal Detective skit over and over just to stare at Wato's glasses

like either he chose frames that look identical to Renegade's or he just fucking stole Renegade's glasses

[hellish-heart-ships]

Ten minutes into Process of Elimination and I will protect Wato with my life