Today on the blog, we have a tester’s corner from Ryechu!
Hi, all! Ryechu here! It’s been a while since I’ve done some testing for MangaGamer, but I couldn’t help but come back to work on Room No. 9. I’m a huge fan of No, Thank You!!!, and since these two games take place in the same universe (though that might only be because the two of the writers were on both projects…), I was certainly interested in checking it out! That, and… well, I remember reading Good Haro’s tweets as she was playing the game and thinking to myself, “Yeah, uhh, Daichi’s really hot.”
I’m not biased at all, right?
Anyway, Room No. 9 is daaaaark. Like, seriously, the plot begins with our two lovely gents wanting nothing more than to get their tan and sun on in beautiful Okinawa, maybe picking up some girls, going backpacking; you know, “best friends having fun” stuff! And then it turns into something out of the Saw flicks—you’re trapped in a room with no way out, no access to the outside world, and a tablet computer that tells you that “You have been selected for a study.” Might as well have told them that you wanted to play a game with something like that. And from there, it starts pretty straightforward: you can pick either Subject A must draw 600 mL of blood from Subject B, or Subject B must make Subject A ejaculate. The people running the study (or the kidnappers, whichever you prefer) will provide you literally everything you need to safely and successfully complete whichever task you choose, and then it’s up to you. Doing the daily task will give you 10 points and delicious food for the next day (they’re really big on the whole “comfort” thing).
Gather 100 points, and you get out. Oh, or if the number of occupants in the room goes below two. Yeah, you can get out that way, too.
Speaking of subjects, who the heck are these people? On the left we have Daichi: orphaned kiddo who tries to be a decent person but isn’t very smart. On the right is Seiji: cool, smart, rich kid. They’re best friends thanks to stuff that happened a long time before when this game takes place, and they slowly realize that friendship is gonna be affected the more time they stay in this hotel cell. So, they get to work.
For a mid-size game (I clocked myself at about 10 hours), there’s a TON that ends up happening here, and the choices really make you think about the current mental state of both Daichi and Seiji. One wrong move and one of them breaks and falls off the deep end. It’s a pretty crazy balancing act that keeps you on the edge of your seat, and it’s one that, as you finish routes, will begin to make more and more sense. That all said, there is an “Easy Mode” option that will make sure you end up in a particular ending if you’d rather not think about it, but it doesn’t tell you what that ending actually is until you read it yourself. I turned it off—it was much more exciting that way.
There is some content that might make some people shy away as well (blood, gore, scat), but there are options to turn that material off, if you’d rather not view it. It does add a bit of impact to the story, but it is by no means absolutely required to fully understand what’s all going on. I’d chalk that up to the writing, which was so much fun to read.
I really hope you decide to take a chance on Room No. 9. It’s dark, but it’s definitely a page-turner… or a window-clicker… or whatever you wanna call it. I wonder what that actually would be…
Anyway, I’m gonna go stare at Daichi’s smiling face some more. Haaaaah…