NIS America’s press event was a real doozy, because it had a ton of new game announcements, some of which came completely out of left field. One of those off-center titles is the upcoming PS4 and Steam release of Suda51’s The 25th Ward: The Silver Case.
The game features three different story arcs where players will be required to uncover the mysteries behind Kanto area’s 25th Ward apartment complex in Japan’s bay area. Things kick off with the murder of a woman and then escalate from there.
Players will unravel the mystery through the eyes of multiple protagonists, including Tokio Morishima from the original The Silver Case.
The big news surrounding this game is that it’s being released for the very first time outside of Japan, starting March 13th in North America and March 16th in Europe for the PS4. The game will be available globally for PC gamers starting March 13th via Steam. You can check out the trailer below to get a better idea of what to expect from The 25th Ward.
The game has some ties to the original The Silver Case, which came out back in 1999 for the PSX. It was like a continuation of the story-adventure games that came out during the Amiga era in the late 1980s but died off during the emergence of the 16-bit systems in the 1990s. Essentially it was a cool visual novel before visual novels were hip in [current year].
Basically, if you enjoy interactive mysteries with stories that unfold like visual novels but with more interaction and input from users, similar to Kojima’s Policenauts or Snatcher, then you might enjoy Grasshopper Manufacture’s The 25th Ward or The Silver Case.
If you’re completely out of the loop on the series, you can actually pick up a digital copy of the original The Silver Case for $19.99 so you can gain an understanding of the world that Goichi Suda created for the universe that The 25th Ward inhabits.
With the growing popularity of visual novels, there’s definitely a much greater possibility of the upcoming Western release of the game seeing wider appeal for people who enjoy conspiracy thrillers with a side-order of puzzle solving and character exposition.
You can look for The 25th Ward to launch in the West starting in the first half of March for the PS4 and Steam.
