It Runs in the Family

「論理の路はつながりました」

『春ゆきてレトロチカ』

 

"The path of logic is connected"

 "The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story"

Is there like a rule that when Square-Enix makes a mystery game, it needs to take place across time and needs to have game mechanics revolving around generating hypotheses?

One of the earliest games I discussed on this blog, and one that I still think fondly of, is Trick X Logic on the PSP. The manner in which it translates the reading experience of a puzzle plot whodunnit story to a video game is absolutely fantastic, and shows very well how a properly written mystery story should allow a reader to gather clues, build hypotheses and lead them to the one and only answer. Of course, this was not surprising, considering the stories found in Trick X Logic were written by authors like Ayatsuji Yukito, Arisugawa Alice, Maya Yutaka, Ooyama Seiichirou and more! (Disclosure: I have translated the works of some of these authors!) Each of the stories in this game was presented in a novel game style, so simply a prose story you read like any other book. As you read the story, you pick up key words and phrases. Once you're done with the "Problem" part of the story, the interactive element start: as the player, you now have to answer the question of whodunnit. How? By using all those key words and phrases from the story in question, and combining them to generate questions, insights and hypotheses. For example, if the story mentions both "X is left-handed" "X caught the ball with his right hand", you could combine these two phrases to generate questions and hypotheses like: "X is ambidextrous," "Is X actually right-handed?" "Is X not able to use his left hand?" These new phrases could also be used, for example, "Is X not able to use his left hand?" and "X fell earlier from his horse" might generate the theory "X hurt his left hand." Trick X Logic thus was a game that really showed how you are supposed to read a detective story, focus on key phrases and combining them to create all kinds of hypotheses, even if they might be wrong. And as you create more and more hypotheses and combine these with each other again, you eventually arrive at the truth. Trick X Logic is in my opinion still one of the few games that really shows how a prose puzzle plot detective story should be tackled and I have always lamented the fact it never got a sequel or never inspired other games in the same spirit.

When earlier this year Square-Enix announced they'd release the FMV (Full Motion Video) detective adventure game Haru Yukite, Retrotica ("As Spring Passes By,  Retrotica") in May 2022, I was absolutely thrilled, for it was made by the director of Trick X Logic and was clearly inspired by that game. Released in English with the less poetic title The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story and available on Switch/Steam/PS4/PS5, the game tells an epic story that takes place across a whole century, and is told through live-action drama (interestingly, the director of this game also worked on 428, which also used live-action heavily). The titular Shijima family is a clan with history, sordid history even as recently, a skeleton was found under a tree at Shijima manor. Shijima Eiji, a medical scientist, asks the mystery writer Kagami Haruka to look into the case of the skeleton found at his parental home: Eiji is a medical consultant for Haruka's mystery novels, and thinks she can find out more about the mysterious skeleton. Haruka and her editor Akari go to Shijima manor, where they are welcomed by Eiji's father and they are allowed to witness an ancient ceremony which is held once a century by the Shijima family. After the ceremony, they are to have tea, but Eiji's father is poisoned. Haruka soon learns the Shijima family not only has skeletons in their garden, but also in the closet: for the last century, members of the Shijima family have been involved in various murder cases, and each time these murders were connected to the "Tokijiku" or Fruit of Youth, a mythological fruit that is supposed to give eternal youth to those who eat the coveted food. Realizing that the poisoning in 2022 and the skeleton have to do with the past murder cases, which also all involved a scarlet camellia left at the various scenes, Haruka decides to read up on the old cases and see if she can solve those, as they are the only clues she has to solve the current poisoning case. And thus Haruka's investigation into a series of murder cases taking place across the twentieth and twenty-first century starts...

The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story is not a perfect game. It is not a perfect mystery game. But I really, really want to recommend this game to people who like puzzle plot mystery fiction, because it is basically the best next thing after Trick X Logic, and that game is hard to recommend because, well, it was only released in Japan and only on the PSP.  But while The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story has its hick-ups here and there, like its spiritual predecessor, it does really show well how a proper mystery story should lay its clues, how it should invite the reader (player) to use these clues to come up with properly built-up theories and how to combine theories to ultimately arrive at the truth. Few mystery games really show and teach you "reasoning techniques" that are also applicable to mystery in for example prose form, but The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story definitely does. Sorry for the self-promotion here, but if you liked mystery stories like The Moai Island Puzzle, Death Among the Undead, Death of the Living Dead and other puzzle-focused shin honkaku novels: this is a proper shin honkaku mystery game and you owe it to yourself to at least check it out. 

Once you're done with the game, you feel like you have watched a full season of a detective drama. The story starts in 2022 and many chapters ("episodes") are also set there, but Haruka also looks into prior cases involving members of the Shijima family, the Tokijiku and the Scarlet Camellia, some even taking place as early as in 1922!  In terms of terms of structure and gameplay, The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story is very similar to Trick X Logic as mentioned earlier. Each chapter/episode starts with a lengthy live-action drama part that unfolds like a proper mystery detective story, from the building up drama to the discovery of the crime and subsequent investigation. Once the first "Problem" part of the episode is over, Haruka starts theorizing about the case in the Reasoning part.  Here the player has to answer a few crucial questions by using the clues and observations made during the first part. You can also rewatch all the relevant scenes of the drama part, or check other important information like floorplans and character relation charts here. As you consider the case using the leading questions as a guide, you combine these questions with the gathered clue fragments to generate hypotheses (many of them actually incorrect). Once you have generated enough hypotheses and new insights, you can move on to the Solution part of the story, where you get the classic "Everyone is gathered in the parlor and the detective reveals who did it" scene: this too is presented as a live-action drama, but the player now has to use the various hypotheses they generated earlier to answer all the important questions and eventually point out who the murderer is. 

 

The process of "observation" -> "creating hypotheses" -> "combining hypotheses" -> "point out whodunnit" is really satisfying, and the game mechanic itself is an excellent translation of how one should tackle a prose detective story too. I do have to say that the controls for the Reasoning part are pretty bad, at least on a console (I played the game on Switch). You have to constantly drag clue fragments to the corresponding question, but not only is dragging these fragments across the screen very time-consuming with a controller, for some reason, you are required to move each clue fragment to a specific place (suppose a question requires three clues: you can't place clue A to the right side of the question because it has to be to the left side). And strangely enough, the touch screen of the Switch is not supported, even though that would make dragging a lot more convenient... 

Generating hypotheses is definitely one of my favorite parts of the game. The mechanic is very simple (the game is made to appeal to non-gamers) and of course, the hypotheses are automatically generated once you combine the correct clues together, but the game does a great job at showing the player how each hypothesis, correct and wrong, are properly based on the clues. Often mystery games just offer you a list of optional answers, one of them good and the rest wrong, but there is no true explanation how each of those options actually came to be. In The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story, you are shown how every hypothesis (= possible answer in the Solution part) is built, from which hints they derive and how they all make sense (up to a degree). Sometimes, you have a fairly good idea of the case already when you start in the Reasoning part, but occasionally the game really manages to throw a screwball at you because when you combine clue A and B, you not only get hypothesis D you were expecting, but the same clues A and B also generate hypotheses E and F, which on second thought actually seem pretty convincing too (because you are shown that they derive logically from clues A & B). Of course, sometimes the hypothesis you create is obviously fake, in a funny way, but that's okay too: the game always shows that a theory in mystery fiction is based on actual clues shown in the story, and not just a gut feeling of "that person looks suspicious".

As for the cases themselves, most of them are not really complex, but I found most of them quite enjoyable. This is partially because of the grand scale of the story: Haruka is not only dealing with what happens at Shijima manor in 2022, but she also reads a few records of the cases that occured in the past. These parts are of course also presented as live-action drama, and it results in quite some variety on screen: one episode you are investigating a case that occurs in the modern world, the next episode you are transported to a suspicious underground auction in 1922. The period drama parts definitely manage to convey the atmosphere of those periods despite each episode not being very long (most chapters are about an hour long in total). What is also funny is how these period drama parts actually use the same actors as in the 2022 parts: the in-game explanation is that Haruka has to visually imagine the past cases while she reads the old records, and in her mind, she "casts" every character with the faces of people she knows, meaning that her editor Akari can be "cast" as one character in 1922, and "cast" as another in another case. It kinda reminds of the Nero Wolfe television show, which also reused a fixed cast who'd play different characters in different stories. I think these historical episodes are also the most memorable, as the plots of those episodes often make good use of their historical setting, utilizing props and ideas that belong to those periods. 

 

Oh, by the way, for some reason this game doesn't actually automatically move on to the final chapter on its own after playing the preceding chapter. There are no unlock criteria or anything, save for completing the previous episode but you have to especially choose to start with the final chapter in the main menu, even though the game doesn't actually tell you it added the new option for the final chapter, so it's quite possible you think you finished the game, but haven't actually started the final chapter. It's so weird, for it really should have just moved on to the final chapter on its own after finishing the previous one, but it doesn't... The final chapter answers a lot of important lingering questions too, and really helps make this a memorable mystery game by the way, so be sure not to miss it, because without it the story of The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story is incomplete. 

And some minor trivia: voice actor Kaji Yuuki has a minor role in this game, but also the shogi player Kagawa Manao. The latter is interesting, because she also has a role in the shogi-themed mystery adventure game Senri no Keifu as herself. Is she actually a big mystery fan and that's why she has all these guest roles in mystery games???

The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story has plenty of minor faults, from its short run-time, the somewhat clumsy controls to the game being mostly a fairly passive experience. But it does present a very interesting and attractive mystery story dealing with a mysterious family, a mythological fruit and a series of murders that take place across time, and more importantly: it translates the experience of "solving a mystery story" perfectly. Like Trick X Logic before it, The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story shows how a proper detective story should be structured and how it should lay out a trail of clues for the reader to follow, and how readers are supposed to build theories based on these clues. The game mechanics of The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story are exactly how I read mystery fiction, and for example how I tackled my earlier playthroughs of Umineko: When They Cry and Higurashi: When They Cry. That is why I think that fans of puzzle plot mystery fiction really owe it to themselves to play The Centennial Case: A Shijima Story sooner or later. I think that at least for me, this will be one game that'll end up in my list of favorite mysteries at the end of this year.

Original Japanese title(s): 『春ゆきてレトロチカ』