Kusari
Encyclopedia
is an eroge
visual novel
by Leaf
. It is a suspense adventure game dealing with psychological warfare as players are pitted against a cunning and powerful criminal while trapped in the open sea on a cruise ship.
Although this game produced Leaf, much of the staff for this game was outsourced. This was due to the fact the game was outside of the fantasy or true love scenario games that have become the company's backbone. Instead the game had twisted dark scenarios.
As the game's story progresses, game play revolves around the player making the correct selections and collecting items. If the wrong selections are made, or an item missed, the story will eventually conclude abruptly with death and game over. The goal is to kill the criminal on board, which may happen in one of 9 different endings in the game. These multiple endings range greatly, from a happy ending, to twisted bad endings.
: A long-time childhood friend of Kyosuke, and daughter of Shino. A gentle girl with strong convictions.
: A reserved and precocious girl. Because she tries hard not to display her feelings, she is hard to read.
: The eldest daughter of a noble family and sister of Tamami. A brash elitist with a large ego.
: The younger sister of Karen, although she is only one year younger than her sister, she looks and acts many years younger. Despite her immaturity and propensity to play pranks, she is quite clever at MacGyver
-ing items.
: Kyosuke's younger sister. Although constitutionally weak, she is very strong-willed girl, because of the loss of her father at a young age. Highly attached to her brother.
: Kyosuke's best friend by circumstance of sharing the same interests. He is very vain and patronizing person, who is very self-centered.
: Mother of Akeno, and the chief person in charge of the "BaShiRiSuKu" voyage. She is the one that invites everyone on the ship's maiden test voyage. A very accepting and generous woman.
: A man found adrift at sea. Claiming to be a marine researcher, he boards the ship, and murders the ship's crew. A fearsome person skilled at psychological manipulation
and terror tactics.
to the public due to having used the Xvid
video codec
in the game. XVid is licensed under the GNU
Public Library, which requires that programs using the codec to make their source code available to program users.
Eroge
An or Ero-ga is a Japanese video or computer game that features erotic content, usually in the form of anime-style artwork. Eroge originated from galge, but unlike galge, they feature erotic/pornographic content.-History:...
visual novel
Visual novel
A is an interactive fiction game featuring mostly static graphics, usually with anime-style art, or occasionally live-action stills or video footage...
by Leaf
Leaf (company)
Leaf is a Japanese visual novel studio under the publisher Aquaplus, and has offices in Yodogawa-ku, Osaka, and Tokyo. It and its competitor Key are the most popular and successful dedicated visual novel studios operating today. It was launched out of obscurity by its early release ToHeart...
. It is a suspense adventure game dealing with psychological warfare as players are pitted against a cunning and powerful criminal while trapped in the open sea on a cruise ship.
Although this game produced Leaf, much of the staff for this game was outsourced. This was due to the fact the game was outside of the fantasy or true love scenario games that have become the company's backbone. Instead the game had twisted dark scenarios.
As the game's story progresses, game play revolves around the player making the correct selections and collecting items. If the wrong selections are made, or an item missed, the story will eventually conclude abruptly with death and game over. The goal is to kill the criminal on board, which may happen in one of 9 different endings in the game. These multiple endings range greatly, from a happy ending, to twisted bad endings.
Story
The stage of this tale is set inside the high speed experimental ship Basilisk. Kyosuke Koduki, the game's protagonist, is invited on the ship's maiden test voyage as a guest by his friend's mother. When the ship finds castaway Yoichi Kishida, things go horribly wrong for the voyage.Characters
: The male protagonist of the game. A high school student who has lost his father at a young age. The tender-hearted elder brother of Chihaya, and reliable guy among his friends.: A long-time childhood friend of Kyosuke, and daughter of Shino. A gentle girl with strong convictions.
: A reserved and precocious girl. Because she tries hard not to display her feelings, she is hard to read.
: The eldest daughter of a noble family and sister of Tamami. A brash elitist with a large ego.
: The younger sister of Karen, although she is only one year younger than her sister, she looks and acts many years younger. Despite her immaturity and propensity to play pranks, she is quite clever at MacGyver
MacGyver
MacGyver is an American action-adventure television series created by Lee David Zlotoff. Henry Winkler and John Rich were the executive producers. The show ran for seven seasons on ABC in the United States and various other networks abroad from 1985 to 1992. The series was filmed in Los Angeles...
-ing items.
: Kyosuke's younger sister. Although constitutionally weak, she is very strong-willed girl, because of the loss of her father at a young age. Highly attached to her brother.
: Kyosuke's best friend by circumstance of sharing the same interests. He is very vain and patronizing person, who is very self-centered.
: Mother of Akeno, and the chief person in charge of the "BaShiRiSuKu" voyage. She is the one that invites everyone on the ship's maiden test voyage. A very accepting and generous woman.
: A man found adrift at sea. Claiming to be a marine researcher, he boards the ship, and murders the ship's crew. A fearsome person skilled at psychological manipulation
Psychological manipulation
Psychological manipulation is a type of social influence that aims to change the perception or behavior of others through underhanded, deceptive, or even abusive tactics. By advancing the interests of the manipulator, often at the other's expense, such methods could be considered exploitative,...
and terror tactics.
Release and sales
Kusari was the fifth top selling computer game on getchu.com for the month of its release, and it was the 44th top selling eroge for 2005. Although these are very good sales overall, they pale in comparison to many of Leaf's other titles, most notably against Leaf's To Heart 2 XRATED which ranked #1 in the same year).Source code scandal
Kusari was one of four games Leaf was forced to release its source codeSource code
In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...
to the public due to having used the Xvid
XviD
Xvid is a video codec library following the MPEG-4 standard, specifically MPEG-4 Part 2 Advanced Simple Profile . It uses ASP features such as b-frames, global and quarter pixel motion compensation, lumi masking, trellis quantization, and H.263, MPEG and custom quantization matrices.Xvid is a...
video codec
Video codec
A video codec is a device or software that enables video compression and/or decompression for digital video. The compression usually employs lossy data compression. Historically, video was stored as an analog signal on magnetic tape...
in the game. XVid is licensed under the GNU
GNU
GNU is a Unix-like computer operating system developed by the GNU project, ultimately aiming to be a "complete Unix-compatible software system"...
Public Library, which requires that programs using the codec to make their source code available to program users.