The Nameless Game / Nanashi No Game

[James]

This horror DS game has taken 3 years to be fan translated, go look up the patch. I will be circulating it in private.

Plot
Rumors have been circulating about a cursed role-playing game; anyone who plays it and does not complete it dies seven days after starting. You are one of the victims playing the game; having started playing it several days after your friend recommended it to you. You visit your friend’s apartment to discover he is already dead. Starting that day strange things happens to you; everything you experience in the game resembles something in real life, and so-on.

Gameplay
The game provides two separate modes of play. Most of the game is spent in the exploration mode, in which the player moves around real-time 3D environments using the D-Pad and touch screen. During the exploration mode the player must also solve puzzles and avoid zombie-like spirits that roam the area. Periodically the exploration mode is interrupted by the RPG mode, which makes use of the top DS screen only. In RPG mode, the player plays a 2D 8-bit RPG (the "cursed" game) that provides clues to the current exploration mode puzzles and advances the plot.

[James]

This game, this game this game this game this game.

So I start it, rather short intro (You're a university student) then it shows you "Nanashi No Game" downloaded automatically on your 'TI' (in game DS ripoff, the DS' boot layout functions as the game's menu)

So you play through Nanashi No Game, it looks like a very innocent 8bit JRPG among the lines of Final Fantasy 2-3 or Dragon Quest but you can't leave this first town for the moment but there's small glitches. You give up playing after 5 minutes or so as a classmate basically interrupts with "HEY I'VE GOT THAT GAME 6 DAYS AGO, GOT IT FROM A FRIEND WHO IS MISSING"

So you go off into the missing person's apartment. You're introduced to the first person exploration similar to Penumbra and Amnesia which is controlled in 'novel' mode (sideways DS), both screens act as your eyes so it is flawed as you of course only interact with the bottom/right touch pad and there's a massive white space. I recommend playign with your left eye closed. Your view You can use the pad to look left right, walk backwards and forwards. You can also move forward by pressing the center of the screen with the stick and look in any direction with the stick. You can run if you press forward on the pad and hold in the center of the screen, which obscures your view of the left panel... which adds to the horror.

The game recommends you use headset because it has 3d sound, which I did, and oh my days this game has had no shock value so far (a great thing!) but the eerie sounds and the rising ruckas going around you made me paranoid. The awkward controls added to this experience as I tried NOT to look around corners as quick as I could and turned around slowly.

An hour later in a new area, without spoiling, I threw up from nausea because I got caught by a creature that was limping but would teleport back and forth.

This game is cool as Hell, hope it keeps me on edge.

[James]

Please excuse how ham handed this post is, also it is my last post bumping it. This game needs attention for how horrifying it is:

Last night I was playing it again with the purpose of getting past the second level or at least a good amount of progress past the part that made me sick.

So I do that, and escape the way I came in. The in game DS is smashed on the floor and you find another one close by, on a baby incubator. There's this segment in the in-game Nameless game where there's a wedding. When you speak to the Groom a spirit appears from the side of him (in game) and runs off. You follow the direction where it went and find a grave with a ring.

When you return to the village, the groom is dead and the bride devastated. You're asked to rest in an inn, so I do. At night you wake up and the bride calls you by the groom's name to get married, if you follow her/get close she says something among the lines "We...'ll Be... Together For...ever" and you're sent back to bed, with her looming over you. I was stuck in this groundhog moment for 5 minutes and realised how to run past her to get out of the inn. She is screaming at you now as you run out of the town.

Now this translated to the survival game, before that I ran through a teenager spirit who fell onto a grate and started slithering, 2 rooms later he was on a sacrificial bed and the door ahead was locked, so I had to run where I came in... on the other side of the door was him again and OH LORD I PANICED and ran another room out. I ran back in and dodged him into a new unlocked door and found notes on what happened.

I was then chased by an ex lover, like the game. I ran completely out of the hospital to avoid it.

Later on I encountered the spirit that made me throw up the other night, though she didn't try moving at me. Just staring in plain sight unprovoked. I shut the DS down and couldn't sleep.