DISCLAIMER: YOUR TURN TO DIE IS NOT A GRAPHIC GAME

Video games have many diverse genres, like romance, action, role-playing, fantasy, and visual novels.  According to Majority, the developer for this game, Your Turn To Die “is a negotiation/adventure game by Nankidai about a deadly game, where the participants choose who dies,”. The game is kind of like Danganronpa, which is a famous visual novel known for its graphics and insane characters. It is a free browser game, but don’t let that steer you away from playing it. The 2D graphics are amazing, despite its status as a free game. It contains Three Chapters, containing Two Parts in every Chapter; however, Chapter Three, Part 2 isn’t out yet. 

 To start off, you play as Sara Chidouin, a 17-year-old high school student that participates in the Death Game. Joe Tazuna participates with Sara in the Death Game, being dragged into this horror after he walked her home. There are 12 characters in total, including Sara. Kazumi Mishima, a high school teacher, Reko Yabusame, a singer-songwriter, Q-Taro Burgerberg, a baseball player, and Kai Satou, a chef, are the first to be introduced. 

Your Turn To Die is an amazing game; the interactiveness in it is just enough for a visual novel. In a lot of visual novels, you don’t get to choose where you want to explore first, the storyline is set out for you. But in YTTD, you can move freely and choose responses to questions. There are also interactive scenes where you must choose the right options in order to win the “argument battle”. In the Main Game, you must interact with the characters and put together a lot of points and arguments to figure out who you should vote to kill off. It is an interesting game that can be replayed many times. Each time you can kill off different characters in Chapter Two or take the route where you choose the mean speaking options rather than the speaking options that will make characters favor you. YTTD also has many puzzles in it, making it difficult to remember all the right steps to each puzzle. 

The storyline is based around surviving the Death Game, where you must solve puzzles and vote people out, which ultimately kills them. Throughout the Chapters, which are just different stages in the game and separate Main Games, there are a total of three main settings. Each Chapter has its own floor, where the story for that Chapter will play out. The setting has an impact on the story as well, some things wouldn’t have happened if there weren’t certain objects around. For example, on the second floor, Nao finds an AI of Professor Mishima and becomes stronger because she had a chance to talk with someone she valued and cared for. If the AI bots weren’t there, I’m sure Nao would have been the first to beg to be voted out, simply to be reunited with her beloved teacher again. 

For reference, this game is similar to the newly popularized Netflix show, Squid Game. 

However, in contrast to the positives, just because a game is well built and has a large audience doesn’t mean that it is perfect. The game can be irritating sometimes. With it being a browser game, it can refresh or the tab can close and your game won’t save automatically. The storyline is a bit confusing for someone who can’t process many storylines at a time or multitask because there are many subplots.

In the First Chapter, you begin on the first floor and meet the characters and the Floor Master, named Sue Miley. In order to successfully navigate the chapter, the player must gain the characters’ trust. There are deaths early on, which turns the story in a different direction. The game requires you to solve puzzles a lot to get to the Main Game, where you will discuss who to vote out and kill. In the end, Kai, who was the Sage, and Joe, the Sacrifice and Sara’s best friend, were the ones voted out and killed. In this chapter, you cannot change who dies. After that, your character, Sara, moves onto the Second Floor. 

You begin Chapter Two in a new setting with new rules and Floor Masters, Rio Ranger, and Safalin. To be able to survive and participate in the second Main Game, you must obtain 10 clear chips from the minigames that are placed all over the map. This map has many secrets and new rooms, such as the Monitor Room, which has AI’s of the players that have died so far in the game, and the Prize Room, which has prizes for collecting other players’ Me-Tokens, which you get from negotiating and trading every day. You can buy other people’s secrets and victim tapes, which are tapes from when you had a life or death situation at the beginning of the game where you had one other person you knew and you had to both escape. In this Main Game, you have three options on who can die. You can either kill Kanna, Sou, or Nao. Choosing Nao will result in everyone but Sara and Nao dying. Previously in the Chapter, either Alice or Reko will die, depending on how you choose.

The players are then moved to the Third Floor to begin the Third Chapter. The Floor Master is introduced, a doll named Midori. You meet new players, but secrets about them are revealed to show that they aren’t humans, but something more disturbing and confusing. The rooms are also recognized by a few of the old players as the First Trial Rooms back from Chapter One. There is only one part out of the two parts that make up the Third Chapter, as of now. There is not a definite release date for the second part of the Third Chapter.

I would highly recommend this game to anyone who loves horror, a storyline to shock you and tug at your heartstrings. Each Chapter can take from 4-6 hours to complete and is time-consuming, which was rather enjoyable because it is difficult to find a good, long scary game. The amount of time it takes for each part to come out is a bit long and can cause you to lose interest in the game; however, it can also create positive suspense. I love how sick it is, but it can also show you how people can bond over traumatic events. You learn to love each character and find yourself rooting for all of them but still having to kill people off and deal with the heartbreak from their death.  Overall, this game is a solid 9/10 in my opinion, and definitely worth all the time it takes to finish each Chapter and Part.