Adventure Corner ~ No Sleep For Kaname Date – From AI: The Somnium Files

Welcome to Adventure Corner, a column where members of the RPGamer staff can give their thoughts, impressions, and pseudo-reviews for various adventure titles that don’t come under our usual coverage. Adventure Corner is aimed at delivering opinions on a wide range of titles including visual novels, point-and-click adventures, investigative mysteries, and so forth.

In this edition of the column we take a look at the latest title in the AI: The Somnium Files puzzle adventure series, No Sleep For Kaname Date – From AI: The Somnium Files.

No Sleep For Kaname Date – From AI: The Somnium Files

Following the Zero Escape trilogy, the team led by creator Katoru Uchikoshi put together an even further mind-bending experience with AI: The Somnium Files, where part of the puzzle was being able to figure out the logic they operate by. Not surprisingly, its success resulted in the sequel AI: The Somnium Files – nirvanA Initiative, and now we have a third entry with No Sleep For Kaname Date – From AI: The Somnium Files. No Sleep For Kaname Date is a somewhat different title than the previous entries. Rather than being a full-fledged sequel, it is much more of a straightforward escape room-themed experience that can be best considered a side story or fandisc. It’s still enjoyable spending more time with Date, Aiba, et al. and figuring out some engaging puzzles, but players shouldn’t expect the same level of interwining of story threads.

No Sleep For Kaname Date takes place between the events of the two previous games, though characters from both show up in it. Furthering the thought of the game being akin to a fandisc, it expects players to be fully familiar with the events of the first game at the very least, and fully versed in the concept of Psyncing. The game begins with returning protagonist Kaname Date, an investigator at a special branch of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department who is partnered by AI companion Aiba, being chased by a group of armed goons. This chase leads him to a familiar street, where he witnesses the sight of the goons and his friend internet idol Iris Sagan beamed up into a UFO. Iris is then tasked by a mysterious virtual lizard-girl with escaping a series of locked room trials, but is allowed to be given outside assistance from Date, while he scours the city for clues to her location.

No Sleep for Kaname Date is more focused on escape rooms than the Psync puzzles or mind-screwing plots of its predecessors.

The game is split into a mixture of investigative events and puzzle sequences. Some of these puzzles feature the returning Psyncs, where players are put into the subject’s Somnium — effectively a dream world created by their mind — and unlock its bizarre logic to uncover clues and information; however, there are also now escape room sequences. These are more outright puzzles where players must put together various chains of clues in order to find and unlock the exit. It’s definitely a harken back to the series’s roots in its spritiual predecessor Zero Escape, with some interesting conceptual puzzles that take on multiple layers, particularly when additional characters become involved in the escape rooms and players have to solve clues for one before another can progress.

Psyncs operate in the same way as the previous games as Aiba acts within this mindscape under the instructions of Date. For each object in the dream world that Aiba can interact with, there are multiple possible actions, each of which uses up a certain amount of time. These actions can also provide items called TIMIEs that can be used to drastically reduce the time a future action takes. The puzzle is ultimately about figuring out the logic of the dream world to know which actions will let Aiba progress through it, while trying to maximise the time available. While No Sleep For Kaname Date might not provide anything new to the Psyncs, they still provide a very effective narrative way of diving into their subject’s psyche, establishing their past traumas, and current, often quite broken, mindsets. The game includes multiple difficulty options that can be switched between at any time. These can allow players to get additional clues from the characters or effectively bypass the time constraints of the Psyncs, meaning that those who do struggle with a particular section will be able to get through them easily should they wish.

There are still some logic-screwing Psyncs for fans to dive into, however.

Despite its strange opening and without wishing to spoil any particular details, the overall plot of No Sleep For Kaname Date ends up being quite straightforward. Due to sitting inbetween the events of the two games, none of the returning characters get anything in the way of development, but there is some good and enjoyable affirmations of their relationships. However, there are a small number of new characters that the story — and its ultimately pleasing conclusion — are built around, and the story works well in developing them while also examining a few of the series’s continuing themes. The game itself isn’t especially long, and will likely take players around half the time of the previous AI games, especially given that there aren’t any route splits, though there are still amusing “failure” endings players can potentially stumble into by doing specific actions.

The visuals don’t come with any surprises either. There are some new sights for both the escape room and Psync sections, which fit in nicely while providing their own distinct themes, but all of the other places are simply reused from before. The small number of new characters have decent designs that fit in well with the style, while Iris is in a new bunny costume that is a little bizarre, especially given it comes with no explanation or apparent purpose. Audio is strong without being overly noteworthy, rather like the game’s narrative positioning in the series.

On the whole, No Sleep For Kaname Date showcases some of what has made the series successful to this date, though certainly not all of it. The escape room sections evoke a bit of its spiritual predecessor Zero Escape and are satisfying to solve, though the plot is one that ultimately lacks the proper curveballs of both series. It’s still an enjoyable title, though any newcomers to the series should really just start with the first game as this one definitely feels like one for the fans.

Disclosure: This article is based on a free copy of the game provided by the publisher.