Nippon Ichi Software announced in this week’s Famitsu magazine a brand new game titled Shoujo Jigoku no Doku Musume. It’s an action RPG with puzzle game-like elements, featuring a male protagonist who ends up in hell and needs to fight against its inhabitants, cute girls, to get back home. The game also has a focus on multiple story routes, branching depending on the player’s dialogue choices.
The development of Shoujo Jigoku no Doku Musume is 75% complete and the game will launch on June 25 in Japan on PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch. Further details and screenshots from Famitsu are included below.
First off, the character designer of Shoujo Jigoku no Doku Musume is Madoka Hanagi. She previously worked on games such as the Disgaea series, The Witch and the Hundred Knight 2, or The Princess Guide. Madoka Hanagi also illustrated many cards in Z/X – Zillions of enemy X-, the card game by Nippon Ichi Software and Broccoli.
The first girl the protagonist of Shoujo Jigoku no Doku Musume meets in hell is the titular Doku Musume, literally “poison girl”, voiced by Manami Numakura. She’s a soul without her own body and she possesses the protagonist. Doku Musume also isn’t her real name, as she suffers from amnesia. She asks the protagonist to help her purify hell from poison swamps, which are appearing because of the negative thoughts and energy of the girls living in hell. Monsters are born out of this too.
Overall, the game flow of Shoujo Jigoku no Doku Musume is exploring hell, fighting monsters, having dialogues with Doku Musume and picking story changing meaningful dialogues choices, looking for poison swamps, and purifying them. To do that, the protagonist needs to trace a trajectory to guide Doku Musume, and circle around the poison to purify it. Enemies who get circled in Doku Musume’s trajectory ends up being defeated, and they can turn into new weapons the protagonist can use. This gives the game a puzzle game like element.
The protagonist’s arm can also be possessed by Doku Musume to turn it into a gun, changing the gameplay to a third-person shooter. The game’s monsters also have many different types of attacks, including ranger attacks and sneak attacks.
Shoujo Jigoku no Doku Musume also features a key character only named Moufuku no Shoujo, literally Girl in Mourning Clothes, voiced by Yuki Kawakami. Just as her name suggests, she wears black, school uniform-like clothing. It seems like she’s a normal human like the protagonist, but she willingly came to hell for a certain reason. Moufuku no Shoujo is also possessed by another Doku Musume, called White Doku Musume, voiced by Mina Takagawa.
Shoujo Jigoku no Doku Musume also has a radio you can listen to anywhere. The various girls living in hell speak on this radio, and you can use it to gather information, but also to learn more about their tragic fates.
The girls who live in hell have strong negative emotions, which makes them end up creating their own hell, with different visual aspects and features, giving the game a reason to include various environments. Here are four of these girls revealed so far. Note that their seiyuu weren’t revealed yet.
Ayami Mori. Something “horrible” happened to Ayami Mori at school but she kept hiding it from her family. She wishes she could erase everything that made her suffer and turn it to ashes, like when correcting mistakes with an eraser.
Mahoro Hiiragi. She died before being able to fulfill a promise with a friend. As such, Mahoro Hiiragi holds very strong regrets and negative feelings, giving her a lot of power.
Misao Mizuki. A girl obsessed with erotic books. In Misao Mizuki’s hell, when clearing poison swamps, you’ll uncover sexy illustrations. It seems like there’s a link between Misao and these pictures.
Yoshie Nanasuki. She’s a girl who obtained, through unknown circumstances, the “Cursed Black Book”, a book appearing in an urban legend. In Yoshie Nanasuki’s hell, the protagonist and Doku Musume will be attacked by many monsters.
Being an action RPG, Shoujo Jigoku no Doku Musume has a pretty good chance to release outside Japan. If you look at 2019, Nippon Ichi Software released multiple new IPs in Japan. One of the few which released in the west was Destiny Connect, a turn-based RPG. Two other games didn’t leave Japan: Jinrui no Minasama e, and Satsujin Tantei Jack the Ripper. These two are visual novels so it’s not surprising. I’m not expecting Bokuhime Project to leave Japan either.
Shoujo Jigoku no Doku Musume‘s key visual and logo were shared by Japanese online game shops. You can find them below. More info on the game will be coming on Nippon Ichi Software’s Twitter at a later date. Last side note, the “me” part of the game when written in Japanese is written with 〆, the symbol that can be found on envelopes denoting closed off, instead of the normal メ: 少女地獄のドクムス〆.
The post Shoujo Jigoku no Doku Musume Announced by Nippon Ichi Software for PS4, Switch by Iyane Agossah appeared first on DualShockers.