Cross Days

Cross Days is a visual novel. These are essentially played by watching and listening to episodic sequences of story and then selecting, or ignoring, clickable actions or responses when they are presented to the player. These choices are intricately linked to alternating routes of plot, moderately changing the direction of the story as each is made, ultimately leading to erotic scenes between characters and one of various endings. In the game's yaoi routes, the protagonist crossdresses as a maid and engages in homosexual intercourse.

Like the games before it, Cross Days is presented with limited animation. The game is audibly stereophonic with lip-synched voice acting, sound effects and background music.

Yuuki Ashikaga is a high school freshman in his second semester at the fictional Sakakino Academy, who from his regular visits to the library, grows enamored by Kotonoha Katsura, a classmate who also comes to read. Despite being in a relationship, she genuinely reciprocates his interest. However, things become complicated when his sister, Chie, introduces him to Roka Kitsuregawa, a friend of hers. In an attempt to make herself seem harder to get, Roka claims that she is equally interested in Makoto Itou, another schoolmate. Her lie is unsuccessful, as Yuuki, aware that Makoto is Kotonoha's boyfriend, decides to ask her about the affair.

Unlike in Summer Days, the story in Cross Days is not rewritten as a spin-off of the original story, but occurs during the events of it, making the game a parallel series to School Days. As such, the undisclosed location of the story remains the same with focus being around the school. All signature characters and their established relationships appear in the game, with six new cast members.

News of Cross Days first surfaced in the December 2008 issue of Tech Gian, a magazine published by Enterbrain, on October 21, showing first ever screenshots, reporting on the story and characters, and mentioning that Cross Days would contain 3D animation with a meticulously reworked plot and male protagonist. Also in October, ASCII Media Works and Gakken published articles about the game in their respective issues of Dengeki G's Magazine, Dengeki Hime and Megami Magazine.

Promotion began shortly after. Besides periodically keeping the public informed on development and characters, 0verflow consecutively released downloadable, non-playable benchmarks of the game from November 1, 2008, to May 4, 2009. Company staff attended Dream Party, an anime convention, in Osaka on November 16, 2008, selling Cross Days telephone cards while stores took pre-orders for the game, reportedly filling reservations in days. On December 5, 0verflow announced that a set of USB teledildonics, collectively known as SOM, would be compatible with Cross Days, manufactured by Goods Land. Trial versions of the game, released to about 95 select retailers, were disclosed by 0verflow on December 26 and at Comiket 75.

Cross Days for Windows premiered as the third most sold game on Getchu.com, a major redistributor of visual novel and domestic anime products, during the month of its release, ranking twelfth for the first half of 2010, and thirty-first for the whole year. The DVD game ranked as the most sold DVDi for the first half of 2011, and forty-seventh most from November 26 to December 27. Cross Days for the PSP additionally ranked as the fifteenth most sold UMD game during that time as well.