Ludography
Kizuato cover

1996 · Leaf · Adult · Visual novel

Kizuato

1996 video game

Released
26 July 1996
Platforms
Windows
Genres
AdultVisual novel
Developers
Leaf
Publishers
Aquaplus
Series
Leaf Visual Novel Series
Modes
Single-player
Country
Japan

About

Kizuato (痕~きずあと~; Scar) is a Japanese adult horror visual novel released on July 26, 1996, by Leaf for NEC PC-9801 and Microsoft Windows 95. An enhanced edition with new visuals, often called Kizuato Renewal, was released on July 26, 2002, targeting Windows 98, Me, 2000, and XP. Another enhanced edition with yet new visuals and voice acting was released on September 18, 2009, this time targeting Windows 2000, XP, and Vista.

It is the second in Leaf's Visual Novel series, which took the style of Chunsoft's Sound Novel series, such as Kamaitachi no Yoru, and applied it to eroge, as with their previous work, Shizuku, which released earlier in the same year, helping to pioneer the term "visual novel".

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Story

Koichi Kashiwagi, a college student, goes to his cousins' for his father's funeral. After the ceremony, as he is on summer vacation, he stays with them. He experiences recurring nightmares and must hold down a strong homicidal impulse surfacing from deep within himself. One day Koichi dreams that he slaughters a person violently. The next day, the news reports the event of a violent homicide in the park where Koichi committed the murder in his dream.

Legacy

Kizuato is known for being historically notable and defining the visual novel genre. It has been described as similar to Shizuku, with themes of bloodshed, violence, and humiliation, with a "dark narrative". Some have argued that having character's hair spring up by antennae was popularized by the game, later becoming standard in games and anime. Kizuato was described as eroge but notable for combining the sound novels form with "erotic content". The visual novel was also mentioned by Konoha Akisato, the protagonist of 16bit Sensation: Another Layer, with the novel as an important part of setting the historical context for the anime's story.

In the same series

Games like this

Collections1 collection

Genres

Description adapted from its source, CC BY-SA 4.0.