Shuten Order

Shuten Order is an adventure and visual novel video game in which the player advances through text to progress the mystery, sci-fi, and dystopian story. The game takes place within the nation of Shuten, a theocratic city-state governed by the titular new religious movement and cult. The cult firmly opposes God and are awaiting the extinction of humanity; countdown clocks to this moment of demise are found around every corner in the city. The player character is Rei Shimobe (Mitsuki Saiga), who awakens without any memories, but is informed by two self-proclaimed angels of God, Himeru (Aoi Yūki) and Mikotoru (Toshiyuki Morikawa), that she is a reincarnation of the Shuten Order's Founder, who was murdered and dismembered during festivities for Shuten's national day.

According to the angels, Rei is in a temporary body and must clear God's Trial — identify her killer, acquire a confession, and then kill them herself — if she wants to be permanently revived. Rei can take help from the power of God in her search for the culprit, but she must use it sparingly since it is outlawed by the doctrines of the Shuten Order.

An amnesic young woman awakens in a hotel room and is greeted by Himeru and Mikotoru, who give her the name Rei Shimobe and task her with God's Trial. Over the next three days, Rei sets out to identify her killer among the five ministers of Shuten so that she may achieve full resurrection. Throughout her investigations, Rei learns several truths about the Shuten Order. Its citizens, and Rei herself, are in fact droids, the "God" detested by the cult actually refers to the droids' human creators, and the power of God used by Rei is in reality computer hacking. In each route, Rei fails to identify the culprit and meets her own death instead, only to awaken once again in the hotel room at the start of the same four-day period, without recollection of the preceding events.

After dying in every route, Rei awakens on the fourth day and retains the memories from all of her investigations. Rei and the ministers gather in the Shuten Order's main office for an assembly conference surrounding the Founder's murder, where Rei correctly surmises the culprit as Manji Fushicho, who runs away when cornered. Rei and Kishiru Inugami track her down to the hotel where Rei awakened, only to find that every guest room contains an exact copy of Rei still asleep. Fushicho appears and explains that Rei/the Founder is a special hive-type droid who is revived upon dying by having her memory transferred into another body; the hotel, Fushicho explains, is where these spare bodies are stored. It is revealed that the five routes were not timeloops, but rather five of Rei's bodies activating simultaneously.

Too Kyo Games co-founder Kazutaka Kodaka, otherwise known for the Danganronpa series, conceived of Shuten Order while planning the game Death Come True (2020), shortly after the cancelation of a project that would later become the predecessor to their 2025 title The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy. The cancelation of The Hundred Line's predecessor gave Kodaka time to plan out Shuten Order, which he intended to pursue as an indie game within Too Kyo, but was forced to place the project on hold when Hundred Line re-entered development. He planned to resume the game when Hundred Line was completed; however, coincidentally around the same time, he acquainted with Junta Inagaki, the producer of DMM Games. They discussed creating a title together, so Kodaka presented the decently developed plot of Shuten Order during a meeting between the two companies. DMM, who were looking to expand their business with an original IP, agreed to partner with Too Kyo for the title.

Since he and many members of Too Kyo would be pre-occupied with Hundred Line, Kodaka took on a supervising and advisory role for Shuten Order while entrusting creative direction to Takumi Nakazawa. Nakazawa was also on the staff team for Hundred Line, but dropped out to prioritize Shuten Order when it entered full-scale production. After its completion, the Shuten Order team at Too Kyo were reunited with the rest of the company on finishing Hundred Line.

According to aggregator OpenCritic, Shuten Order was recommended by 75% of 53 professional reviewers. Rival aggregator Metacritic describes reception as "mixed to average" on Nintendo Switch and "generally positive" on PC, based on weighted averages of critic scores. Out of 20 reviews on Switch, 12 were positive, 7 were mixed, and 1 was negative. According to Caitlin Moore for Anime News Network, critical reception and sales of the game stalled due to its initial localization issues. In an amendment to her original review after the release of the translation patch, she wrote:

Shuten Order was highly praised by critics, but most of us pointed out the issues with the English text, whether specifically pointing to the pronoun issues or a more general discussion of the inaccuracies and grammar mistakes. These criticisms are also reflected in player reviews and community discussions; currently, the game has "Mixed" reviews on Steam, with many citing the translation as the reason not to recommend it. Within my personal circles, people who would ordinarily pick up any game with Kodaka's name on it have chosen to wait to buy it. A cheap, rushed, machine-driven translation hurts game sales. It makes it impossible for international players to understand the message the creators were trying to convey, and I'm glad the publishers are changing course to provide players with an accurate, quality release.