True Tears

The gameplay in True Tears requires little player interaction as much time is spent on reading the text that appears on the lower portion of the screen, representing either dialogue between characters, or the inner thoughts of the protagonist. Before the beginning of every week in the game's storyline, the player is given the option to plan a schedule, and is allowed to pick and view any three days of the given week. Different events occur depending on the days that the player chooses. Every so often, the player will come to a "decision point" where he or she is given the chance to choose from options that are displayed on the screen, typically two to three at a time.

Depending on which choice the player makes, the "tear points" of the heroine associated with the events of the day would either increase, decrease, or remains the same. "Tear points" act as a system notifying the player how well he or she is treating a certain character. If a character's tear points exceed the maximum amount of eight, her ending is rendered inaccessible during that specific playthrough. There are multiple plot lines that the player will have the chance to experience.

The story of True Tears revolves around the protagonist Tetsuya Mizuno (水野 哲也, Mizuno Tetsuya), a third year high school student whose role the player assumes, and his interactions with his schoolmates during the second half of his final year attending Mizuho Academy (瑞鳳学園, Mizuho Gakuen), in which the main part of the story takes place. Tetsuya meets Yuzuko Sanada (真田 柚子, Sanada Yuzuko; Voiced by: Yūna Inamura), a heroine and a childhood friend whom he nicknamed Yuzu one day on his way to school. Yuzuko actually has a crush on Tetsuya. To her advantage, she is skilled at cooking and homemaking, but has a timid personality.

He later also meets Rui Nakane (仲根 るい, Rui Nakane; Voiced by: Yui Itsuki) at the pool after running errands for Asumi Akiyama (秋山 飛美, Akiyama Asumi; Voiced by: Kyōko Hikami), his cousin who is also the school nurse. Rui is the main heroine in the story, who holds vast knowledge, and is very affectionate towards animals to the extent where her aim is to become a veterinarian. Despite her love toward animals, she has a severe fear of touching cats due to a past incident.

True Tears was first announced on May 4, 2005, at the Dream Party convention hosted at the Tokyo Big Sight. It was announced as the first project by the visual novel studio La'cryma, a collaboration among visual novel studios Broccoli, Circus, GameCrab, and Japanese artist Rei Izumi. The executive producers for the visual novel were Takaaki Kitani from Broccoli, and Tororo from Circus. While their respective companies also led the planning, the scenario is worked on by Nonoka Maihama and GameCrab.

hack//Legend of the Twilight, who also provided character designs. Music from the game was composed entirely by Kometto Nekono, who had also provided music for the Da Capo series.

Unlike Da Capo II, one of the two games that often appeared alongside True Tears in advertising campaigns, the game did not enjoy as high of a sales record, ranking forty-first out of fifty on the national ranking of bishōjo games based on amount sold in Japan during the last two weeks of March 2006, compared to D.C. II's first place debut on the same chart two months later.