What do you get when you mix visual novels, escape rooms, and shoot’em ups? YURUKILL!

Yurukill: The Calumniation Games can be summed up by one word, interesting. Whether it’s we’re talking about the plot, the characters, or the gameplay, Yurukill continuously had me wondering what was coming next. While the game is interesting, whether that means the game is worth the purchase is a different question.

The plot of Yurukill is one of my favorite points of the title as it’s just a roller coaster of twists and turns. You follow teams comprised of a prisoner, and the victim of said prisoner’s crime who are referred to as executioners. Why are they referred to as executioners you ask? Because at any moment they can exact revenge on the prisoner by pressing the execute button thus killing them instantly. Executioners must work to keep their partner prisoner alive as completing Yurukill will grant them anything they desire while also freeing their paired prisoner. Within this already wild story, there’s an overarching story following Sengoku Shunju, a delivery driver who’s been framed for mass murder, who’s pairing with Rina Azami, a victim who lost everyone she loved supposedly to Sengoku. Sengoku must prove to Rina that he’s innocent as the real killer in present on the island of Yurukill. The plot only gets crazier when gameplay gets involved.

Yurukill combines elements of visual novels, escape room puzzles, and bullet hell shmup gameplay. Levels of the game are segmented into several chapters where you must first complete a series of escape room puzzles. The escape rooms are designed around the crime scenes which are set to invoke emotions from the executioners in an effort to push them over the edge and execute the prisoners. As you progress through the puzzles, you’ll come across Maji-Kill Time Segments which remind me Danganronpa. These events task you with convincing the executioner to keep prisoner alive based on evidence found across the escape room challenges. To top off all the madness, at the end of each escape room the game places you into VR headsets where the prisoner and executioners face off in giant mech suits (yes, it gets this out of control with the plot) in a shoot’em up bullet hell sequence where the prisoners must continue to prove their innocence to the executioners. To say there’s just everything going on is a massive understatement.

Gameplay-wise, the escape rooms really do kill a lot of the fun for me as the challenges rarely offer any challenge and are monotonous as it follows the same formula of three rooms to explore in each stage. Add in dialogue that while at first is intriguing, ends up being annoying as the dialogue goes on. Similarly, the Maji-Kill Time events end up feeling like checkpoints set to test your understanding of the information you’ve been given thus far; and even they feel overly easy. The shoot’em up moments are where the games shine the strongest but aren’t without their flaws. Shmup stages are fast-paced, bullet-ridden challenges where you’ll have to be quick to survive. What’s nice about these moments is that each prisoner has stats that change up combat. While the bosses at the end of each section offer some sense of individuality, there aren’t a huge number of lower-level enemies to make each a difference.

As I first began Yurukill, I honestly didn’t know how to feel about the game. Going in expecting a focus on the shmup style gameplay, instead getting a small taste when I started the story followed by over an hour of talking without any gameplay was rough. The characters did a lot to keep me hooked through these moments whether we’re talking about Binko playing the role of the crazy host of the events that gave me heavy Monokuma vibes, the prisoners whose lives have been destroyed because of the crimes they’ve been framed for, or the executioners who have lost so much only to have to participate in these events where they themselves could be the killers adds so much drama and mystery that’s just addictive. If Yurukill added some depth to the escape room style moments, this game would be a must-play for me, however, it feels tacked on in a way to talk about the backstory of the characters and add in content. With that being said, I would love to see Yurukill return with another game if the story is this compelling.

*Review code provided by the developer for PS5*