Satsui no Kaisō: Soft House Renzoku Satsujin Jiken

A new video game hit has just released for the "Fairy Computer" - PowerSoft's "Super Marx Brothers". Celebration of the game's success was short-lived when soon after launch, its programmer Masato Nishikawa has seemingly jumped to his death from a cliff. Not convinced that Masato would commit suicide at the peak of his career, his friend and this game's protagonist Akihito Kashihata sets out to PowerSoft's office to investigate the case.

Compared to its peers in the Japanese-style adventure genre on the Famicom, especially the ones with a mystery narrative, Satsui no Kaisō: Soft House Renzoku Satsujin Jiken is significantly more challenging to play due to its unique deadline feature. 3 minutes will pass for each action you take, like moving to a new room in PowerSoft office, making a dialogue exchange, trying to use something or examining something. You start each day of investigation at 10AM and have to leave when PowerSoft ends its working hours at 6PM. There are time-limited events happening during the investigation, for which you only have one chance to show up and gather clues. The PowerSoft president will allow you to enter the company's office for 3 days to investigate. The game will end early by then if you have not gathered enough clues, or continue past the 3rd day if you have. The game does not provide enough time to exhaust all of the dialogue topics available with every NPCs, forcing you to be surgical with your investigation, not brute force through the game.

It's possible to reach the end credits of the game without fully solving the case. In order to see the game's true ending, it's necessary not just to find out whodunnit, you also have to have gathered enough clues to build a case against the suspect(s).