The third in the now-trilogy that started with AI: The Somnium Files is the first that Kotaro Uchikoshi took a back seat to. He still had a supervisory role, but it’s one of Uchikoshi’s mentees, Kazuya Yamada, who gets the creative credit for this one. The good news is that Yamada is every bit as thirsty as Uchikoshi at his best. Oh, and he’s also got a lot of potential to become a great game writer, as No Sleep For Kaname Date shows with some style.
No Sleep For Kaname Date takes place between the events of AI: The Somnium Files and its sequel. It also centres the narrative Iris, or A-Set, when she is, for reasons, captured by aliens in the opening cut scene and then tasked with solving puzzles by said aliens to save the world. I’m not going to spoil the plot, as it is both consistently delightful and utterly surreal.
It’s also just really, really thirsty. Uchikoshi has never been particularly subtle about his love of raunch, fan service, and beautiful people, and Yamada takes to that same attitude with gusto. With no exaggeration, my eyes were stretched wide when, within the first five minutes of the game, Iris is dressed in a two-piece bunny costume that Koei Tecmo’s Dead or Alive team would think is pretty in-your-face. My eyes nearly popped out of their sockets when, after the narrative switched back to Horndog, Date, he proceeded to use his X-ray vision to study a girl’s skeleton with all the innuendo of someone who was enjoying that way too much. Well done, Yamada. I must admit I’ve never come across a fetish for skeletons in video games before, and you’ve got a point on the board for that.
To be abundantly clear, this game has been made for the fans, and while AI and its sequel had their eye-opening moments, this one does dial things up to 11, Spinal Tap style. If you find some pretty heavy sexualisation amusing, this game will amuse you. If you already know the characters, then seeing them go off the rails is funny in its own right. If you don’t have an existing relationship with this series, then so much of the humour of No Sleep For Kaname Date will pass by you, and given that the narrative seems exclusively interested in making you laugh by being outrageous, you’re going to find this falls flat without the context. And if discussions about a woman’s hip bones and totally-not-accidental camera crotch shots of Iris upset you, you’re really best off just leaving the AI series at a two-chapter story.
But then you might want to grit your teeth and bear it anyway, because No Sleep For Kaname Date brings a triumphant return to the escape room puzzle. AI: The Somnium Files had excellent puzzles, but there’s something particularly special about the way that Team Zero Escape can construct Saw-like puzzle rooms (minus the gore, though heavily implied if you let the time count sections drop to zero). These things are nuanced and layered to test just about every type of logical thinking that you can imagine. Take, for example, the very first room, which requires you to collect a series of statues and then find ways to use each of them creatively to solve puzzles that rely on their size, weight, shape, features and even numbers carved on the back of them.
My recommendation is that you set the puzzle difficulty to at least “normal”, but preferably even “hard”, and just accept that you’ll be stumped for a while a few times in every room. It’s not the fastest-paced game as a result, but good grief does it feel good when you do solve that final step and escape on your own initiative. So many puzzle games effectively hold your hand, it’s refreshing to have one that, outside of the easiest setting, will give you hints but be willing to let you fail if you can’t figure out the solution for yourself.
The game also features the same “Somnium” style puzzles as the AI series proper, and while those are fine, they’re much more linear in both design and solutions, and I spent my entire time playing those wishing I was solving more escape rooms instead.
In general, however, you should go in expecting No Sleep For Kaname Date to be a more limited experience. It’s “only” about 18-20 hours long (depending on how tough you find the puzzles), the narrative is much more linear, and by replacing characterisation with a series of puns and humour, the narrative is also much thinner than in previous titles. None of this is an inherent problem, and 18-20 more hours hanging out with this gang is better than that kind of time in just about any other game out there.
No Sleep For Kaname Date – From AI: The Somnium Files is a kind of filler release, and that’s okay. Not every game needs to be something that overs tens of hours of highly emotional plot and deep gameplay, and the first two AI: The Somnium Files games have already established an intelligent pedigree for the series. It’s nice to have something that goes for pure comedy as a contrast. The Zero Escape team stuck to what they knew with the gameplay, and clearly had bundles of fun doing so. That makes it very easy for fans to have fun with the game in return.
Also, this was an excuse for more Iris. Game of the year contender right there.
