With rising development costs making it harder to turn a profit from the genre, the market has seen fewer high-budget 3D visual novel games coming out in recent years. Against this background, Spike Chunsoft recently launched No Sleep For Kaname Date – From AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES, a new entry in Kotaro Uchikoshi’s iconic murder mystery series. The project was made possible thanks to long-term sales of the franchise’s first two games, but also due to the development team’s efforts to use their budget where it really counts.
Talking to AUTOMATON, Spike Chunsoft executive and AI series producer Yasuhiro Iizuka comments, “How I see it, there’s a certain upper limit to how much money you can put into a visual novel game. As in, if you go beyond that limit, the project won’t be profitable anymore.” Iizuka suggests that for the AI series, robust cost-saving measures are crucial.
“As fans of the series may have noticed, we’ve been creative about not going overboard with costs, particularly when it comes to the exploration segments of the game.” While acknowledging that it is important to invest in environments too, Iizuka stresses that “rather than pouring money into graphics or new maps to give the game a sense volume, our policy is to spend on what this series values most – the story, depicting how the scenario unfolds, and the interactions between characters.”
A specific example of this approach is the reuse of maps for both Somnium and exploration gameplay segments, which was done in both nirvanA Initiative and the new No Sleep for Kaname Date. “We reduce the sense of repetitiveness by applying filters to change the mood and spacing out scenes.”
On the other hand, an aspect Spike Chunsoft doesn’t compromise on in Somnium Files games – apart from narrative – is voice work, which is undoubtedly the most expensive part of development according to Iizuka. “One of the rules I set for the AI series is that even the silliest little jokes get voiced. We follow this just as strictly for English releases,” Iizuka comments, adding that he considers this kind of attention to detail an important part of the series. “We make sure to allocate budget for it.”
On a related note, Spike Chunsoft greenlit and developed the AI: The Somnium Files’ second mainline entry, nirvanA Initiative, despite its predecessor launching to weak initial sales. As they were riding on positive player feedback rather than sales figures, it was all the more important to keep development costs at a minimum. Though the series is now seeing solid commercial success, these kinds of cost-saving efforts seem to be what has allowed it to keep seeing new developments years later.
No Sleep For Kaname Date – From AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES is out now for PC (Steam), Nintendo Switch, and Nintendo Switch 2.
