Japanese illustrator and game developer MYU recently announced that their web browser-like augmented reality game (ARG), Sato Killing Time Chat.exe, has amassed over 10,000 downloads on Steam in just three days. Released on March 13, it was first conceived roughly five months after their last game, Type-NOISE: Shonen Shojo, and took about two months to develop (source: Game*Spark).
Post translation:
Sato Killing Time Chat.exe has gotten over 10,000 downloads! Thank you so much! Please continue to support the game.
The idea for Sato Killing Time Chat.exe came about when MYU was working on another game that incorporated text-based chat. While it was not the main focus of the other title, MYU wondered if they could create a game that worked primarily using player text inputs. After testing Sato Killing Time Chat.exe with Google’s Gemini Application Programming Interface (API), they saw the potential in the title and decided to develop it as a full-length game.
Inspired by Misaki from Welcome to the N.H.K. and Lain from Serial Experiments Lain (according to a recent developer interview), your chat buddy in Sato Killing Time Chat.exe is the anime girl named “Mina”. Estranged from her family and an outcast at school, she asks you to kill time with her through a chat-based app.
Mina responds to every message you type into the app. Much like a real person would, engaging in topics that Mina dislikes repeatedly can cause her to leave the chat. Get close enough, however, and she will send you pictures of herself as a “reward” of sorts.
In addition to the chat app, an in-game web browser lets you search fictional pages about topics you discuss with Mina, as well as engage in some cyber sleuthing of your own. From a shadowy organization known as “A.R.G.” to Mina’s identity, you’ll be searching high and low for the answers to the game’s deepest, darkest mysteries.
Sato Killing Time Chat.exe currently has a “Mixed” rating on Steam, with negative reviews centered on its hard-to-understand English translation. Given that this is a type of game that lives or dies based on the readability of its text, here’s hoping that future updates will address these concerns.
Sato Killing Time Chat.exe is available for Windows (Steam).
