Raise a girl to save the world in Sekai no tameno Subeteno Shoujo, an apocalyptic deckbuilding visual novel

Publication date of the original Japanese article: 2021-11-20 20:38 (JST)
Translated by. Nick Mosier

On November 20, Japanese indie developer yondray released a demo for their upcoming title Sekai no tameno Subeteno Shoujo (世界の為の全ての少女). The demo is available on PC (Booth) and only supports Japanese.

Sekai no tameno Subeteno Shoujo is a deckbuilding visual novel about raising a child to save a world that has already fallen into ruin. The game takes place in a near future where the world is on the brink of destruction, and humanity has placed all its hope in a little girl that they plan on launching into space.

You play as the person responsible for raising this unwitting, regular child into the perfect human. The only town on the planet is constructed as the location for the child to grow up, and the player must manage the town while raising her.

The game takes place over multiple year-long cycles that are comprised of 6 turns each. The town is made of multiple districts such as the residential district, the entertainment district, and the commercial district. By revitalizing these districts, the liveliness of the town will have an impact on the girl and raise her stats.

But that isn’t to say you just need to make each district more and more lively. Districts can get fatigued and will occasionally need to be given time to rest and recover. Plus, if you rush to make the town too lively, the likelihood of the girl catching on to the plan increases. It’s important to make the girl feel like it’s as normal of a town as possible.

But just as important as managing the town itself is the personnel you hire. As you hire groups of people and assign them to districts, you’ll receive various perks.

There are also conversations between you and the little girl, and events where the girl meets personnel you’ve hired. Magnetic storms and other disasters can also threaten the town, so finding the right people for the job to prepare for when disaster strikes is crucial.

At the end of each year, the child takes an aptitude test which requires “memories” that the girl has of the town to pass. Meeting certain conditions while playing will let you earn MP (Memory Points), which will allow the girl to obtain memories such as “Memory of the festival” or “Memory of summer rain” by consuming them. These memories are tied to stats like intellect and affection.

During the test, interrogators will ask questions relating to things such as intellect or affection, and you’ll need to match the appropriate response/memory to the question. That means the more memories you gather beforehand, the easier passing the test will be. If you skillfully reach passing marks from all 4 interrogators or pass at least 2 by the 7^th turn, you’ll be able to continue on to the next year.

Managing the girl’s stats, managing the city, hiring personnel, gathering memories, making decks with those memories, the game is composed of a lot of different gameplay elements. In the demo, all this information is dumped on you up front, so it’s difficult to grasp everything. But there are also areas that are highly polished like the apocalyptic world building and the multitude of artwork in the game.

The game is set to launch in the winter of this year, so hopefully it comes with a tutorial that’s a little easier to understand.