Game designer Jiroo Ishii recently announced that his new social deduction-style visual novel Depth Loop will release in Spring 2026. The game’s title is based on JINROU: The Playing Theater (TLPT)’s Depth, an improvised play in which actors assume the roles of characters participating in a Mafia-styled social deduction game. In a recent interview with 4Gamer, Ishii told the story of how he decided to make an “endlessly playable roguelike visual novel,” and what fans should expect from the title.
Having created cult-classics like 428: Shibuya Scramble, Jiro Ishii is considered a veteran in the narrative adventure game/visual novel genres, but according to him, the medium has been reaching a dead end in recent years, with less and less truly “innovative” titles coming out. However, trying to be a part of a shift that will push the visual novel genre further, Ishii decided to make his next project a “roguelike visual novel.”
Ishii theorizes that the roguelike visual novel genre was initiated by PetitDepotto’s Gnosia, but since there weren’t any games inheriting its style, he took it upon himself to broaden the genre and pitched Depth Loop. To give a brief explanation, a “roguelike” visual novel lets the player experience looped gameplay, with each loop being a completely different, randomized experience. A huge reason why Ishii decided to adopt and play around with the roguelike genre is because he wanted to attempt making a visual novel with infinite replayability. “Games without randomness only behave as intended […] But roguelikes can go against one’s expectations, and if you make them the right way – they can be infinitely replayable. Creating an infinitely replayable visual novel is probably impossible without a roguelike system,” he explained.
In the case of Depth Loop, the player, alongside 12 other genius researchers, will be forced to play numerous games of Werewolf/Mafia. With each round, villager and imposter roles will be shuffled around, providing a different kind of scenario with each loop. Furthermore, as Ishii mentioned in a recent Denfaminicogamer interview, all 12 of the NPCs will be powered by AI (Update: this refers to enemy AI; not to be confused with generative AI) that was trained on TLPT’s vast archive (they have held more than 800 performances with a 13-person cast so far). So, aside from having their own personalities and behavior patterns, all the characters will already be familiar with many different strategies for the Werewolf game – and also have a strong will to survive. The randomness factor paired with a human-like cast of characters that behaves differently based on the situation means that each round of the game will, ideally, be its own separate experience with a completely different outcome.
As Ishii explains, “the number of endings itself is huge. We still don’t know if we can implement all of them, but I think around 200 endings will be able to see the light of day. As for the number of routes that lead up to these endings, it’s endless. That’s why I consider it a visual novel of endless possibilities. Most usual novels can only be played once, but I believe Depth Loop has the possibility to be the complete opposite of that.”
With so many possible endings, you may think – well, there’s got tobe one true ending, right? And there technically is, except not in the way most of us are expecting. As Ishii hints, rather than “getting the true ending” of Depth Loop, the player will have to go meta and fight against the system itself. “While Death Loop relies a lot on the randomness factor as a roguelike werewolf game, the actual theme of our game is Can you dismantle the werewolf game?,” Ishii teased.
Depth Loop is set to release in Spring 2026.
