Following his return to work after an emergency hospitalization in July, Shibuya Scramble Stories director Jiro Ishii announced on September 2 that the current total amount raised from the game’s crowdfunding campaigns has come to over 100 million JPY (roughly $624 thousand USD). Storytelling, Ishii’s company, will temporarily cover the unpaid development funds from the fiasco with crowdfunding site Ubgoe (which resulted in the project missing more than half of its funding) while it continues to seek rightful compensation.
Ishii also attended a Shibuya Scramble Stories presentation event on September 1. In addition to providing updates on the project’s crowdfunding, his team revealed a gameplay demo video, as well as two new characters.
The demo (shown above) isn’t a 1:1 representation of gameplay, as some footage may differ from the final game. According to Ishii, the visual novel portions are running “almost entirely” on the in-game engine and are what the team is hoping to achieve.
It was also announced that Japanese influencer Namae wa Mada Nai and professional wrestler Unagi Sayaka will be playing two new characters. Namae wa Mada Nai plays Mido, a female college student who aspires to be a journalist. To get closer to achieving her dream, she writes and posts news articles on social media, many of which have racked up several views from readers. Unagi Sayaka plays Unagi Nagiko, a devout follower of Shibuya’s local “Banana Cult,” which has been active for several decades.
A stretch goal for the first phase of the CAMPFIRE crowdfunding campaign stated that one major, non-playable character would be included in the story once the project reached a cumulative 100 million JPY in funding. While that goal wasn’t reached during the first phase, it was just shy of roughly $10 thousand USD – an amount it managed to obtain at the start of the second phase, meaning we could be seeing more additions to the roster.
Shibuya Scramble Stories is currently in development. The second phase of its CAMPFIRE crowdfunding campaign is currently ongoing until September 30. You can find more about the game on its official webpage.
