Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters: Daybreak Special Gigs is quite possibly the longest title for a game that I’ve reviewed this year, and honestly, the game itself makes about as much sense as the title. Taking the role as a new student transfer to Kurenai Academy, players need to juggle their school and social lives with a part-time job at Gatekeepers Incorporated, a magazine on the supernatural that just happens to hunt ghosts on the side. Part visual novel, part RPG, Daybreak Special Gigs is certainly a unique experience, but seeing as it’s published by NIS America, that uniqueness seems to go with the territory.
You start Daybreak Special Gigs on your first day at your new school, literally bumping into a couple of your new classmates, and entering into text-based conversation with them. In fact, this conversation is fairly one-sided, as your character appears to be mute, as your interactions with the game-world are made via a conversation wheel that pops up whenever you’re expected to interact with someone. This wheel isn’t explained at all in-game, and seeing as it resembles the conversation wheel from Oblivion, I figured I’d press some buttons and see what happened. As it turns out, this is less of a conversation wheel and more of a sensory perception wheel, as I’ll explain.
Essentially, the wheel is broken down into two screens, and a number of segments. The first screen allows you to choose from happy, sad, affectionate or angry, and then the second screen gives you the options of touch, taste, smell, listen, or look. So, using this wheel, you can shake someone’s hand by choosing ‘happy’, then ‘touch’, or you can punch someone by choosing ‘angry’ then ‘touch’. Unfortunately, not knowing what I was doing or really knowing what the symbols inferred, I chose ‘angry’ then ‘taste’, which resulted in me biting my new classmate. This wasn’t the only such strange social encounter that I experienced, and I can’t help but feel that a little context or introduction would have helped quite a bit.
It seems as though Daybreak Special Gigs enjoys being deliberately obtuse, taking delight in confusing players and refusing to explicitly explain many of its mechanics. Your first five minutes in the classroom are spent answering questions regarding your name, hometown, favorite subject at school, height, weight and eyesight. Following this, you’re whisked away to the mysterious top floor of the school, where, along with the help of one of your classmates and a mysterious lady, you’re required to fight the ghost of a serial killer in a red coat. You’re quickly shown how a battle plays out, via the in-game Ouija Pad, which presents a top-down view of your environment, laid out like a Dungeons and Dragons map in grids. You’re then shown what your first four moves should be, and then that’s it. There’s a minimal explanation of what to do, and then you’re left on your own to figure out the rest.
Thankfully, once you become a full member of Gatekeepers Incorporated, and gain access to the equipment and planning side of battles, it becomes a little easier, and a little more interesting, to engage in battles. You’re shown the layout of the area that you’re about to battle in, and the spots where ghosts have been sighted previously. Using this information, you’re able to place traps and lures which will hopefully dictate where the ghosts will be able to move to, and therefore make you job of defeating them a lot easier. There still isn’t much explanation to be found about which traps are more useful, or what approach you should take, but trial and error goes a long way to figuring out Daybreak Special Gigs, and battles are no exception.
Personally, I didn’t much enjoy my time with Tokyo Twilight Ghost Hunters: Daybreak Special Gigs, as I found the game frustratingly obscure and almost deliberately confusing. However, I can imagine that there are gamers out there looking for this exact type of game, as it doesn’t hold your hand and rewards players willing to stick it out and figure out how to play. While the game itself works as intended, it isn’t exactly ‘fun’, and a lot of players will likely give up during the first battle. There’s a lot of text for long periods, minimal player input and an unwelcoming feel to the game that will put a lot of players off. Despite that, if you’re looking for a game that you really need to work at, Daybreak Special Gigs might be something you’ll enjoy.
