Visual Novel / Yet Another Killing Game

1 Following

Yet Another Killing Game is a Visual Novel by Jun Kakeru and Team YAKG which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin, yet another killing game. A demo containing Part 1 was released on December 7, 2024 and the full game released on January 31, 2025 for itch.io and Steam.

Three girls wake up in an unfamiliar house: the Amnesiac Hero, the occult enthusiast Cecilia, and the straitlaced Oriana. At the entrance is a bold message for them written in red: "this door will not open until one of you DIES". With all the exits sealed and faced with the prospect of death, they'll have to make a choice: who can they trust and who will be the one to die?

The game cites Ace Attorney, Danganronpa, and Zero Escape as influences with Point And Click investigations in different rooms and making decisions on who to explore with, what to say, and of course, who to kill.

It's time for Yet Another Killing Game's tropes:

• Achievement System: v1.2 introduces 60 achievements for different events, choices, and uncovering optional conversations. Beating the game unlocks hint descriptions for how to obtain each achievement.
• Affectionate Nickname: In Part 1's resolution, everyone is comfortable enough to share their nicknames with each other with the UI updating to replace their names with it for the rest of the game. Cecilia is Cece and Oriana is Ria. Carol-Maria is Karma.
• All for Nothing: During The End, Ria quietly rues the fact that since the Professor's murders were all committed with the aim of allowing him to escape, the Occult Club stopping him and convincing him to return to Hell means their deaths were for nothing.
• All Just a Dream: Played for Laughs and subverted. If you inspect the bed in the master bedroom twice, the protagonist will fall asleep, prompting a brief cutscene in which she wakes up to find the game's events were all just a horrible nightmare... before Oriana shouts her awake again. You even get an achievement named "It Was All A Dream" for doing it.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • During investigations, items of interest will sparkle to let you know they can be investigated and there's a % completion bar to let you know if you've found everything. You can end the investigation right away after finding the plot-relevant items, and skip them entirely if investigating the same area again on the same save file.
  • After the first bad end, rollback is unlocked which allows for going backwards in dialogue and picking another decision.
  • During Part 1, the protagonist is given the option to reflect on their Déjà Vu, which hints at how to achieve another ending.
• Armor-Piercing Question: As The Professor prepares to condemn himself back to Hell during The End, Ria pointedly asks why he was looking for his daughter's spirit in Hell. After a moment of Stunned Silence, the Professor bursts out laughing and agrees that his daughter would most likely have gone to Heaven.
• Art Shift: Cece and Ria's flashbacks to their pasts are shown in a sketchy monochrome style.
• Bait-and-Switch: When the trio are eating dinner during Part 1, Ria suddenly bursts out laughing. Cece assumes she's snapped under the pressure of the Deadly Game before it's revealed that the dog you saw earlier has arrived and started tickling her under the table.
• Bookends: At the very start of the game, you're prompted with a choice on who to kill. At the end of Act 3, the same UI pops up and you're again given the choice of who to kill, which determines the different final endings.
• Bound and Gagged: The Part 1 bad ends where Ria is a victim has Cece tying her up and asking the protagonist who should be the one to kill her.
• But Thou Must!: The game tells you up-front that some of your choices won't matter. Notable examples include:
  • The trio play rock-paper-scissors to decide who gets the master bedroom. You'll always win, no matter what you pick.
  • During the Chaos ending, Cece presents you with a Bound and Gagged Ria and two options: kill her yourself, or do nothing and watch Cece kill her. The game lets you Take a Third Option and try and stop Cece, but she just knocks you out and kills Ria while you're incapacitated. No matter what you choose, Ria dies.
  • While investigating the lounge with Ria, she asks you what tragedy befell the family that used to live in the house. If you choose the wrong answer, she gives you a hint and asks you again, and the game won't proceed until you choose the right answer.
  • Towards the end of Part 2, as The Professor's corpse comes to life and attacks you, you're given two options on where to go: back upstairs, or into the library. If you choose the former, the way ends up blocked and you're forced to go with the latter.
  • During The End, a choice screen appears with a single choice: sacrifice yourself so that Cece, Ria, and Karma can escape. Wait a few seconds and a second choice appears: don't sacrifice yourself. Choosing it causes the protagonist to think that they should reconsider, and the options appear again. If you keep choosing the second option, the protagonist gets more and more confused as to why they're picking it, and the wording of the options grows more and more insistent. Eventually it's subverted, as picking "no" enough times causes the protagonist to have a "Eureka!" Moment that leads you towards the Golden Ending.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: Chaos magic, as explained by Cece, works on the principle that the world is shaped by humanity's beliefs, therefore someone who decides I Reject Your Reality hard enough is able to change reality.
• Conscious While Possessed: The Reveal is that you're a spirit from hell who's been possessing the third Occult Club member, Carol-Maria, since the start of the game. She let you possess her in the hope it would suppress her Groundhog Peggy Sue powers and put an end to the killing game, but she remained conscious enough for them to keep working, and her voice can be heard crying out during several bad endings. During the Omega Ending, it becomes full-blown Symbiotic Possession, with the two of you establishing a psychic link and able to rewind time at will.
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: At the end, it's pointed out that the Professor could have just thrown the protagonist's Soul Jar into the Hell Gate years ago, and it would have released him without the need for the whole Deadly Game. Justified, as the Professor admits that deep down, he'd wanted someone to stop him. The mastermind also admits that had he known that time travel was possible, he would have used that to save his daughter instead of resorting to the occult magic that got him trapped in the first place.
• Cuteness Overload: Ria turns into a gushing mess whenever the dog stops by and often fails to resist the urge to stuff her face into its fur.
• Deadly Game: The basis of the story is Cece, Ria, and the protagonist waking up in an unfamiliar house with no way out aside from the front door, which states it'll only open after one of them dies. The text later updates to say that they only have 20 hours left.
• Death Equals Redemption: Once The Professor is defeated, he is a Graceful Loser and calmly speaks with everyone before willingly throwing himself into the Gate to Hell so they can leave.
• Deconstruction: Of a few killing game elements:
  • Everyone has to sleep at some point which leads to easy ambushes the very first night in the Part 1 bad ends.
  • Once it's clear nobody is going to kill each other, the culprit decides to just hunt them down himself.
  • The Protagonist is given all the big decisions and never targeted by Cece or Ria because Karma was so tired of the endless cycle that she asked everyone else to trust whatever decision the protagonist makes.
  • Making a Heroic Sacrifice turns out to be a Senseless Sacrifice in a Deadly Game where the culprit is happy with anyone dying when it lets them leave as well.
• Deus ex Machina: Cece explicitly describes the protagonist's Mental Time Travel ability as one after they point out they can just rewind time if any of them should be killed while pursuing the Big Bad.
  Cece: Yeah, don't you just LOVE deus ex machina? We can't possibly lose!
• Developer's Foresight: Attempting to name the protagonist "Karma" or "Carol-Maria" at the start of the game leads to a Non-Standard Game Over as Ria isn't sure if the possession worked with the player getting a The End message and a return to the main menu.
• Disturbed by Not Being Disturbed: Inspecting the bloodstained tools in the basement causes the protagonist to remark, "I don't like the way I'm not flinching to blood anymore..."
• The Dog Was the Mastermind: A literal case with the dog whose body turns out to be a vessel for The Professor to possess as a means to spy on everyone.
• Domestic Abuse: A letter found in the lounge reveals the father of the house was beating his son for "forgetting his sin". The rest of the room indicates it started after his daughter died.
• Do Not Spoil This Ending: Achievement #60 has an in-character request to not mention the secrets revealed in it.
• Dramatically Delayed Drug: In the Karma Ending, Cecilia has Oriana at her mercy only to suddenly collapse and start bleeding from her eyes and mouth. Oriana swiftly reveals that she put rat poison in Cecilia's dinner, and it's kicked in just in time. It's not enough to stop Cecilia from stabbing her in the throat for a Mutual Kill.
• Eldritch Location: Black Magic Mansion is a house between the realms of the living and the dead. Its entire existence is confined to its walls, with the "windows" actually being its borders and the fog beyond being absolute nothingness. The only way out is to complete the sacrifices The Professor started and feed one more soul to the Gate to Hell.
• Ending with a Scream: The Karma Ending ends with the protagonist, the Sole Survivor, screaming in horror and anguish.
• Exact Time to Failure: After exploring for a bit, the entrance door is updated to state that the cast only have 20 hours for someone to die and the door to open. Subverted, as the time limit is fake and just put there to pressure the cast, though the door still needs someone's death to open.
• Exact Words:
  • During the Order and Karma Endings, Oriana refers to Cecilia as being the person responsible for bringing the three girls to the mansion, which the protagonist takes to mean that she's the culprit behind the Deadly Game. Oriana later explains that she was being literal: Cecilia brought the trio to the mansion as part of an Occult Club expedition, but she isn't responsible for the killing game.
  • At the end of Act 1, depending on your choices, you can ask Cece and Ria whether the third Occult Club member is yourself. Ria replies that there is nobody by your name in the Occult Club, which is true, but omits the fact that you are in fact currently possessing the third Occult Club member.
• Failure Is the Only Option: You can't catch the dog during Act 1 no matter what you pick, though you do get an achievement for keeping up the chase for as long as possible.
• Faking the Dead: As a spirit possessing his own corpse, The Professor does this a few times to avoid revealing himself:
  • The first time is when he possesses the dog's corpse and leaves behind his body in the basement when the Occult Club investigates it. Cece declares him dead after not finding a pulse which gives him the opportunity to sneak back in and ambush them.
  • During Part 3, he leaves the dog's corpse out in the open. After that, he leaves his own body to be found with a knife through the chest. He does this to avoid further detection and to pressure the cast into thinking that they'll have to turn on each other to get out since his death apparently didn't count.
• Fanservice: Part 2 opens with Cece intentionally getting out of the shower with just a Modesty Towel on as the protagonist wakes up. If you choose to ignore her, and from the third loop onwards, Cece admits that she's invoking the trope and gets upset about you ignoring it.
  Cece: But... my fanservice scene...
• Fauxshadow: A lot of dialogue hints that the protagonist may actually be the daughter of the house's family with The Professor himself being hopeful that it's the case. However, the achievement for entering the protagonist's true name and the Thanking the Viewer message indicate it's just supposed to be the player's name, along with The Professor expressing disappointment after hearing it. Either way, the protagonist never fully clears up their amnesia.
• Foreshadowing:
  • The key to getting the Golden Ending is foreshadowed on a couple of occasions:
    • The very first choice you have to make in the game is whether to kill Cecilia or Oriana. If you take long enough, a timer appears on-screen, and waiting out the timer lets you skip the decision without killing either of them... which is exactly what you need to do when the choice comes up again at the end of the game.
    • During Act 1, while discussing their situation, one dialogue choice leads to Cecilia suggesting that they may want time to run out.
  • Depending on your choices, the third Occult Club member can be brought up repeatedly prior to The Reveal, and Cece and Ria will act strangely each time. Most notably, at the end of Act 1, you can actually choose to ask whether you are the third Occult Club member, and while Cece and Ria deny it, the protagonist thinks to herself that she's not too far off.
  • It's mentioned at the end of Part 1 that the house you're in is haunted, with locals having reported hearing the sound of clanking metal and roaring flames coming from within. That would be the Hell Gate in the basement.
  • At the end of Part 1, while discussing how to get into the lounge, Cecilia suggests that they try burning the door down. The protagonist replies that she has no plans to burn to death anytime soon, eerily foreshadowing her fate in one of the bad endings and the True Ending.
  • There are multiple hints that Cece has been possessed by The Professor throughout Part 3, which are replayed to you during The Reveal:
    • When the dog's corpse is found, Cece is quick to judge it as a warning, and when The Professor's corpse is found, it's in Cece's bedroom. Both times, it's because The Processor in Cece's body put them there.
    • The above events result in Cece steering you back towards the killing game and ultimately persuading the trio to make the "final choice", something the player explicitly calls her out on doing but is unable to prevent.
    • During Part 1, Cece explains that she plays a lot of gacha games on her phone and is upset at missing out on her login bonuses. When she gets her phone back from The Professor's corpse, however, she isn't bothered by it in the slightest.
• Golden Ending: The End has the protagonist choose to seek out the full truth instead of sacrificing themselves which leads to unveiling The Professor, subduing him, and him being a Graceful Loser who sends himself through the Gate to Hell as the last sacrifice to open the doors for everyone to leave.
• Hell Gate: The mansion you're trapped in turns out to have one in the basement, foreshadowed by the book you find in the attic during the Judgement Ending. The protagonist falling into it during the Light Ending and being incinerated by hellfire is what causes them to realise they were Dead All Along.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: The game gives three opportunities to give names:
  • You're able to name the amnesiac protagonist at the start of the game.
  • At the end of Part 1, you're given the opportunity to name the dog yourself instead of taking the others' suggestions of Shaggy or Cerberus.
  • During the Light Ending of Part 2, you're able to reject the protagonist's name which is followed by a prompt to type in your true name.
• "Here's Johnny!" Homage: When The Professor is chasing down the survivors, they wind up locking themselves in the bathroom with The Professor stepping away and saying he's going to get his axe to break it down. Falling for the bait and leaving too soon leads to him immediately attacking, with an achievement directly referencing the quote.
• Ignore the Fanservice: Part 2 opens with Cece intentionally leaving the shower with a Modesty Towel as the protagonist is waking up for Fanservice. One dialogue option is to be completely unfazed, which turns the tables and has Cece loudly wondering about different reasons for why the fanservice is being ignored.
• In the Back: In the Darkness Ending, the protagonist is suddenly stabbed in the back by an unknown assailant after Ria goes down the hatch to investigate and Cece gets knocked out. The protagonist is suspicious of Cece in the aftermath, though the actual assailant is The Professor.
• Jump Scare: Cece in particular likes doing this to you, including one occasion in Act 1 where she jumps in front of you so that her grinning face fills the screen. There's even an achievement for getting jump-scared by her while in the basement.
• Kirk Summation: During The End, Ria calls out The Professor as a mass murderer who needs to be stopped because he can't be contained and won't be able to let go of trying to find a way to revive his daughter. The Professor acknowledges Ria read his journal entries and is speaking from a place of kindness; after he's subdued, he thanks Ria for the wake up call and giving him the strength to sacrifice himself and finally stop.
  Oriana: I can tell you've thought a lot about this over the years... You've wanted to escape this house for so long... There's an objective you so badly want to achieve... But...you're also an immortal. Time has no meaning for you. You've already waited decades in solitude, with nothing but corpses keeping you company... A normal prison is a mere instant compared to that. And then when us mere humans can't confine you anymore... You will start again. Continue to do absolutely whatever it takes to achieve your final objective... And you will be a prisoner to your impossible task once more.
  The Professor: ...I see. Your defiance stems not from your morality nor convictions, but rather...your kindness.
  Oriana: You are sane. That's why...you continue to torture yourself. Killing people over and over and over again, even though it eats away at your soul. That's why...we must end it here. YOU must end it here.
  The Professor: ...You have a valiant spirit, Oriana. I commend you for showing a wretch like myself such consideration.
• Last-Second Ending Choice: Downplayed. While the very last ending is the happiest one, the final decision is whether the protagonist chooses to leave with the girls or stay behind in the house and pass on.
• Let's Split Up, Gang!: The cast frequently split up to explore more rooms which leads to bad things happening each and every time they do it. While they're in a rush from the 20-hour time limit, it's a small house and they suspect the mastermind is hiding somewhere.
• Meat Puppet: The wrist shackles allow the soul within to take control of whatever body they're equipped on, dead or alive.
• Mistaken Death Confirmation: When Cece examines the corpse in the basement, she confirms it doesn't have a pulse. On the correct path to completing Part 2, the corpse awakens and tries to attack them. Technically, the corpse is dead, it was merely possessed while the trio weren't looking.
• Mutual Kill: The Karma Ending has Cece and Ria killing each other. It starts off like the Chaos Ending where Cece has Ria Bound and Gagged until the rat poison Ria put into her food starts killing her. Ria begins her Evil Gloating, but is Caught Monologuing when Cece uses the last of her strength to stab her in the throat.
• No-Harm Requirement: A mutual example. The Professor elects to take down the survivors non-lethally instead of killing one of them to avoid triggering Karma's Groundhog Peggy Sue ability. Meanwhile, the survivors are doing their best to avoid hurting Cece, who The Professor is possessing, while trying to take away the wrist shackle his soul is in.
• Ominous Visual Glitch: During Part 3, the protagonist can suggest that Cece is the mastermind to Ria. The screen abruptly turns negative and the dialogue keeps repeating "ERROR: An exception has occurred. Please rollback your changes." before going back to normal afterwards.
• One-Steve Limit: The game gives you an achievement for defying the trope and giving the protagonist the same name as another character.
• Player Nudge:
  • During Part 1, the protagonist can take a moment to reflect on their Déjà Vu to figure out how to reach a new ending. If the wrong critical choice is made, the protagonist will also have a bad Gut Feeling that they're going to repeat a bad end.
  • After each Good and True ending, the narration keeps urging the player to uncover the full truth and gives hints on how to get another ending.
• Psychic Link: In the final part of The End, Karma is able to read the protagonist's thoughts even when they're possessing the dog. Cece guesses it's from the two sharing a body for so long.
• Rewatch Bonus: Many after discovering the Occult Club's relationships, the protagonist being a spirit possessing the third club member Karma who is a Groundhog Peggy Sue, and The Professor's Body Surfing.
  • The dog always feels cold to the touch, which the cast take as a sign of him having access to the outside somehow. It's really the fact that the dog is a walking corpse.
  • The Chaos End is just as much Cece being interested in what the demon will do and being especially disappointed if they refuse to let Ria be killed. The protagonist instantly getting knocked out in this ending is from Cece taking their wrist bangle off for a bit, which also occurs in the Non-Standard Game Over.
  • During the Karma ending, Cece saying "Karma" isn't her talking about the Mutual Kill, but addressing her friend's body.
  • Cece's maliciousness during Part 3 is a lot easier to spot as The Professor possessing her along with her being especially unhelpful during The Summation.
    • In particular, observe the girls' facial expressions as you make your "final choice" in Part 3. Ria is appropriately mortified, but Cece is grinning from ear to ear, even if you choose to kill her. It's easy to write this off as Cece's usual Nightmare Fetishist tendencies, but when you're prompted to make the same choice at the very beginning, Cece looks just as mortified as Ria, which you're likely to have forgotten about by that point. Turns out her giddiness in Part 3 is because she's been possessed by The Professor, who's about to escape no matter who you pick.
  • The Cecilia and Oriana Endings have the respective survivor talking to the protagonist, except that the protagonist's name isn't shown during their dialogue. On a repeat playthrough, it becomes apparent that this is to obscure the fact that they're actually talking to a no-longer-possessed Carol-Maria.
• Secret Expanded Epilogue: Achievement #60 is a secret after-credits scene with two Event Flags to unlock it. It also comes with an in-character Do Not Spoil This Ending request.
• Senseless Sacrifice: The Good Ends and True End are retroactively revealed to be bad ends after learning in The End route that killing someone to open the door allows The Professor to escape in those endings.
• Shout-Out:
  • The achievement for sneezing in the kitchen after inspecting the pepper shaker is called "Only Chosen Intellectuals" (Doctor Pepper, get it?).
  • Examining the microwave in the kitchen leads to Cece calling it a microwave while the protagonist feels the need to specify that it's a microwave oven. This is followed by Cece asking what the difference is, not unlike the first ladder vs stepladder debate.
  • Examining the window in the kitchen has Cece ponder whether the house might be flying, before bringing up a movie in which a house was picked up and carried away by a tornado. The protagonist points out how unrealistic that is and suggests it could instead have been lifted by countless helium balloons, but Cece remarks that they're not allowed to discuss that.
  • In the attic, the protagonist can say they're not in a video game, which Cece retorts to by bringing up the movie where mankind is put in a simulation by machines attempting to enslave them.
  • The protagonist remarks at one point that the darkness inside the hatch in the basement is "advanced darkness".
  • Achievement #33 is titled "Human Re-instrumentality".
  • After Oriana Dope Slaps Cecilia in the basement, Cece complains, "Even my own mother's never hit me..."
  • If the protagonist makes the wrong choice during The End, there's a "Here's Johnny!" Homage and achievement where they're attacked in the bathroom.
  • When Cece wakes up from having been possessed by the Professor, she mutters, "An unfamiliar ceiling...?"
  • The achievement for completing the game is titled "YOU FOUND IT!"
• A Sinister Clue: Brought up by Cece in an optional achievement dialogue when pointing out that the protagonist is left-handed and the associated myth of it being a sign of the devil.
• Sliding Scale of Gameplay and Story Integration: The ability to reject bad endings is Karma's Groundhog Peggy Sue power kicking in. In the Good and True endings, the rejection option is no longer there because Karma is finally satisfied with the protagonist making a choice on who dies and ending the loop. In this case, it's up to the player to purposely restart the killing game again.
• Soul Jar: The wrist shackles are revealed to contain a soul, and placing the shackle on someone allows the soul to possess their body or corpse. Taking away the shackle will render the soul unconscious, and putting the shackle through the Gate to Hell burns them up and effectively kills their living presence.
• Spanner in the Works: Karma's Groundhog Peggy Sue power was an unexpected factor preventing The Professor's plan to leave, which led to him offering the wrist shackle containing the protagonist in an attempt to end the loop. The protagonist's influence leads to the events where the Occult Club can all live.
• Stab the Scorpion: During Part 2's conclusion, the protagonist is on edge after the Darkness Ending and suspects Cece of stabbing them. When Cece flashes her knife all of a sudden, the protagonist fears the worst, but Cece is actually defending the group against the knife-wielding corpse who's suddenly started moving.
• Stating the Simple Solution: After The Professor is defeated, the protagonist has a choice of either asking why The Professor didn't have Karma put on his soul shackle instead or why he didn't just sacrifice the protagonist's shackle in the first place. In both cases, he answers that he hoped the protagonist was really his daughter and that deep down, he wanted to be stopped.
• Symbiotic Possession: When Karma puts on the Protagonist's soul shackle in The End, they're both conscious and able to communicate with the protagonist controlling the body while Karma is focused on when to rewind time.
• Take Your Time: In the library, Cece is holding the door against the zombie while the protagonist is desperately searching for something to patch Ria up with. Aside from the standard case of taking your time, there are a lot of journal entries here to optionally read through.
• Tampering with Food and Drink: When Cece becomes a victim in the Part 1 bad ends, it's from Ria putting rat poison in her dinner.
• Thanking the Viewer: The final ending leaves off on a thank you message from the developer, with the effect of letting the player know that the game is truly over.
• That Wasn't a Request: If the protagonist rejects the True End, but messes up with their deduction, the Occult Club reveals that they were set on sacrificing the protagonist anyway, seeing as they're a dead spirit from Hell.
• This Is Reality: After seeing a crate in the attic, Cece encourages smashing it open, which the protagonist objects to by saying that they're not in a video game.
• Time Rewind Mechanic: After the first bad end, the Recall mechanic is unlocked, which allows the player to go backwards in the conversation and potentially make other choices. This seems to be an offshoot of Karma's power as she learns to use it for Save Scumming during The End. Additionally, the controls for it still work even when the protagonist isn't possessing Karma.
• Title Drop: As the True End route occurs, Karma laments the Time Loop Fatigue from her Groundhog Peggy Sue power persistently triggering and being trapped in yet another killing game.
  Karma: All I knew was pain. And no matter how much I struggled, I couldn't escape... I wanted to die. I wanted to fade away. I wanted to stop caring about my friends so I could leave them for dead. But no matter what attitude I had, it would always end the same... Time would flow back to the beginning... The beginning of yet another killing game...
• Trust Password: When the protagonist is about to time travel back in the Despair ending, Cece asks the protagonist to remember a phrase: "Serena killed the clownfish". When asked about it later, she says it's a secret she never told anyone else, and that she revealed it in order to test the nature of the time-loop power. During The End, the protagonist asks Cece what Serena killed and she's unable to answer, thus confirming that she's possessed by The Professor.
• Waiting Puzzle: The True End is reached by refusing to kill Cece and Ria and waiting out the timer. The End is accessible after waiting out the prompt to sacrifice the protagonist.
• Unwinnable by Design: If you make a specific set of choices during Part 1, the protagonist will not only kill Ria when asked to by Cece, but actively enjoy it. This not only gets you the Chaos Ending, but will lock you into getting the Chaos Ending on every subsequent loop on that save file, no matter which choices you make, preventing you from progressing.