The Xbox One continues to see an influx of indie games, even as Sony has announced its Unity development tools have gone free. The next indie Xbox One game, D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die, will release this Friday.
D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die is billed as a “Japanese mystery game,” which is to say it’s unlike a title most Xbox One owners would often play. The concept seems straightforward and interesting. Players take the detective protagonist on a time-traveling journey to solve and ultimately prevent his wife’s murder.
Exactly how it’s done is where the game might feel different.
D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die is being developed by Swery65 (Hidetaka Suehiro), who imbues his games with a unique humorous and surrealist tone. This new $14.99 digital-download game for Xbox One promises to be no different.
Gamers haven’t heard much from Swery65 since his 2010 game Deadly Premonition. Considering the ‘cult classic’ nature of that game, Microsoft certainly has high hopes that D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die will follow in those footsteps. And announcing its release date during the 2014 Tokyo Game Show is certainly no coincidence.
Although the Xbox One no longer requires Kinect, the motion-tracking sensor will be used in full form in D4. Although it won’t be required to play D4, the Kinect will allow players to control their player using gestures and (English) voice commands. The Xbox One controller can be used for all interaction, though, and you can switch between controller and Kinect at any time during the game.
If you opt for Kinect, your gestures will replicate the hero’s actions and emotions in each scene. It’s not quite biomimicry, but it’s pretty slick nonetheless.
D4 is billed as a “cinematic murder mystery.” If you think of the mystery unfolding in episodes, you may be interested to learn that a ranking system will show how players performed compared to other gamers at the end of each episode.
You can read more about the game here.