The Second Reality Room: Unspoken Truths opens in Steam Early Access

• Announcements by Jack Allin
• Published:

Demo also available for visual novel-styled "empathy-driven" psychological deduction mystery for PC

Trauma can have an incredible effect on the human mind, from simple stress to repressed memories and even multiple personalities. In Shadow Glove's The Second Reality Room: Unspoken Truths, it'll be up to you to help your teenaged clients through their respective manifestations of a whole different type of psychological issue known colloquially in Japan as "chuunibyo."

You control Kogoro Satori, the 29-year-old director of the titular consultancy clinic, a place that treats adolescents suffering from "elaborate fantasies, dramatic personas, and self-mythologizing." Your clients have "strange troubles" that seem to defy logical explanation: one believes himself to be the reincarnation of a fallen angel, while another fears he's been cursed and destined to be consumed by a black miasma. Couch therapy won't do for cases like these, nor even traditional hypnosis. Instead, with help from your eager young assistant Mikoto, you'll use a combination of normal questioning and mind reading to uncover the "true feelings hidden beneath their words" and identify "the circumstances that led them to embrace chuunibyo." Only by tapping into the "pain and inner conflict that could not be put into words in everyday life" can you hope to heal them of their harmful psychoses. 

Described as an "empathy-driven psychological mystery adventure that confronts the modern pain of feeling misunderstood," The Second Reality Room is a combination of visual novel-styled dialogue, first-person examination of imagined inner thoughts, and keyword-based deduction. Success involves three core mechanics – Talk, Mind Read, and Translate – as you seek to discern your clients' "fantastical way of seeing the world." In conversation you'll choose topics for clues and new leads that may sound delusional but will identify important keywords and enable you to tap into frozen scenes from their subconscious for closer inspection. Then, drawing from what you're learned, you'll fill in the blanks of their stories through word-based deduction. You can't simply brute force your way through, however, as each treatment features both a "Clear End and a Bad End." You'll have a limited number of days to complete your treatment, and incorrect diagnoses will worsen your patients' condition and decrease the time available. Allow them to reach "Stage IV" and you'll lose them forever. 

The full and final version of The Second Reality Room: Unspoken Truths, consisting of "a Prologue, an Epilogue, and 6 main chapters," won't be ready until sometime later this year, but the version now available through Steam Early Access for Windows PC already includes "the Prologue through Chapter 4, with approximately 7–9 hours of gameplay." A free demo can also be downloaded to try it out first, containing only the Prologue and first chapter. 

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