A visual novel inspired by social deduction games like "Werewolf" or "Among Us", with a protagonist who "loops" after death like in "Groundhog Day" or "Re:Zero"

Intended for mature players only, Raging Loop is a visual novel inspired by the party game “Werewolf”, which is a “social deduction”, “hidden role”, or “communication” game – an asynchronous team game where players try to bluff one another in order to expose and remove members of the opposing team. The multiplayer video game “Among Us” is also this general style of game.

Raging Loop begins when the protagonist accidentally stumbles into an extremely remote and tiny village not on any map. The warmth of local welcome ranges from the friendly kindness of the young woman who first meets him, to cold indifference from some elders, and varying attitudes from students and others. Then an eerie mist envelops the village.

Murderous monsters prowl the mist at night, preventing any attempt to escape, but even worse – some of the village inhabitants have also become murderous “wolves”! The still-human villagers must find and hang the “wolves” in their midst before their own numbers dwindle too low, and a strict set of religious rules imposed by the local deity “Shin’nai” restrict what both the humans and the “wolves” can do. Any rulebreakers will be slaughtered by “the corruption” at night, with their mangled bodies left for all others to see the next day.

This premise is horrifying enough, as the village inhabitants – all of whom know each other, some with very close family ties – have been locked into a dark game of kill or be killed. Yet another twist is that the protagonist, who begins the story as an unfortunate outsider, “loops” back to the start of his ill-omened road trip every time he dies. However, he is capable of retaining some (not all) memories of his looping, and the flashes that stay with him can guide him to make different choices in his next “loop”… sometimes.

In-game, this is represented as a story flowchart. The player can jump around parts of the flowchart that they have experienced at any time. Parts of the flowchart are locked by “keys”, and the vast majority of “keys” are earned by making a choice and then dying.

Although there is a “Save” feature that works like a bookmark in the story, all key, scene, or ending unlocks are permanent unless the player uses a menu option to reset all data. There is also a menu option to “cheat” and make the game immediately yield all keys, although this is only intended as a recourse against data loss and can greatly detract from the story if the player uses it to take the “locked” routes early on their first playthrough. If the player doesn’t know or remember where to use their keys in the flowchart, an optional “hint corner” scene after every possible ending will tell them.

Ultimately, Raging Loop has very little gameplay. Its choices are relatively few and far between, and most “wrong” choices just lead to a unique Bad Ending and another loop. Some Bad Endings are mandatory for progression, while others aren’t but are absolutely worth seeing regardless.

The heart of Raging Loop is its story, which is told with skilled voice acting, surprisingly catchy or evocative music, expressive character images, and the occasional special piece of artwork. The art style blurs the line between anime and western artwork, but the story is unquestionably Japanese. All voice acting is in Japanese only; the English subtitles are quite well-translated, conveying the full nuance of the original lines and not just their literal meaning. Typos exist, but are few and far between.

The story is immersive and shockingly addictive. Raging Loop features a very large cast of characters with hidden depths, complex relationships, and motivations at cross purpose. It’s hard to explain just how good the story is without giving away spoilers, but be prepared for a long haul with a protagonist who must do a great deal of critical and pragmatic thinking, in response to grisly and seemingly impossible situations.

Raging Loop is intended for mature players only (older teens or adults). The story has murder, gore, and references to sexual situations. Gore is never explicitly shown on-screen – only in silhouette form with chilling text descriptions.

Sexual situations are not explicitly shown or described (other than an occasional kiss, or in one case, a sexual advance that is successfully rebuffed), and are nowhere near as frequent as the gore. A couple of hidden “alternate” or “joke” endings have sexual situations that would be repulsive if taken seriously (they’re clearly not intended to be serious).

Completing the main story of Raging Loop unlocks bonus content – some additional postgame story scenes that serve as an epilogue, and the option to re-read the story with additional scenes that reveal “what really happened” or characters’ previously hidden thoughts.

Aside from a few implausible story elements (especially in the ending), Raging Loop is the gold standard of visual novel storytelling, and highly recommended even for those who don’t normally like the horror genre; restricting all scenes of gore to silhouette images makes the story more accessible to a wider audience.

Just don’t expect much in the way of gameplay. Some visual novels interweave their choices with minigames; Raging Loop has only occasional choices and nothing more. I’ll give the “battle system” and “skill system” ratings three stars each since there’s no “N/A” option and all battles are story scenes.