Hark! What's that sound? A car backfiring? A gunshot? A train collision at a crossing gate? In Paranormasight, that crashing noise, brisk but richly layered, a bit of metal to it, is the sound of understanding. It fires up the moment a character makes a connection between two disparate parts of the plot. It's the proverbial dropping of a penny. It's the instance of the fingerpost. Aha! But also, since this is a doomy kind of fairy tale: oh dear.
Paranormasight is a visual novel set in the Sumida Ward of Tokyo. We're sometime in the past, as the telephones are old bakelite things and the TV sets still come in lacquered wooden cabinets. And we're somewhere slightly removed from our world too. People believe strange stories and are willing to make odd leaps of logic. We are often fixed on the spot but able to turn in a neat 360 degrees, all the better to take in the environment and set ourselves up for a jumpscare. And the colours sizzle and throb slightly, drab greys and blues and sickly creams, but all lit from within, as if seen through the light of a failing 80s television tube.
I'll get this out of the way now. I love this game. I think it's intriguing and brilliant and haunting. And the set-up is wonderfully strange. One night in Honjo, a group of strangers are brought together by an old legend: seven tales of ancient spookiness rooted in specific parts of the neighborhood, along with vague rumours of an ancient rite that can raise the dead. But the rite is confusing - like the tales of ancient spookiness its edges and detailing have been foxed and spattered by time. And it appears the only way to trigger the rite is to commit murder?