Steins;Gate originally launched as a visual novel, but it gained widespread fame once it was adapted into an anime. Now, things are coming full circle with the release of Steins;Gate Elite, which is a remaster of the original visual novel that incorporates footage and scenes from the anime, leading to an experience that the developers describe as “a playable anime”.

With the game available now, Spike Chunsoft and 5pb have put out a brand new trailer for the game to celebrate its release. It’s mostly spoiler-free, but I do advise skipping it and going into the game blind anyway. Steins;Gate Elite is one of the greatest time travel stories across all media, and it is a story that is best experienced blind.

If you pre-ordered the game on the Switch, you will get an 8-bit recreation of Steins;Gate; PS4 owners get a brand new episode to play through, on the other hand. Steins;Gate Elite is out now for PS4, Nintendo Switch, and PC.

https://youtu.be/nuaN5Gx7_Rc

Sony has announced that PlayStation Plus subscribers will receive SOMA, Onrush, and Iconoclasts – among other titles – for free in December. They might not quite be major headliners like last month’s Yakuza Kiwami and Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition, but these are still some quality releases. Check out the video below.

SOMA is available for the PS4, and comes from the development studio behind Amnesia: The Dark Descent. It takes players into a futuristic underwater facility teeming with robots, both friendly and rogue. What’s going on, and how does the player escape? That’s part of the appeal in this atmospheric horror title.

Codemasters’ Onrush comes from the team responsible for DriveClub. Though it wasn’t especially successful, the title’s fast and responsive racing, along with an unorthodox approach to team play, is interesting to try out. Then there’s Iconoclasts for the PlayStation Vita (which has Cross Buy support with PS4), an excellent side-scrolling 2D platformer with a compelling story from the developer of Noitu Love 2: Devolution.

Other titles that you can look forward to include Steredenn and Steins;Gate for the PlayStation 3 and Papers, Please for the PlayStation Vita. All in all, it’s a fairly strong selection across all platforms. Look for them to go live when the PlayStation Store refreshes in December.

A localization has still not been announced. First print runs of the game on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita will include a copy of spin off title Steins;Gate: Linear Bounded Phenogram, which marks the first time the side-story title will come to PlayStation 4. Meanwhile, first print runs of the Nintendo Switch version will include a brand new game, Famicolle ADV Steins;Gate, which adapts the story once again into a classic Famicom adventure game like was seen in Japan on the Famicom back in the day.

• 1. Development
• 2. Story
• 3. Gameplay
• 4. Characters

Development

Series creator Chiyoshukura Shikura had ambitions to evolve the visual novel genre, and took influence from the game series Yarudora, A series of FMV visual novels which Sony released in Japan in 1998, themselves taking inspiration from titles like Dragon’s Lair. Like Steins;Gate, Yarudora was a visual novel with branching paths based off of player choices throughout the game.

Shikura appreciated how those titles blended the strengths of a visual novel and anime, but realized that to be feasible in today’s market that such a project would be incredibly resource draining and time intensive. The decision was obvious to Shikura from there that to make such a game today, there would be a need to reuse and recycle as much animation as possible, leading to what the project eventually became.

The story of Steins;Gate was chosen because there was a Steins;Gate anime adaptation that was already completed, and had covered a large part of the story already. Of course this was not without its challenges either. The animation studio that originally created the anime adaptation, White Fox was brought on board to work on new animations to cover pieces of the story not included in the anime.

In addition, player interaction had to be considered. Animation had to be created for the player pulling out their cell phone in a variety of situations, and the user interface had to be seamlessly integrated with the animation. The animation of some scenes had to be deconstructed, altered and pieced out to have characters move and talk separately, since multiple characters moving and speaking at once would have been at odds with the player advancing the story with each input.

Story

Given that Steins;Gate is a visual novel with minimal gameplay, it’s actually very had to talk about its story without spoiling most of it, but let’s try. Steins;Gate follows the story of college student Rintaro Okabe, and his friends, who run a hobbyist ‘lab’ for running science experiments and inventing useless gizmos they call future gadget. Okabe is a piece of work, who fancies himself a mad scientist, and likes to pretend that a nameless, shadowy organization is tracking his every move, and trying to get to him.

But when Okabe ends up inventing what he thought would be a harmless device- a microwave that can be controlled by telephone- and it ends up having the power to transport things through time, he suddenly finds his life veering dangerously close to the delusions and fantasies he has always held. Now fighting against a shadowy organization that will stop at nothing to get their hands on his time travel tech, and trying to protect his friends and their very identities, Okabe ends up traipsing through time itself on an epic odyssey.

Gameplay

As a visual novel, the interaction the player has within the world of Steins;Gate Elite is relatively limited. Players proceed through the story, advancing the action with an input and see events play out. At points in the story, the player will have influence over specific decisions, such as an action taken by Okabe or who he calls at a specific moment. These decisions are usually routed through the “Phone Trigger” system in the original game and that system is likely to be preserved for this remake.

Okabe will be called or sent text messages throughout the story, and the player driven choices to pick up or ignore those calls, to reply to a text message and how they choose to do it, or if they do at all. Though on a few occasions response will be necessary, most of the time it’s player driven and those choices drive which of the six paths down the story players will go.

Characters

Players take control of an eccentric young man named Rintaro Okabe, who acts as the protagonist throughout. He founds the Future Gadget Laboratory in Akihabara and as founder titles himself as Lab Member No.001. He refers to himself as a mad scientist, and shows an outwardly manic persona.

Childhood friend of Okabe, Mayuri Shiina is Lab Member No. 002, despite being a bit childish. The young woman lost her grandmother to strange circumstances before the start of the story, and Okabe created his entire persona around keeping her from wallowing in grief.

Lab Member No. 003 is skilled computer programmer and hacker extraordinaire Iradu “Daru” Hashida. The two met in high school, and is a first year Tokyo Denki University student like Okabe, who can sometimes annoy Daru with his over the top delusions. When he’s not working with computers, he’s deep in Otaku culture.

Okabe’s assistant is Kurisu Makise, Lab Member No. 004. She’s a neuroscience researcher who has already had her work published in an academic journal, making her something of a prodigy at her young age. She can be prickly but is easily embarrassed when referred to as a tsundere.

Moeka Kiryu, Lab Member No. 005 meets Okabe in Akihabara when he’s looking for an old IBN 5100 computer. The 20 year old woman is incredibly shy, even sending someone right in front of her a text message instead of speaking to them.

Luka Urushibara is something of a pupil to Okabe. Faris Nyannyan works at the same cafe as Shiina. The final Lab Member No. 008 is Suzuha Amane, who seems to dislike Makise for unknown reasons. She’s searching for her father in Akihabara while working part-time for Okabe’s landlord.

Note: This wiki will be updated once we have more information about the game.