PixelLinkr #48: The Story Behind the Puzzle

Steins;Gate (2009) is a visual novel about time travel set in a lab in Akihabara built around a microwave that sends text messages to the past. The true ending of the game is locked behind a specific choice that requires players to have already made the wrong decision in a previous route. If you play it correctly the first time, you are locked out of the conclusion. The game is testing whether you paid attention.

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🟢 Easy: Developed by CD Projekt Red

Games: The Witcher · The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings · The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt · Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales

If you know the Witcher games at all, this one was quick. Four titles, one studio, the same corner of northern Europe rendered across three mainline entries and a card game spinoff that grew into something much larger.

CD Projekt Red released The Witcher in 2007 as its first in-house game. Before that, the studio spent years importing and distributing foreign titles in Poland. The jump from distributor to developer is not a natural one. The Witcher was their first attempt and it worked.

The Witcher 3 is one of the highest-rated games of all time. The two free DLC expansions, Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine, are each longer than many complete games and are considered by a large portion of the fanbase to be better than the base game. Blood and Wine in particular has a reputation for sticking with people.

Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales started as a campaign mode inside Gwent, the standalone card game extracted from The Witcher 3. The single-player content expanded during development until it became a 30-hour narrative RPG with full voice acting. It released separately in 2018. It is considerably underseen.

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🟡 Medium: Rhythm games

Games: Dance Dance Revolution · Beatmania · Taiko no Tatsujin · Beat Saber

Four rhythm games covering five decades and four completely different input methods. Dance pad, turntable, taiko drum, VR light sabers. The mechanic is always the same: hit the input at the right moment. Everything else varies.

Beatmania launched in 1997 at Japanese arcades. Konami called the new category BEMANI, named after the title, and proceeded to build an entire division around it. Dance Dance Revolution followed a year later. By 2000, Konami's arcade floors were organised around music games. Taiko no Tatsujin came from Namco in 2001 and has never stopped shipping sequels.

Beat Saber arrived in 2018 as an early access VR title made by a tiny Czech studio. By 2019 it was one of the best-selling VR games of all time. It did something most VR titles had failed to do: it made the headset feel worth owning. Meta acquired the studio in 2019. The original developers stayed on.

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🔵 Hard: The complete story only emerges across multiple playthroughs

Games: 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors · AI: The Somnium Files · Steins;Gate · NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139...

This is the category that separated people. All four games share a structural design philosophy: one playthrough is deliberately incomplete. The narrative is written for players who return.

999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors (2009) has six endings. The true ending requires specific choices that can only be made if you carry knowledge from a failed earlier run. The game is set on a ship with a nine-hour deadline, and the puzzle codes from previous playthroughs are how you make the correct decisions when you finally reach the ending branch.

AI: The Somnium Files (2019) is a murder mystery with six routes that branch from a central point. The true ending is the last one that unlocks. The full picture of what happened only becomes visible once you have seen the others. It is written by Kotaro Uchikoshi, who also made 999.

NieR Replicant has five endings labelled A through E. Ending A is the complete first playthrough. Ending B replays the same events from a different perspective, recontextualising what happened. Endings C, D, and E branch from a late-game decision. The fifth ending was written specifically for the 2021 remaster and provides the emotional conclusion the original was missing.

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🟣 Tricky: Published by Koei Tecmo

Games: Atelier Ryza · Dynasty Warriors 8 · Ninja Gaiden 2 · Dead or Alive 6

Four games from four different development studios, all published under the same umbrella. Without the publisher thread, this group looks like a list of games from completely separate corners of the industry. That is why it landed here.

Koei and Tecmo merged in 2009. Koei brought historical strategy games. Tecmo brought action titles built by Team Ninja. The combined company owns a wide catalogue and publishes through multiple internal studios, which is part of why the connection is not obvious from the titles alone.

Ninja Gaiden II (2008) was designed by Tomonobu Itagaki, the head of Team Ninja and the person most responsible for the modern Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive series. He left Tecmo in 2008, the same year the game came out, following a dispute over bonuses. He announced his departure by suing the company.

Atelier Ryza was the best-selling entry in the long-running Atelier series when it launched in 2019. The series had been running since 1997. Ryza reached players who had never touched the franchise by streamlining the crafting system and making it more immediately legible. A third Ryza game followed in 2023.

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Today's CineLinkr puzzle has a hard group built around graphic novels you have probably watched without knowing their origin, and a tricky group that will catch you off guard if you don't already know your vampire films. Worth a look if movies are your thing.