The Sekimeiya is a game I've been looking forward to ever since 2019, when the echoes of the name "Secret VN" began floating through the various Discord servers I've been in. Thanks to my work on the Remember11 improvement patch, "Gestalt Edition," I landed myself a spot among the beta testers, so as soon as the game was unlocked, I began my climb of the mountain.


It is now late April, and while I just finished up my playthrough, it still feels like it isn't over. The Sekimeiya is an incredibly complex mystery, so much so that there are still things that remain unclear to me, and I'll likely be brainstorming them for a good while. The meticulous labyrinth this game spins is insanity, and while I will argue that some of it dips a bit into convoluted territory, it's still extremely impressive and well put-together. The sheer amount of thought and detail put into every nook and cranny of this Visual Novel is staggering, and it's frankly incredible for the writer's first official go in the medium.

Keeping up with the positives, one of my favorite things about this game is this: everyone is SMART. It feels like everyone in the game is thinking and responding to their environment, and I live for it. I've read so many VNs where the characters are completely insufferable because they don't stop and think, but that's far from a problem in The Sekimeiya. In fact, the sheer walls of text coming from the protagonist—Atsuki—alone could fill an entire chapter. He thinks through everything, and he's constantly building on his theories, only for them to be torn down by the game's narrative. I would kill for other VNs to have even a fraction of what Atsuki has. Another character, Sai, is the other standout. He's also incredibly smart, but he's also partial to screwing with people, a trait I very much enjoy in VNs.

These positives are at their best in the first chapter, which makes up the first third of the game. The introduction is incredibly intriguing, and while the game is fairly slow, it is DENSE. For this very reason, I don't think this game will be for everyone. There's lots of information, and the game expects you to pay attention. There were days where, even though I was extremely interested, I didn't end up reading, because I knew I had to be perfectly awake and in the right state of mind to process everything. There's no speedreading in The Sekimeiya—if you forget things, they'll come back to bite you. Luckily, however, the game supplies you with another great feature: the summary and notes section.


Not only does it provide you with great summaries of each and every scene, but it provides what characters were present, specific scene titles, and a spot to write down your notes and thoughts on the scene as well. I've never seen another game do this, and I really hope this will be adopted in future games. The QoL in general is just incredible. You're able to search for specific keywords and sentences, copy text, jump to various points in dialogue, switch text fonts and colors around... It's glorious.

The OST, art, and presentation in general are also pretty great. I enjoyed the character sprites quite a bit, and it was a pleasure whenever the odd CG showed up. Despite this, a few of the CGs weren't placed as well as they could've been, which is disappointing. There were a few scenes that would've benefited quite a bit from the extra art, but instead just received a red filter on the screen. I'd like to call specific attention to the title screen and the BGs, because they're all GORGEOUS. The OST is also quite nice, even if it is dominated by mostly EDM, a style I don't typically listen to. Even so, I found it to be very enjoyable, except for two songs that were so incredibly distracting that they actually kept me from being able to read properly. Luckily, this game allows you to mess with the volume of the music and sound effects independently, so I just muted the music until the next scene. There were some standout tracks that I loved, to the point where I even used the game's detailed UI to find the songs outside of the game.

I was practically in heaven during the first chapter of this. It's been a long time since I've been so engaged with a game, and my notes went on for longer than the summary sections themselves. I was so incredibly into everything that was going on, and the ending of Chapter 1 drove that home. All the game needed to do to be one of my new favorite VNs was to keep up that energy and intrigue...


As much as I really enjoyed my time with The Sekimeiya, not all of it was great. The mystery in the game is fantastic, and I can't express enough how impressive it is... but the same can't be said for its characters, and, in some cases, its pacing. I previously mentioned that every character was smart, and while yes, this is a very nice change of pace from other VNs, this does not inherently make them interesting. The cast in The Sekimeiya exists to move the plot forward, and while there are some character moments, I can't say they're anywhere close to the focus. The stories I tend to resonate with the most are character-driven, and as such, I always look for characters that scratch that itch for me. Unfortunately, however, this game doesn't achieve that much at all with its cast. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that the vast majority are pretty bland. I would still say some are entertaining and fun to watch, but the mystery is definitely what you're signing up for here. This actually ties in to what I said earlier—how this game isn't for everyone. There aren't really any characters that'll carry the game for you; the mystery is the main draw, so you better be ready for that.

In regards to the pacing, I would say that Chapter 1 is perfect. It starts off quite slowly, but the build-up is steady, and its increasing sense of intrigue kept me hooked from start to finish. The chapters after the first one then wavered quite a bit, from fairly speedy to quite slow. I don't have an issue with slow pacing—some of my favorite works are built upon it. The issue comes, however, when the pacing is all over the place, or when the player's time is spent on things that aren't worth the investment. There is one main section at around the midpoint that fulfills this criteria, and it was the lowest point of the game. And while the story did pick back up again eventually, my enthusiasm never quite reached the same heights.

After the midpoint, the game picks back up, and the last few chapters are very good. I do still have one small gripe with them, though: while the mystery is incredibly detailed, some of those fine details are... a bit much. I ended up just focusing on the main gist of things and not worrying about the finer details in order to save my sanity, but that just goes to show how incredibly intricate the game is.

The last thing I'd like to mention has to do with the game's UI. While it is normally fantastic, there are a few instances in which the text becomes difficult to read when on certain backgrounds, especially white ones. There are quite a lot of text options, but none were able to solve this issue for me during my playthrough, so I was forced to use the backlog in order to read during those sections.


The Sekimeiya is very well worth your time. While there were a few dips in quality, it's safe to say that this is one of the best VNs I've played recently, and it's a monumental achievement for the community as well. Trinitite Team has proved that they're a developer to watch out for, and if this was their very first VN, we've got a lot to look forward to.