Closed Game is an interactive erotic visual novel that presents the player with choices along the way that affect how the story is being told. Developed by Empress and released back in 2015 in Japan, the game finally became available for the western audience as well when localized and published by JAST USA on 27th of May 2021.
Follow the story of Tougo and his friends who get dragged into a death match called “Closed Game” that is known as entertainment for the privileged high-class society up in the sky. This sick twisted show promises a chance for a lucky survivor to win his/her place among the wealthy to live in a world where Earth’s poverty and misery do not exist, an ideal utopia for the selective few. Watch as the group struggle to survive and make choices that lead you towards different outcomes and endings!
Table of Content:
Closed Game Gameplay
The game puts you in the shoes of a young man named Tougo who from outside the player’s view experiences the deadly Closed Game together with few unfortunate ones dragged into the same mess along with him.
The story has a branching narrative based on player-driven choices, presented in rare situations that call upon the need to decide with whom of the four main girls found in Tougo’s party the player wishes to advance forward.
The story is guided by a stunning soundtrack with varying moods for each given situation. Beautiful backgrounds paint the scenery behind the characters and the characters themselves are illustrated by the incredible Japanese artist, SeiShoujo (聖少女), from Starless.
Story
“With the Earth’s natural resources drying up, and the divide between the rich and poor widening, society has all but collapsed. But turn your head towards the heavens and you may find hope in a place called Caelum Urbs. Those few born in that city in the sky never experience want, hunger, or disease. It’s a life those born on Earth could only dream of… until now. Survive the Closed Game – a horrifying killing game gauntlet – and you’ll be rocketed to a new beginning as one of the “Heaveners” of Caelum Urbs. It may be pure entertainment for some debauched soul, but what have you got to lose?”
– Empress
The story starts out on Earth but our heroes spend most of the entire experience inside the Closed Game which is an artificially crafted ruined city built inside a space station, to which the contestants are abducted to participate against their own will.
Though quite shallow for what it promises, the game provides a decent story to follow, even if falling apart in some places due to lack of effort in world build and character development. It is filled with grim events, though visually lacking when it comes to blood and death as these are scenes left for the imagination conveyed only through text. The world of Closed Game may be a twisted one, but it is painted in bright colors. All the female characters are fully voice acted in Japanese!
Characters
Inside the life-threatening death game, there are some faceless thugs and monsters which our heroes try to overcome in order to stay alive. One man and four beautiful young women take the center stage in the story, shadowed by two devilish sexy women orchestrating and observing the show from a safe place.
All of the participants are dragged into the game against their own will and must quickly face the reality of the dreadful situation, each forced to find a reason and motivation to keep going beyond simply surviving, for Caelum Urbs is heaven above Earth providing a chance for a better life that despite the circumstances is too good to miss out on.
All of the girls are given a distinctive personality from each other and along the way you get to learn more about them, albeit only a little. Despite the life-threatening situation and decisions the player gets to make on the girls’ behalf, the story does not focus on character development but simply gives four stereotypical girls to enjoy the ride from start to finish.
Player decisions
Closed Game is an interactive visual novel that occasionally presents the player with decisions that have varying results which branch the narrative towards different outcomes and ultimately different endings, thus giving the game some replay value.
These decisions sometimes can lead to your own demise or someone else’s unfortunate situation but unfortunately, the decisions are not as impactful as the game leads the player to believe. Most of the decisions provide a small detour in narration before returning back to a single linear path.
The decisions often present a question asking you to choose whether to stay in the group, split up or with whom you may wish to partner up. No matter the decision, an erotic scene will soon follow, only different depending on your choice.
Despite the life and death element playing a heavy role in the story, the interactive choices in the game are not based around questions that test the player’s survival capability and critical thinking skill or anything of this nature. All the decisions are purely based around the simple question of with whom you wish to advance in the game to experience their lewd scenes, though sometimes the questions may be presented in different words disguising their simple true meaning.
Settings
From within the setting screen, you can manipulate all the characters’ individual volumes, changing how loud each character speaks. The same applies to background music and sound effects. Text display speed can be found within the settings but on top of this, you can even change the text font.
You can naturally skip text or take a look at the dialogue history to recall a moment in the past or a line missed by accident. Save the game whenever you like, even in the middle of a decision time. The game also supports the autosave feature, always making sure you can return back to the most recent event in case you accidentally close the game without saving.
Skip button lets you speed through the story, allowing you to experience all the alternative outcomes of different situations and endings within just a few minutes despite the length of the story normally taking well over five hours. The skip feature does not skip over decision moments.
Extras
Once having completed the story, the game rewards the player with Extras from which you will find character posing mode, H-gallery, and Jukebox that lets you listen to music found within the game.
Character posing mode allows you to play with all the major characters seen in the story, changing their clothes and facial expressions, as well as the background in which they stand.
Closed Game Hentai
Closed Game offers a variety of hardcore hentai, free of death, blood, and gore despite the game’s life-threatening atmosphere. All the female characters introduced in the story take part in the lewd scenes, and depending on your decisions during the story, you get to experience one of them more than the others.
There are 60 unique H-scenes to enjoy, all scattered waiting to be discovered through branching narrative during the story. To find them all, Closed Game is required to be played multiple times. One can however take advantage of the skip button to speed through the entire story within just a few minutes to hunt for the missing H-scenes after the first playthrough.
The hentai scenes include both humans and monsters and are mostly non-consensual sex. On the human side, you can find gangbang, masturbation with sex toys, bondage BDSM, lesbian strap-on, and even futanari (on a man). On the monster side, there are slimy goo creatures, reptiles, pigmen, insects, and tentacles. While only a small part of the overall lewd experience, some scenes involve urination and scat, and even force-feeding of it.
The adult scenes revolve around the four female survivalists, Tougo, and the two villains, Michiko and Celine. While certain scenes put two female characters together, there are no strong lesbian H-scenes to be found for other than one or two out of the entire collection.
Once having finished the story for the first time, you unlock the hentai gallery. Lewd scenes get recorded to the gallery upon encounter. You can choose between static images or scenes guided by text and voice acting.
The western version of Closed Game bought via JAST USA is free of censoring.
There is a physical version available of Closed Game, purchasable via J-list. This is a collectors edition that provides additional accessories on top of the physical game disc. You get;
- Tin case GAME BOX
- Poster with removable vinyl stickers (x2)
- Game on DVD
- Original Sound Track CD
- 8-sided paper die
- Celicia Dog Tags
- Game DL code
You can read the Closed Game review or watch almost an hour-long Closed Game Hentai demonstration video to learn more about the game.
For more erotic visual novel experiences, check out Beat Angel Escalayer R, Makai Tenshi Djibril 4, and The Witch’s Endless Corridor.
