commonly shortened to SciADV, is a video game series and media franchise consisting of interconnected science fiction stories created by Mages, initially in collaboration with Nitroplus. The main entries mostly take the form of visual novel video games.
The series currently consists of six mainline entries: the first entry of the series, 2008's Chaos;Head, is followed by Steins;Gate, Robotics;Notes, Chaos;Child, Occultic;Nine, Anonymous;Code, as well as the upcoming Steins;???. The series also includes several spin-off games based on Chaos;Head, Steins;Gate, Robotics;Notes, and Chaos;Child, as well as spin-offs in other mediums including anime, manga, light novels, audio dramas, and stage plays. All main entries except Anonymous;Code have received anime adaptations.
The main entries and their spin-offs all take place in the same fictional universe, focusing on several different science fiction themes. Chaos;Head and Chaos;Child focus on perception, Steins;Gate focuses on time travel and science, Robotics;Notes focuses on robotics and augmented reality, and Anonymous;Code focuses on hacking, time leaping, simulated reality among concepts from other games in the franchise. The player can affect the course of the story by making certain choices: in Chaos;Head and Chaos;Child this is done by choosing what kind of delusions the player characters experience. The choices in the Steins;Gate games and Robotics;Notes are made via messages set by the player via an in-game cell phone and tablet computer, respectively. The choices in Anonymous;Code are made using the hacking trigger and save/load ability.
The series is created and planned by Chiyomaru Shikura, founder of Mages and Chiyomaru Studio, composed by Takeshi Abo and Zizz Studio, written by Chiyomaru Shikura, Naotaka Hayashi along with other writers, and features character designs by artists including Mutsumi Sasaki, Huke, and Tomonori Fukuda. The developers aimed to make the series set within reality, as Shikura felt it made it more relatable and believable. The series has been commercially and critically successful both in Japan and internationally, far exceeding sales expectations for the genre and establishing Mages (previously 5pb.) as a game developer.
The series is published by Mages and Nitroplus in Japan, and by JAST USA, PQube, Mages, and Spike Chunsoft internationally.
The Science Adventure series consists of six core entries, along with a seventh in development. Some of the games have received updated editions with added content, and there are compilations collecting several games, such as Chaos;Head Dual (collecting both Chaos;Head games) and Steins;Gate: Divergencies Assort (collecting Steins;Gate 0, Darling of Loving Vows, and Linear Bounded Phenogram).
The main entries are as follows:
The series contains eight spin-off games: one based on Chaos;Head, five based on Steins;Gate, one based on Robotics;Notes, and one based on Chaos;Child. It also contains several more side entries spanning several different mediums other than visual novels, such as manga, drama CDs, short stories, and novels.
The Science Adventure entries all feature stories in the science fiction genre. They make use of real scientific concepts and theories, but also cross over into fictional territory, using fringe science and urban legends. Chaos;Head and Chaos;Child focus on individuals with the power to alter reality, and discuss topics such as perception, reality, and antimatter, while Steins;Gate focuses on time travel. Robotics;Notes focuses on several technologies such as robotics and augmented reality, as well as borrowing some concepts from the previous two entries. Occultic;Nine focuses on the paranormal. Anonymous;Code has a heavy focus on futuristic computer technology, such as brain-computer interfaces, blockchains, internet of things, and world-simulating supercomputers, as well as reusing and re-contextualizing existing series concepts.
The entries are all set in the same universe, and although presented as self-contained stories, they all make significant use of previously established concepts in the series. They all contain frequent callbacks to previous entries as well, ranging from minor references to major revelations. There is also a higher antagonist shared throughout the entire series, the Committee of 300. The Committee, based on the real conspiracy theory, seeks world domination, and is portrayed as very powerful, having control over corporations, politicians, and religions, and being seemingly impossible to beat even with time travel and control over reality.
Most of the main entries are visual novels, in which the player can affect the outcome of the story through choices. In the Chaos;Head games and Chaos;Child, the player does this by controlling what types of delusions the player characters experience: the player can make them experience positive or negative delusions, or alternatively choose to let them stay in reality. Chaos;Child Love Chu Chu!! additionally uses a "yes/no" questionnaire the player character takes in in-game magazines to determine the plot's direction. In Steins;Gate and Steins;Gate 0, the player affects the outcome by using the player character's cell phone: in Steins;Gate, it is done by choosing to respond to certain messages, make phone calls, or taking out the phone at specific times, as this affects what information the player character learns and how he interacts with other characters; and in Steins;Gate 0, it is done by deciding whether or not to answer the phone at certain times. Robotics;Notes works similarly to Steins;Gate, but with the player using a tablet computer and its apps instead of a cell phone. Anonymous;Code has a "Hacking Trigger" where the player can interact with the game at any point to urge the protagonist to use his ability.
The series is planned by Mages's CEO Chiyomaru Shikura, and is developed by Mages, Nitroplus, and Shikura's multimedia concept studio Chiyomaru Studio, the latter of which owns the copyright to the series. Naotaka Hayashi has worked on the series writing, both in the role as a scenario writer and as a scenario supervisor. Recurring character designers include Mutsumi Sasaki (Chaos;Head and Chaos;Child games), Huke (Steins;Gate games), and Tomonori Fukuda (Robotics;Notes games). The games' soundtracks are composed by Takeshi Abo and Zizz Studio.
Shikura aimed for the series to be set in reality, feeling that it made the stories more relatable and believable; he said that he personally found it difficult to "buy into" fantasy, and that he was not convinced that people could get excited for "exaggerated fantasy stories". Throughout the series, the development team aimed for a rate of "99% science and 1% fantasy". Shikura called the 1989 film Back to the Future Part II a direct influence on Steins;Gate, citing how it is just believable enough to feel real. For Robotics;Notes, Mages cooperated with JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, to bring further realism to the story. Due to the series' use of worldlines â alternative worlds â the developers make use of a correlation chart to track the events in the games' stories, which is updated whenever they create new entries in the series.
Abo noted that while all the games are part of one series, their sound have different images; comparing them to weather, he called Chaos;Head rainy, Steins;Gate cloudy, Robotics;Notes clear weather, and Chaos;Child stormy. He used the same process for all of them when composing the music: he started by reading the story, to understand the setting and characters as well as possible, and writing down notes about the games' emotional flow and the situations that occur throughout the stories. Using these notes, he constructed musical worldviews for the games, with a lot of weight on his first impressions. This approach, while slower than just designating songs to different areas of a game, allowed him to compose higher-quality songs with a better relationship to the games' worldviews. He was given a lot of freedom when working on the series, and was able to make the music he wanted to make for it, something he enjoyed greatly. Abo also got to compose each game's theme song, and was especially happy with Steins;Gate theme song, "Gate of Steiner", which he aimed to represent the entirety of the game with.
Originally, Occultic;Nine and Anonymous;Code were intended to be part of a separate series from Science Adventure. The former's original light novels were labeled as a separate Paranormal Science NVL series. Its visual novel adaptation and Anonymous;Code were referred to internally as part of the Science Visual Novel series, which was originally announced to be separate from Science Adventure, but has since been incorporated into the series. Occultic;Nine was planned to be updated with new story content tying it more closely with Science Adventure with an expanded release titled New World, but those plans were ultimately scrapped.
The Science Adventure series is partly the child of Infinity, a visual novel series primarily developed by the now-defunct company KID. It contains several references and similar themes, as well as a similar focus on science fiction elements. Some of the staff who worked with KID and the Infinity series, such as Naotaka Hayashi, Chiyomaru Shikura, and Takeshi Abo, came together to work on Chaos;Head, and later, the rest of the Science Adventure series.
The games have also received generally positive reviews, both in Japan and the West. Critics have enjoyed the story, the music and visuals, and the implementation of the gameplay elements within the visual novel presentation, although some have noted how it is complicated and difficult to unlock certain routes. Anime News Network wrote that the series has well-paced mysteries and uses creative concepts, but that the conclusions often are not as good as the set-ups.
In 2009, Steins;Gate won Famitsu annual Game of Excellence award. RPGFan included Steins;Gate on a list over the 30 essential role-playing games of 2010âÂÂ2015, calling it one of the best visual novels on the market. It was also nominated for the Golden Joystick Awards, for best handheld/mobile game of 2015.
In the West, while reviews for the series are generally positive, many of the official English releases for the games have been criticized for their subpar release quality, including mistranslations, inconsistent terminology, and technical issues, among other things. Because of the lacking quality of official releases, a large fan group called the Committee of Zero has worked on patches for most of the games, including massive translation fixes, content restoration, technical fixes, and other miscellaneous additions to improve the player experience. Anonymous;Code's English release received more praise on this front, being translated by the experienced, long-time Science Adventure fan Andrew Hodgson, along with a full English dub. However, the price was criticized, as many considered it to be too high for the game's length.
The Science Adventure series has been a commercial success for Mages, with the release of Chaos;Head and Steins;Gate helping establishing them as a game developer. In June 2011, Steins;Gate sales passed 300,000 copies sold, something Shikura noted as an achievement for its genre. A year later, he revealed that there had been more than 80,000 preorders for Robotics;Notes, which was a large improvement compared to Steins;Gate original release. Steins;Gate 0 similarly did well commercially, selling 100,000 copies during its first day, bringing the combined sales of all Steins;Gate games past one million copies. Chaos;Child original release, however, failed to chart on Media Create's weekly top 50 sales list in Japan, selling an estimated 1,415 copies.
The English console releases of Steins;Gate performed "phenomenally" well, with a large majority of the sold copies being of the PlayStation Vita version; according to PQube's head of marketing, Geraint Evans, it was the game that made PQube break through and get noticed as a publisher. Steins;Gate Elite international PC release was among the best-selling new releases of the month on Steam.
In addition to the games, the series has seen adaptations and spin-offs in several types of media, such as audio dramas, stage plays, light novels, and manga. There are also anime adaptations of all four of the main series games â Chaos;Head (2008), Steins;Gate (2011), Robotics;Notes (2012âÂÂ13), and Chaos;Child (2017) â and of Occultic;Nine (2016), as well as Steins;Gate 0 (2018), a "final route" to the story of Steins;Gate 0. The Steins;Gate anime series was followed by the anime film ' in 2013. A live action Steins;Gate television series is also in production by Skydance Television. There are several music albums featuring the games' original soundtracks, as well as albums featuring new arrangements.
The Steins;Gate characters Kurisu Makise and Mayuri Shiina appear in the 2012 role-playing video game Nendoroid Generation. Kurisu also appears as a playable character along with the Chaos;Head character Rimi Sakihata in the 2011 fighting game Phantom Breaker, and along with the Robotics;Notes character Frau Koujiro in the 2013 game '. Multiple Steins;Gate characters also appear as bosses in the 2013 role-playing game Divine Gate.
Our World is Ended is a Japanese science fiction visual novel developed by Red Entertainment and published by PQube in North America and Europe for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Microsoft Windows in 2019. But, this updated version, dubbed Judgement 7 - Our World is Ended was published by Mages in Japan for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 in 2019. Mages advertises this game as a "Masterpiece for Science Adventure fans".