When friends Clyde and Devon go to a mysterious treatment centre seeking a cure for Clyde’s mother, they stumble into a game of luck and skill that could grant them exactly what they are looking for with only one catch: if you lose you die and there can only be one winner.
The Game of Fourtune, developed by BlackLock Games, is a story-rich visual novel that follows a group of 16 people through a deadly game of chance. I don’t think I will ever be able to think about a killing game and not jump to compare it to one of my favourite franchises: Danganronpa. That said, The Game of Fourtune holds its own well and is unique enough in both concept and execution for me to separate the two.
Clyde, Devon and 14 other people meet in a clover field on 4 April just before 4:44am. Each person has a wish, or is there to support someone else’s wish, and is ready to take on their opponents to win the Game of Fourtune. The players, for the most part, do not know anyone other than their partner, and they all have different knowledge regarding the game they are playing and the cult-like organisation that sent them there: The Digits of Eden.
The Game of Fourtune is run by a goddess called Bell. She is obsessed with the number four and hosting an interesting (and drama-filled) game and these two things play a big factor in the organisation of the contest. Some games play on the characters weaknesses and secrets, others force you to inflict violence and unimaginable pain on your own partner and friends. Other games are simple, a trivia contest or a card game. You never know what you are getting into.
To briefly sum up how The Game of Fourtune works: there are four rounds. Each round sees four players at a time walk through one of four doors to play a random game of luck or skill. There are four types of game that can dictate how many people win or lose and the overall winner gets to make a wish.
The Game of Fourtune is a standard visual novel with a lot of reading and no interaction from the player outside of occasional decision-making. Despite this, the game did an excellent job at keeping me entertained, engaged and involved with the story. I found myself really excited to know what the next game would be and trying to guess who was going to come out of the other doors alive.
There are 16 unique routes that you can take through The Game of Fourtune with the decisions you make setting you on different paths. This is not including the various bad endings that can occur if you die in places you aren’t supposed to die. These death scenes are short but each one provides a bit more insight into the characters thoughts and the overarching story as a whole. If you miss them it isn’t the end of the world but it gives the player a bit of a reward if their answer is incorrect.
The highlight of the gameplay for me is the flowchart which tracks the timeline you are going down and allows you to jump between key decision points in The Game of Fourtune. This is a brilliant feature that helps you see what the moments that caused splits in the timeline were and allow you to really easily go back and play other routes without having to start the game over again. There are also plenty of save slots for if, like me, you want to save your game before every decision just so you can see what would have happened if you chose differently.
The Game of Fourtune uses an anime art style that fits well with the Danganronpa-esque themes of the game. When I first started playing, the art style wasn’t my favourite – some of the characters faces felt a bit off, particularly Bell’s, and their expressions seemed frightening at times I don’t think they were meant to be frightening. That said, the anime art really did grow on me as I started to work my way through the timelines. Each character is so uniquely themselves in the way they dress, look and their expressions that I came to accept the parts of the style I didn’t like as character quirks.
Ultimately, The Game of Fourtune shows a lot of promise as a visual novel and with mentions of Bell’s other numerically obsessed siblings and offspring, there is definitely room for a franchise to blossom here. Working through the timelines to find out how each persons story ends and what brought them to this game is such a fun experience and putting together the mystery of the games is a lot of fun.
If you are a fan of visual novels or you love a good story and don’t mind doing a lot of reading then The Game of Fourtune is definitely worth picking up.
Megan played The Game of Fourtune on PC with a code provided by the developer.
