Idea Factory has launched a visual novel label, starting with a crime thriller about painting people's minds
The new IFChronicle brand's first game is ICONOLOGY, a Switch and PC adventure in which a police investigator reads suspects' thoughts as paintings. Psycho-Pass writer Makoto Fukami is on scenario duty.
Idea Factory has set up a new label for visual novels, IFChronicle, and announced its first game alongside it. ICONOLOGY is a crime suspense adventure for Nintendo Switch and PC via Steam, with a premise built around reading minds as art.
Painting a suspect's thoughts
The setting is a future Tokyo where the Metropolitan Police Department runs an experimental task force equipped with the White Cube - a device that renders a suspect's thoughts as what the game calls cognitive paintings. Players take the role of Haruho Tsubakiya, an art student recruited as a Special Investigator, who reads those images for motive and trauma while pursuing the unsolved murder of her own parents ten years earlier.
Steam's listing describes the images as "beautifully twisted mental landscapes," and says player choices determine which of several endings you get. Development is credited to Idea Factory with Dokidoki Grooveworks; Idea Factory publishes under the IFChronicle name.
Who's making it
The staff list is the strongest part of the pitch. Scenario is by Makoto Fukami, whose credits include the Psycho-Pass anime - a fit so neat for a story about mechanised criminal psychology that it barely needs explaining. Illustration is by Teita, known for Fate/Grand Order and CharadeManiacs, and Asami Saito is directing.
The official site and Steam page both list Japanese with full voice acting plus English, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese text. Neither gives a release date: Steam has it as coming soon.
Why it matters
Idea Factory is best known in the West for Neptunia and its otome output under Idea Factory International. A separate label aimed squarely at story-led adventures, opening with a writer from outside games, suggests a wider pitch than the publisher's usual audience.
Why it matters
A dedicated visual novel label from Idea Factory, launching with an anime screenwriter attached, points at the publisher broadening past the Neptunia and otome catalogue it is known for.