| “ | Their fates can be changed by his effort. Though it cannot expect whether the result is happy. | „ |
| Cross Days クロスデイズ | |
|---|---|
 Kotonoha stands behind Roka, who is beside the cross-dressed Yuuki. | |
|
Developer |
0verflow |
|
Publisher |
Stack (Windows) |
|
Release Date |
March 19, 2010 (Windows) |
|
Manga Original Run |
April 26, 2010 – May 26, 2010 |
Cross Days (クロスデイズ, Kurosu Deizu) is the third release of the “Days” series in 2010, following 2006's Summer Days and preceding its 2012 remake, Shiny Days. It is a parallel story to School Days and its protagonist is male freshman Yuuki Ashikaga.
Yuuki is present for key parts of the School Days plotline, such as Sekai kissing Makoto. Moreover, he also witnesses Makoto choosing Sekai over Kotonoha per School Days episode True Feelings.
It is also possible in the third episode for Yuuki to become a crossdresser, as seen in the title art.
This story also introduces Nanami Kanroji's boyfriend, Kyouichi Kasannoin, in his first onscreen appearance as a main character. The game also presents a deeper look at the mental state of the girls' basketball team, further increasing the awareness of the reasoning behind some actions of the characters in School Days.
Cross Days is considered to be the most obscure of the Days series, as it was never officially released outside of Japan.
As the game was released, its story was adapted into a manga, three light novels, and the game's soundtrack were published.
Gameplay[]
Like its prequel visual novels, Cross Days requires minimal gameplay. At predetermined intervals, the game presents the player with one or two choices to make, or the player can decide to not make a choice. These choices change the course of the story and takes the player to one of the many endings.
Like its predecessor, and unlike traditional visual novels that consist of the protagonist talking to static images of characters, Cross Days is unusual in that it incorporates motion and voice, making it similar to an anime series. In addition, it is noted that developers often used 3D models in this game, in contrast to the frequent drawing in the original game.
The player is initially given the ability to pause, skip to the next scene, return to the beginning of the current scene, and return to the beginning of a previous scene. The player can also turn on the ability to skip to the next choice, although if the player hasn't viewed a specific part, the player will be stopped at those. After the player has viewed a specific part, the ability to fast-forward becomes available. Progress can be saved at any time in up to 100 slots.
Plot[]
The game is a parallel to School Days, unlike Summer Days, which is a spinoff of the original story.
The plot focuses on Yuuki, who lives in Aoi Town with his older sister, Chie, and their parents, who are implied to constantly be away at work. Following the original plot, the story takes place during the second semester at Sakakino High school, where he works as a library committee member along with his sempai Kasannoin. Yuuki is soon introduced to Roka Kitsuregawa, a member of his sister's basketball team. They both develop feelings for each other, even going to Sweets Ohara together. However, due to a misunderstanding, Roka thinks he is going out with Hikari Kuroda, his former middle school classmate.
In an effort to make Yuuki jealous and draw him away from Hikari, Roka claims to be dating Makoto, a former middle school classmate of hers. However, Yuuki knows that Makoto is the boyfriend of Kotonoha, a frequent visitor of the library, and has also seen Makoto kissing a third girl, Sekai. The story follows Yuuki's attempts to clear up the misunderstandings with Roka and repair Kotonoha's relationship with Makoto.
Depending on player choice, many endings can be reached, both good and bad.
Despite Roka being the main heroine, not much is known about her past in Haramihama, except what she tells. What's more, scenes with her appear quite rarely, we never get to see her personal life and her mother (but we can hear her) and what she's thinking about. They mostly cover up the ongoing story in certain episodes.
The same may go to Chie. We never get to know why Yuuki has trust issues to his sister, and what her friends (Ishibashi and Youka) really are.
Media[]
Manga[]
Based on the story of the game, Cross Days was published into a manga, written by Yoko Kagura and illustrated by Homare Sakazuki. 0verflow announced on April 4, 2010 that it would make its serialization debut in Monthly Comp Ace on April 26. The series was circulated until August 2010, published by Kadokawa Shoten into a first and second volume, released November 26, 2010 and June 25, 2011, respectively.
The manga follows a radically different plot from the game, focusing on Yuuki's efforts to “save” Kotonoha and Roka from Makoto by revealing to them his evil true nature. To do so, he cross-dresses and seduces Makoto as “Yuu”. In contrast with the game, in this storyline Makoto is in a stable three-way relationship with Kotonoha and Sekai, albeit Makoto is more sociopathic.
Light Novels[]
- Cross Days～Overlapping Lies and Feelings ~. In this novel, Roka and Kotonoha are the protagonists, rather than Yuuki. It follows the path of Lies and Truths Pile Up, with slight changes.
- Cross Days: Kitsuregawa Roka's Rule of Love. The second novel follows the story after the cancelled school festival due to rain, where Roka and Yuuki reconcile and become lovers. The “Yuu” persona is made, so cross-dressing is a main part of this story, as Roka decides to help Yuuki by swapping clothes with him.
- Cross Days ~ Harvest Novels ~. The third novel's beginning is completely based on the game, but later on it becomes its own story, additionally allowing the reader to see narration from both Roka and Yuuki and expanding the cross-dressing route with Yuu/Roka interactions.
- Cross Days (BugBug Novel). It was written by Sekimachi Typhoon and used Junji Goto's original paintings as full-color illustrations, released in May 2009. This showed a rumoured story of Yuuki. Not much is known about this Novel, if to be correct, nothing is known about it.
Other publications[]
- Cross Days OST.
- Cross Days Visual Fan Book. Contains info about characters, scenes, additional content, and walkthroughs.
Development[]
Cross Days' logo was launched and published on 0verflow's “April Fool's Project” (エイプリルフール) website. It was announced alongside Sekai Days, but the dedicated official website was later shut down after the April Fool's event. On October 21 of the same year, 0verflow officially announced the production of Cross Days on its website update, and first reported the news about Cross Days in December 2008.
At the same time as starting the game promotion, 0verflow released the first demo version “Cross Days Run Checker” on November 1 of the same year (Cross Days Action チェッカー) ; and in order to allow consumers to understand game development and character settings, from November 1, 2008 to May 4, 2009, 0verflow continuously launched the Cross Days test software without play function available for download.
On November 16, 2008, the 0verflow production team participated in the Anime Exhibition DreamParty held in Osaka City and sold calling cards for Cross Days. The game's pre-order service and attracted many crowds on the day of the exhibition, but the official game pre-order work of the relevant store was only launched on November 21. On December 5th, 0verflow announced that the Cross Days game can fully support the USB remote SOMCON, and Goods Land is responsible for the production of goods. On December 26, 0verflow announced that it would launch a demo version of Cross Days. In addition, before the official release, 0verflow also launched a number of promotional activities to strengthen the popularity of Cross Days, including a joint launch of game animations in various towns from March 5th to March 14th Screening service.
Release history, cut content and “trojan” incident[]
Cross Days was originally scheduled to be officially released on February 27, 2009. However, due to the continuous delay of the game release, some consumers were dissatisfied. It was delayed for 7 times total, from 2009 to March 19, 2010.
Not much is known about development history before the release, but it was noted multiple times that the game was probably cut. This is based on differences from the BugBug journals, which were released during the game's development (from October 2008), where many unused scenes are shown that were not shown in the final game. It is theorized that the developers wanted to experiment with the characters and ask, “what if?”
Moreover, the game's subtitles have untouched lines pertaining to some of the removed scenes seen in BugBug. Examples include Chie and Makoto interacting; additional lines of Roka visiting Yuuki and seeing his games; Otome's domination on Roka in the girls' bathroom and vice versa; etc.
On the second day after the game was released, the patch 1.00a was uploaded immediately to update the game's DLL files. However, many players still experience problems with the engine, as it constantly freezes/crashes/bugs.
Unaware pirates of this game had their personal data leaked. As noted by NetAgent, at least 5,510 people's computers were infected with viruses and most of the users who tried to download games illegally also strongly hoped to delete their personal data. One of the conditions offered by Trojans was the fact, that these users must click a button to admit that they are using pirated software. This “trojan” was installed in the installation program, as noted in EULA. Since patch 1.00b, serial code checker is removed, as well as this malware.
Main reasons of this game becoming unpopular (Subtotal of the above)[]
1. The excitement of the game was higher than it should have been. 0verflow released a ton of additional content for this game, beginning from journals and exhibition events and ending with screening service around the towns in Japan. As a result, people expected a game, that would justify buying it.
2. The game delays and the launch problems. As noted above, the game was delayed 7 times in total, from 2009 to March 19, 2010. It should also be noted that when the game was finally released, most of the customers who acquired their game were unhappy about the difficulties of the game's engine (which had crashing issues). It was “fixed“ by the developers ASAP, as they released patch 1.00a.
Cross Days is still known for its game engine, as it's very unstable.
3. Cross Days animations and its scenes are “decent,“ but may have been considered subpar compared to other Days games.
4. The game seemed and used to have more variation of content. Due to the BugBug journal, players may have anticipated more endings/their variations/etc. that looked as if they were made but were cut for reasons unknown.
Moreover, there are left traces of cut content. Some routes don't have proper connection to the past story and lead onto the endings, without mentioning scenes before (like Yuuki witnessing Makoto being with Roka and Chie investigations). Additionally, there are unused lines in the game files.
5. The aforementioned “Trojan incident“.
6. School Days HQ release. Only a couple of months after Cross Days' release, it was overshadowed by the release of School Days HQ.
Videos[]
Crossover[]
Lost M[]
