The gameplay mostly consists of reading and listening to the conversations provided. Every now and then, a "Please Select Your Destiny" event will occur, giving the player multiple choices on how to respond. The choices selected determine who will be Rin's destined love; depending on which route the player takes, there will be between 8 and 12 multiple-choice questions. At a certain point in the visual novel, a translucent image of the destined character appears when the day changes indicating who Rin has fallen in love with after which the multiple-choice events become almost nonexistent. Near the end of the game, two sex scenes will occur. After some more conversation the visual novel ends. After the visual novel has been completed at least once, players can view CG (computer graphics) artwork they have observed, skip to scenes or endings for characters they have viewed, and listen to music they have heard in the game.
The PlayStation 2 version varies from the PC version as all the sex scenes are removed and the player may follow two new storylines: Mayumi Thyme's and Kareha's. Additionally, Kareha's younger sister Tsubomi makes her first appearance in the PS2 version during Kareha's path.
Shuffle! Essence+ allows the player to follow the storylines of seven heroines, including four new storylines: Tsubomi's, Sakura Yae's, Nadeshiko Benibara's and Daisy's. In Daisy's path, Erica Suzuran makes her first appearance as a secondary character and Ruri Matsuri appears as the second main heroine, but she does not have any sex scenes.
Plot
Setting and themes
The story takes place in a fictional universe where humans live in harmony with gods, resembling humans with slightly pointed ears, and devils (demons in the English dub of the anime), who have more prominently pointed ears. Despite their respective positive and negative connotations, both races are equally kind and good-natured. Ten years prior to the story, the gateway between the worlds of the gods and devils were opened, and since then, people from all races have been immigrating between the worlds. The characters attend the multi-racial high school, National Verbena Academy (バーベナ学園 Bābena Gakuen) in Kōyō-chō (光陽町, lit. Sunshine Town). This is so humans, gods and devils can interact and learn to live together in harmony with mutual understanding rather than hatred, fear and ignorance. Also, due to dimensional tears, whose appearances are never fully explained, some members of each race had been transported to one of the other worlds where they married and had children. This is how some of the students with mixed lineage are able to be older than the gateway to the human world like Mayumi Thyme, whose human parent had fallen into the world of the Devils through one of those tears years before the gateway to the Human world had been opened, or Asa's mother, Ama Shigure, who somehow was transported from the world of the Devils to the Human world.
Shuffle! contains a leitmotif of allusions to flowers. All of the characters' names are references to flowers in some way, mostly genera of flowering plants.
Main characters
The protagonist and player character of Shuffle! is Rin Tsuchimi, a normal seventeen-year-old second-year high school student and the male protagonist to the series. Since a young age, he has placed the well-being of others before his own and dislikes seeing people in sorrow. Since he lost his parents in his childhood, he has been living with Kaede Fuyou, a life envied by many of his classmates. One of the heroines of Shuffle!, Kaede believes it her duty in life is to take care of Rin, which she takes upon herself in order to atone for her treatment of him in the past and bears a one-sided love towards Rin. Kaede appears again as the heroine in Really? Really!, a sequel to Shuffle!, that continues from Kaede's ending in Shuffle!. In middle school, the two meet and later befriend Asa Shigure, another heroine of Shuffle! who is in her third-year of high school. While she has a weak constitution, she makes up for it with her energetic tomboy personality and is an excellent cook. She has a habit of slapping Rin on his back.
At the onset of the story, two girls who Rin had met once during his childhood come to his school as transfer students and began living as his next door neighbours. Lisianthus, a heroine of Shuffle!, is an energetic and enthusiastic person who is able to start a conversation with anyone. She comes to the human world as a possible marriage candidate for Rin and as the daughter of the Lord of Gods, thankful for his kindness to her in the past. Similarly, Nerine, who is also a heroine, is a reserved girl with a beautiful voice and a capable user of magic. She also comes to the human world to be a marriage candidate for Rin as the daughter of the Lord of Devils. Nerine appears again as a heroine in Navel's game, Tick! Tack!, which continues from Nerine's ending. Soon after the two daughters come to his school, Rin meets Primula, a strange, soft-spoken girl who often carries a stuffed cat around.
There are two new storylines that are available in the PlayStation 2 version of the game. Mayumi Thyme is a heterochromia-eyed girl who is half-devil and half-human. She is Rin's classmate and is always searching for news. She takes pride in her smallest bust size, a fact often made fun of by Rin and Itsuki, claiming them to be a rarity sought after by a select group of men. Kareha is of the god race and is Asa's friend and classmate who enjoys making sweets and taking on related part-time jobs. Whenever she sees something romantic or cute, she has a habit of saying "Ma Ma Maa!" and starts to daydream, losing awareness of her surroundings.
