Steins;Gate is a science fiction visual novel game developed by 5pb. and Nitroplus. It is the second game in the Science Adventure series, following Chaos;Head. The story follows a group of students as they discover and develop technology that gives them the means to change the past. The gameplay in Steins;Gate follows non-linear plot lines which offer branching scenarios with courses of interaction.
Steins;Gate was released for the Xbox 360 on October 15, 2009. The game was ported to Windows on August 26, 2010, PlayStation Portable on June 23, 2011, iOS on August 25, 2011, PlayStation 3 on May 24, 2012, PlayStation Vita on March 14, 2013, and Android on June 27, 2013. The game is described by the development team as a "hypothetical science ADV" (想定科学ADV, Sōtei Kagaku ADV). JAST USA released the PC version in North America on March 31, 2014, both digitally and as a physical collector's edition, while PQube released the PS3 and Vita versions in North America and Europe in 2015. Additionally, the iOS version was released in English on September 9, 2016.
A manga adaptation of the game, created by Yomi Sarachi, was serialized from 2009 to 2013, and later published in North America from 2015 to 2016. A second manga series, illustrated by Kenji Mizuta, began serialization in Mag Garden's Monthly Comic Blade on December 28, 2009. An anime adaptation by White Fox aired in Japan between April 6, 2011 and September 14, 2011, and has been licensed in North America by Funimation. An animated film premiered in Japanese theaters on April 20, 2013. A fan disc of the game, titled Steins;Gate: Hiyoku Renri no Darling, was released on June 16, 2011. A non-canon 8-bit sequel to the game, titled Steins;Gate: Hen'i Kuukan no Octet or Steins;Gate 8bit, was released on October 28, 2011. Another game, Steins;Gate: Linear Bounded Phenogram, was released on April 25, 2013. A follow-up game, Steins;Gate 0, was released on December 10, 2015 for PS3, PlayStation 4 and Vita, and received an anime adaptation in 2018. A remake of the original visual novel titled Steins;Gate Elite which presents fully animated cutscenes from the Steins;Gate anime was released for PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Nintendo Switch and Steam in 2019. Included as a bonus for the Nintendo Switch version, an entirely new game called 8-bit ADV Steins;Gate in the style of Famicom adventure games from the 1980s, was released.
Gameplay
Steins;Gate's gameplay requires little interaction from the player as most of the duration of the game is spent reading the text that appears on the screen, which represents either the dialogue between the various characters or the thoughts of the protagonist. Like many other visual novels, there are specific points in Steins;Gate where the user is given a choice to affect the direction of the game.
For these decision points, Steins;Gate presents the user with the "phone trigger" (フォーントリガー, fōn torigā) system which is similar to the "delusional trigger" system that was introduced in Chaos;Head. When the player receives a phone call, the player can choose to answer or ignore the call. Incoming text messages have specific words underlined and highlighted in blue, much like a hyperlink on a browser, which the player can select to reply to the text message. Most phone calls or text messages do not require a response, though there are certain points in the game where the player is required to take action. Depending on the player's choices of how to respond to these phone calls and text messages, the plot will progress in a specific direction.
Synopsis
Setting and themes
Steins;Gate is set in the summer of 2010, approximately one year after the events that took place in Chaos;Head, in Akihabara. Physical locales of Akihabara like the Radio Kaikan building can be spotted in the game. According to Chiyomaru Shikura, who headed the planning of Steins;Gate, Akihabara was chosen because it is an easy place for acquiring hardware parts, which makes it the ideal place for people interested in inventing and tinkering with things. The notion of time and time traveling are the main themes of the game. The concept of cause and effect is featured prominently in the game as the protagonist travels back in time numerous times to perform different actions in an attempt to alter what has happened in the future.
Plot
True End route
The following summary is based upon the True End route.
Steins;Gate takes place in the Akihabara district of Tokyo. On July 28, 2010, Rintaro Okabe and his friend Mayuri Shiina head towards the Radio Kaikan building for a conference, where Rintaro finds a girl named Kurisu Makise lying in a pool of blood. As Rintaro sends a text message about the incident to his friend, Itaru "Daru" Hashida, he experiences a strange phenomenon and the people around him disappear, with no-one else noticing anything had changed. After later running into Kurisu, who is strangely alive and well, and discovering the message he had sent to Itaru had arrived a week before he sent it, Rintaro soon deduces that the 'Mobile Microwave' he and his friends had been developing is, in fact, a time machine capable of sending text messages to the past. He and his friends soon learn that SERN, an organization that has been researching time travel for some time, has actually succeeded in sending humans into the past although they seem to have all resulted in the test subjects' deaths. Rintaro begins experimenting with "D-Mails" (Dメール, D mēru, short for DeLorean mail), which begin to cause major differences in the timeline. Kurisu also manages to create a device to send a person's memories through the microwave, allowing that person to effectively leap into the past.
However, SERN learns of the time machine and sends a group led by Moeka to retrieve it, killing Mayuri in the process. Using Kurisu's time leap machine, Rintaro travels back in time numerous times to try to save Mayuri, but to no avail. As Rintaro reaches wit's end, he is approached by Suzuha Amane, a girl from a future ruled by SERN due to their possession of a time machine, who tells him that he needs to return to a Beta worldline in which Mayuri won't die. By undoing the effects of the D-Mails that caused shifts in the timeline, Rintaro regains possession of an IBN 5100 PC that they lost earlier, allowing them to crack into SERN's systems and delete the evidence of Rintaro's original D-Mail. However, Rintaro realizes that by doing so, he would have to return to a world line in which Kurisu is dead. After realizing their feelings for each other, Kurisu tells Rintaro to save Mayuri. Reluctantly, Rintaro agrees and deletes the evidence of his D-Mail from SERN's database, returning him to the Beta world line.
