Chaos Child

Chaos;Child (stylized as ChäoS;Child) is a visual novel video game developed by 5pb. It is the fourth main entry in the Science Adventure series, and a thematic sequel to Chaos;Head (2008). It was released in Japan in 2014 for Xbox One, and later for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Microsoft Windows, iOS, Android, and Nintendo Switch. An English localization was released for the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita by PQube in 2017, and for Windows by Spike Chunsoft in 2019.

The player takes the role of Takuru Miyashiro, the president of his school’s newspaper club, who investigates the “Return of the New Generation Madness” serial murder case. He experiences delusions, and at multiple points throughout the story, the player gets the option to choose if Takuru should experience a positive or negative delusion, or neither: these choices affect the plot’s direction, causing it to branch off from the main narrative into different routes.

The game was created to have “psycho-suspense” elements similar to Chaos;Head, while also adding a larger amount of horror elements. For the game’s aesthetic, the developers aimed for it to be “unmoving”, in contrast to the previous game in the series, Robotics;Notes (2012). The music was composed by Takeshi Abo based on notes of his impressions of the story and emotional flow, to ensure a good relationship to the game’s worldview. The English localization was handled by Adam Lensenmayer, whose experience with translating the Science Adventure game Steins;Gate 0 (2015) ensured a smoother process, with a lot of communication with the developers.

Chaos;Child was well received by critics, but underperformed commercially; this led to the development of Steins;???, which relates to the more popular Science Adventure game Steins;Gate similarly to how Chaos;Child relates to Chaos;Head. Other Chaos;Child media includes an anime series, two manga, an audio drama, and the video game Chaos;Child Love Chu Chu!!.