Trivia / AI: The Somnium Files

• Acclaimed Flop: In Japan, at least. Since its release there back in September, it has only sold 1000 copies on the Nintendo Switch and 2000 on the PlayStation 4 up through the beginning of December. Ouch. This most likely has to do with the combination of Uchikoshi's works not selling the best in general as well as it being rated Z (18+) by CERO, restricting it from sale in most stores. By comparison, North American copies have become quite rare on PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch alike, going for over $100 new on both platforms.
• Acting for Two: An example only existing in the Japanese dub, Date/Falco and Saito share the same voice actor, Tarusuke Shingaki, regardless of which of the two bodies they are currently in. In English, whoever is in Saito's body is voiced by Greg Chun while whoever is in Falco's body is voiced by D.C. Douglas, including Date during the ending and epilogue.
• Blooper:
  • The English dub contains an error in which the line "Iris was in So's Somnium", correctly rendered in text, is spoken with the names switched around. Either Boss's voice actress or the script that she was provided slipped up and it wasn't caught before release.
  • Early on in the right path, inspecting Aiba's human form when she projects herself in the real world for the first time has Date erroneously observe her in the passenger seat of his car when they're in Bloom Park, which was obviously reused from the similar scene in the left path where she does this while Date is driving.
  • On the right path, after discovering the corpse in the cold storage warehouse is Manaka Iwai, Date's AI Sight memory of Hitomi recalling her late friend Manaka has her at the Harbor Warehouse District during this, but at no point does she meet Date in this location and she talked about Manaka at her home.
• Character Blog: Iris and Ota have official in-character To-Witter accounts.
• Fandom Life Cycle: At its release it was a Stage 1 but it’s slowly gearing its way to Stage 2 as there is quite a lot of fan material to be found of this game.
• Hey, It's That Sound!: Given it's a Kotaro Uchikoshi game, you'll recognise several sound effects from the Zero Escape series, such as the "creaking door" sound when Date tries to open the merry-go-round's central column, the save jingle being the same as the first two Zero Escape games, and most notably the echoing 'ka-chunk' sound from the "SEEK A WAY OUT!" escape room intros which gets reused for the Mental Locks intro for Somnium levels. This gets brought full circle in the sequel where there's a bonus Somnium that's a HD remake of the 3rd Class Cabin from the beginning of Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors.
• No Export for You: The games physical editions (such as Switch and PS4) have never been released in East Asian countries, including China Taiwan and South Korea. Only the Steam version has.
• Release Date Change: From July 25 to September 17 in North America and September 19 in Japan, due to production complications and some quality improvement.
• Self-Plagiarism: The hero having years prior been involved in a three-way body swap involving the main antagonist was previously used by Uchikoshi in Punch Line.
• Streisand Effect: An attempt was made by an American fan to review-bomb the game, in part due to being disgruntled with how Iris' character was handled, and in part to point out how easily-manipulated Metacritic scores are. This ended up drawing attention to the game, and causing people to quickly discover that it is surprisingly good, giving it free publicity.
• Uncredited Role: For some reason, Amame's Japanese VA is completely unknown in the first game. Not even the sequel credits her despite her having a MUCH bigger role there. (Though multiple sources reveal it to be Risa Kubota.)
• What Could Have Been:
  • According to Uchikoshi, Hitomi would’ve been the female lead with Date instead of Iris, but after Iris’s design was complete Uchikoshi rewrote it to her being the female lead.
  • Early in production during the planning phase, the game was originally planned to be a VR game where you would explore somniums in first person (this carries over to the final product where the vast majority of the visual novel segments take place in first person from Date's perspective).
  • Once the VR element was dropped, it was decided that Date should have an AI helper who would be his avatar in exploring Somniums. But initially, the helper was going to be rather simplistic, akin to Siri. It was then decided that the helper should have more of a personality to interact with Date, at which point Aiba was conceptualized.
  • The fourth victim of the Original Cyclops Killings was originally the design for Boss until the current design was chosen sometime during development, hence why she has a full 3D model compared to the other three who are the generic ghostly humanoids with their photos taped to their faces.
• Working Title: Project Psync.

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