Left to right: Shiori Natsume, Aoi Ooe and Akari Abe
Pedestal
is an adventure-mystery game by Uri made in Wolf RPG Editor, and her first non-horror game. It was released in Japanese in 2021 and in English in December 2022.
Aoi Ooe, head (and only real member) of the Newspaper Club at Cosmos' Girls Academy, is a mystery-loving girl who wants to make her club bigger and more respected like the other clubs. She and her best friend Akari Abe decide to investigate the mysterious death of Shiori Natsume, the most popular student in the school and heir to a big company, who fell off the rooftop one night in what is rumored to be a suicide. But Aoi isn't convinced that the popular rich girl with such a fantastic life could ever want to kill herself, and so sets out to solve the mystery of this girl whom she knows nothing about and the truth of her death.
But it will not be easy, because some of the students who had a connection to Shiori do not want anyone talking about her. Aoi identifies several key people connected to Shiori - her sister Sakura, her fiancée Sumikazu, the Music Club concertmistress Miyuki, her rival Alpha Bitch Kana, and her shy friend Midori. Absolutely none of them want to talk about Shiori and all of them act aggressively to Aoi's questioning, which only further convinces Aoi that something more is going on and that one of them may be involved in her death. This drives her to uncover every secret, every connection, and every loose end.
But the more she finds out, the greater her hunger for the truth grows - and the closer she may get to a truth she may not want to hear... a truth that could break the Pedestal forever.
Gameplay primarily consists of investigating the school and its students to uncover details about Shiori. This takes the form of Interview segments where you switch between different questions and ask them to the students, and some of them will give you useful bits of information that you will need. In between some of these segments are various minigames you must complete to get another piece of the puzzle.
This game contains examples of:
- Awful Truth: A major theme of the game is that the truth is not necessarily something that will bring closure, but might only open more wounds. This comes into play by the end, when Aoi discovers the truth behind the mystery of Shiori's life and death. It turns out that none other than her own best friend Akari was responsible, as she is The Sociopath who already encouraged her teacher friend to kill herself and ruined Shiori's life to see if she would kill herself too, purely to amuse herself. If Aoi accepts this, she decides she cannot be friends with Akari any longer and is brought to despair herself over discovering this.
- Big Bad: Akari Abe, Aoi's best friend, is revealed to be the one ultimately behind Shiori's death, as the circumstances that led to Shiori accidentally dying were brought about by her trying to drive Shiori to despair for fun.
- Bittersweet Ending: Ending 3, “Only the Pedestal Remains”, is far more downbeat than the usual true ending in Uri's games, but does offer a little bit of hope. Aoi has discovered the Awful Truth that her best friend Akari was behind everything, permanently ruining their friendship. Aoi is driven to the Despair Event Horizon, and the last scene in the game is of her crying, lamenting their dead friendship. Meanwhile, Akari herself moves to Europe and gets away with everything, and will presumably find more victims to drive to despair. But at the very least, Aoi discovering the truth behind Shiori's death has brought closure to her loved ones, who can move on now that they know they didn't drive her to suicide, and since Aoi befriended them in the process, it is indicated that she now has several new friends who can help her move on from Akari in turn.
- Color-Coded Characters: Most major characters are associated with a certain color that also matches their hair: blue for Aoi, red for Akari, purple for Shiori, pink for Sakura, white for Miyuki, yellow for Kana, green for Midori, and black for Sumikazu.
- Double-Meaning Title: Pedestal refers to the pedestal that Aoi put Shiori on for being the perfect School Idol beloved by everyone, and how her supposed suicide threw her off it, to the point that Aoi is investigating her death specifically to prove that such a popular girl who had everything could not have possibly killed herself and thus preserve the pedestal. But Stage 2 outright explicitly says that there was another person Aoi put on a pedestal that gets broken by the end - Akari, Aoi's best friend, who turns out to be The Sociopath who drove Shiori to despair for her amusement.
- Fair-Play Whodunnit: Zigzagged. It gradually turns out that someone else was on the rooftop with Shiori when she supposedly committed suicide, and the goal then becomes a matter of finding out who this person is. The player is in fact required to figure out who this person is and then state it to Akari before it gets revealed, by piecing together all the clues gathered throughout the game. Doing so and spotting a seeming contradiction will lead you to the correct answer. But the person in question didn't kill her - she died by accident. And the actual culprit - the character who did ruin Shiori's life - is revealed to the player early on in Stage 2.
- Karma Houdini: Akari ruined Shiori's life, tried to drive her to suicide, successfully got her teacher friend to kill herself, and turned the Cat Hag into a serial cat killer. In all endings, either Aoi never finds out or Akari transfers to another school in Europe after Aoi finds the truth, escaping justice and presumably going on to find more victims.
- Never Suicide: Aoi decides to investigate the death of Shiori Natsume because she doesn't believe for one second that the popular, rich School Idol could possibly have killed herself. As her investigation continues, she uncovers evidence that points towards this conclusion and suspects foul play was involved. She's right about the first part, wrong about the second - it was an Accidental Suicide.
- Never the Obvious Suspect: Aoi and Akari, in their search to find who may have killed Shiori, find five possible suspects. Of them, four are incredibly antagonistic to Aoi and her questioning while the fifth one simply runs away from them. But each one of the obvious suspects is gradually knocked from the list. Sakura, who is said to have hated her sister (the victim), actually loved her and misses her. Kana, the Alpha Bitch who openly hated Shiori, has the same deal. Sumikazu, who outright attacks Aoi and Akari, was just trying to keep a secret Shiori had that had nothing to do with her death. Miyuki, who had a falling out with Shiori, also has no idea what happened to her. The one who actually knows is Midori, the shy girl who admired Shiori and seemed to be the least likely suspect. Except it's subverted because she didn't actually kill her, it was an accident... and then double subverted when Stage 2 reveals that the real culprit behind the circumstances that led to Shiori dying is Akari, who was not on the list of potential suspects at all.
- Poor Communication Kills: Despite a major theme of the game being that the truth is not always pretty and sometimes it's okay to keep secrets, the more about Shiori is uncovered, the more it becomes clear that her death, and a lot of suffering and strife, could have been averted if she or her friends didn't choose to keep their worries to themselves. Because Shiori chose not to burden her friends with her problems, and because her friends did not ask her about it, Akari was able to sabotage three of Shiori's friendships without anyone realizing, and Midori confronting Shiori about it leads to her accidental death. This leaves all of the friends except Midori (and the insane Cat Hag) convinced that they drove Shiori to suicide. Had any of them said anything, they might have caught Akari in the act.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Aoi and Akari have this dynamic, though ironically their names and color schemes actually correspond to the opposite role. The blue-haired Aoi is the spirited, passionate Amateur Sleuth always ready to jump into anything, while the red-haired Akari is the cool, unflappable best friend who generally does whatever Aoi wants.
- Shrinking Violet: Midori is painfully shy and generally avoids speaking to others unless spoken to.
- Split-Screen Phone Call: Aoi and Akari's phone calls show split screens of them in their rooms.
- Suicide Dare: How Akari indirectly killed the teacher she befriended during middle school. Said teacher was depressed, and constantly ranted to Akari about how her job stresses her out and how she wanted to die. Akari, tired of her ranting, goads her into doing so and feels no remorse for it.
- This Is Unforgivable!: Aoi says this to Akari after the latter explains how she tried to drive Shiori to despair to signify that they can't be friends anymore.
- Trash of the Titans: Akari's room is incredibly messy and she only makes an effort to clear it out when she prepares to move out.
- The Unreveal: While Stage 2 answers almost all of the questions left unanswered by Stage 1, there is one mystery where the answer is never outright revealed to the player; mainly, what Shiori Natsume's “secret” is. Aoi herself finds out when reading her diary, but every time it looks like she or another character is about to say the secret out loud, the screen cuts to black and jumps to after they say it, with it being talked about in nebulous terms otherwise. We are given hints - it has to do with some ambition Shiori had, she doesn't want to marry anyone because of this ambition, Aoi says it's “outside the norm” but doesn't think it's a big deal, Shiori wanted to keep it a secret from the family fearing that it could bring harm to her sister Sakura, and when Shiori somehow failed in her ambition, Sumikazu falsely believed it had driven her to suicide. But ultimately, Aoi decides Shiori was right to not let it get out and decides to respect her wishes by not revealing it to anyone - including the player.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Akari has a phobia of insects, and she dreads moths and butterflies the most. If she sees a moth while she and Aoi are sneaking around inside the school building at night, it will result in an instant game-over.
