Video Game / SEVEN's CODE

SEVEN's CODE was a now-defunct Rhythm Game developed by UNLIMITED STUDiO (notable for having Naoki Maeda of DanceDanceRevolution fame as one of its founding members) and published by Applibot, for iOS and Android, as a Spiritual Successor to CROSS×BEATS, which was terminated in 2018. It was released in Japan in October 2019, and later got a global release with an English localization in January 2020; content updates are synchronized across all regions. The final story content update was released in October 2020, with the game being shut down permanently on June 30, 2022; due to the game requiring an internet connection to its servers to play, it is no longer playable.

The game features two distinct play styles, Simple and Chaos. Simple mode features conventional lane-based gameplay, in which notes scroll towards the player in a "hallway" perspective (similar to Guitar Hero and CHUNITHM) and must be hit when they reach the judgement line at the bottom. Chaos mode basically picks up where CROSS×BEATS left off, featuring notes popping up on a two-dimensional plane with two guidelines coming from opposite directions, on which markers slide towards the notes; you hit the note when the markers reach it. Gameplay is mainly focused on one-on-one battles, with both players using special character skills to inflict Interface Screws on the opponent while gaining Score Multipliers for themselves.

For those who are interested in the game's music, the offcial YouTube account for the game has a playlist of official song uploads here.

A quasi-successor to this game, DeltaBeats, was released in 2023, using similar gameplay to the Chaos mode from this game.

---

SEVEN's CODE features examples of:

• Ambiguous Gender Identity: The game seems to make an effort to make it difficult to discern Johannes's gender. Johannes has a conventionally feminine appearance and is referred to as the "Woman of Couture", so one would naturally assume that they're a woman. However, they're routinely referred to with male pronouns and their name is a variant of "John". And if you unlock their bio at the Terminal, expecting an official answer on what gender they are, there are no gendered pronouns or even any singular uses of "they"; instead their name is used in place of any pronouns.
• Anti-Frustration Features: The max combo bonus for Clear Rate from CROSS×BEATS has been removed, eliminating the problem of losing a bunch of Clear Rate just because you missed one note.
• Anti-Magic: Sayoko is able to nullify other ORGANs using KIDNEY. In Free Play mode, this translates to her Skills canceling enemy Skills and emptying their Skill gauges.
• April Fools' Day: For 2020, the game features "Torapero", a cover of "Transparent ZERO" with Kanaka as the vocalist and a poorly-drawn doodle parody of the song jacket. The charts themselves are packed with gimmicks such as overly long Chain Notes, strings of Slash Notes a la CROSS×BEATS (which did not have Chain Notes), chords of more than two notes at a time, and in the Simple charts in particular, floating notes (at times resembling fellow mobile rhythm game Arcaea).
• Back from the Dead: People with Backups can come back to life within SEVEN's CODE. Nire, for example.
• BFG: Mirai's ORGAN, GALLBLADDER, takes the form of a gatling gun as large as herself.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: The English translation is mostly passable, and is good enough if you're just playing for the gameplay, but makes odd capitalizations and grammatical choices here and there, especially in Story mode. It also has a habit of using the wrong gendered pronouns all the time.
• Body Surf: Every time a new chapter begins, Yuito finds himself involuntarily taking over the body of someone else.
• Boss Game: Technically, every fight in Story and Challenge Modes is a boss, as the battles are usually presented as one-on-one affairs. However you do encounter some nameless Mooks like generic KUROKAGE workers, Guardian AIs in Pillars, and SOAT officers, and some enemies get more emphasis than others, like people who have been corrupted by HALZiNA's Judgments and the HALZiNA members themselves.
• Boss Remix: The HALZiNA rematches in the final chapter use "Special Battle Mixes" unique to these fights that each mash up two existing songs into one track.
• Boss Rush: The final chapter has only boss-type enemies. First you fight a Greed-corrupted Sayako. Then you rematch against the seven members of HALZiNA two at a time, except for Conni who you once again fight one-on-one. Finally, you go up against the Final Boss, Aurora, twice.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Anyone who is inflicted with a Judgment goes Ax-Crazy, acting on the sin they're accused of to an extreme degree, and the effect only stops when they are killed. Nire manages to come back to life and back to normal through a Backup. Thor acts less "crazy" and more just "really, really exhausted".
• Call a Hit Point a "Smeerp": The four different note types are called Slash (flick), Chain (slide), Reflection (tap), and Charge (hold). Lampshaded in the Easter Egg keyword files, which outright refer to them by their more conventional names ("called x in 2019").
• Calling Your Attacks: Every time someone uses an ORGAN, they call out its name and its function:
  • "PANCREAS! Break down the target!" or "PANCREAS! Break down the target permanently!" or "PANCREAS! Break down myself!"
  • "LUNG! Throw 'em out!"
  • "CORNEA! Alter visual input!"
  • "BLOOD! Rain thorns of red!"
  • "LIVER! Release toxins!"
• Charged Attack: Collect type. You build up the Skill gauge by hitting notes; when it's full, a yellow button appears in the top left corner so you can use your Skill. If you don't touch it after several seconds, the Skill will activate automatically.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Mirai, towards her boyfriend/subordinate Yuito. To start, when Yuito reports the corpse of Aurora that he found in the subway, Mirai has a distinctly sharp tone when it's mentioned that Aurora was a woman ("Did you have any feelings for this WOMAN?") Come chapter 5 and this trope gets used against her for the Judgment of Envy, causing her to go full-on Yandere mode after mistaking Yuito for cheating on her with Sayoko.
• Downloadable Content: Some songs and characters are locked behind a paywall; specifically, you have to purchase Diamonds with real-world currency and then spend them on songs. You can earn free Diamonds by entering keywords into the code terminal, but the amount you get is so small (most keywords give you three each and song and character prices are on the order of hundreds) that you might as well just pay up. If you remember to keep up with character birthdays, you can also get 77 Diamonds just for logging in on someone's birthday.
• Dual Boss: The final chapter has you fighting all of HALZiNA two at a time except for its last member, who is again fought solo. The pair battles have both enemies combining their attacks into one.
• Easter Egg:
  • The notecounts for "Kimi to Mita Yume": Normal (both styles) has 247 notes referring to the phrase "24 hours a day, 7 days a week", Hard (both styles) has 428 notes which refers to NAOKI's birthday and which happens to be a Goroawase Number that means "Shibuya" , and Master (both styles) has 666 notes.
  • There are a few dozen Easter Egg codes that are not related to the story, usually referring to staff members, types of alcoholic drinks, gameplay terminology, and common rhythm game jargon. Three of them are required to unlock songs.
• Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: HALZiNA is an group of seven girls who all seem like your usual charismatic Japanese idols and are actually the embodiment of the Seven Deadly Sins.
• Femme Fatalons: One of the mass-produced ORGANs on the market is NAILS, which manifest in the form of nail extensions on the user. Unusually for this trope, most users of it seen so far are male.
• Fight Woosh: Before each battle in Story and Challenge Modes, an upward shower of lights fills the screen, then the opponent's portrait and name are shown.
• Foreshadowing: The game drops a few hints that Vulca is actually a disguised Conni, which is not formally revealed until the end of Chapter 10: they both have the same measurements, hairstyles, and seiyuu.
• Gender-Blender Name: Johannes is a woman, despite what the name may make you assume.
• Glass Cannon: In Free Play mode, generally speaking the stronger the multiplier that a character gets when using their skill, or the more powerful their Interface Screw gimmick is, the higher the score penalty they get when they miss notes. Or in some cases, so much as get a Hit or even a Burst!
• Goroawase Number: "428" pops up in a few places, such as the title of "MAX SBY -428-". 428 can be read as "Shibuya" (as in the city in Tokyo).
• Harder Than Hard:
  • The difficulties are, in order of easiest to hardest: Normal, Hard, and Master.
  • The difficulty scale appears to be out of 10 levels, as shown by the bar meter next to the difficulty number. However, the scale actually goes to 12.
  • In Challenge Mode, you may encounter songs with unique charts that are even harder than their Master charts. To make things even harder, Challenge Mode imposes a lifebar that decreases on a Hit or a Miss (whereas in Free Play, there is no Game Over), and in later stages your opponent will start using their Skills to visually impair you.
• Hope Spot: At the end of Chapter 7, Thor is tired and sleepy due to being afflicted with Sloth, and he and Yuito-as-Vulca are cornered by Fiona and a squad of KUROKAGE agents who seem quite keen on enforcing the Judgment. Yuito manages to fire off multiple ORGANs at once, knocking down a lot of the KUROKAGE Mooks, and Thor finally finds the Heroic Willpower to use COLON...only for Sayoko's KIDNEY to nullify their skills, allowing Nire to go in for the kill on Thor.
• Idol Singer: HALZiNA is a group of seven of them.
• The Immodest Orgasm: "Don't Touch Me There" features samples of a woman moaning intensely in pleasure. Fittingly, it's used as the Boss Battle theme against Conni, who guards the Pillar of Lust.
• Inappropriately Close Comrades: Yuito and his commander Mirai are dating, and even made a charter out of it to avoid charges of abuse or harassment. Thanks to misunderstandings caused by Yuito's unwilling Body Surfing as well as Mirai being cast with the sin of Envy, this dies in the fifth chapter, when Yuito-as-Sayoko is forced to kill Mirai, who has gone on an envy-fuelled rampage.
• Inconsistent Dub:
  • Fiona's name is also sometimes written as "Fanni". This can create problems for English-speaking players trying to fill the keyword collection, as you have to type "FANNI" into the code terminal for her profile, whereas "FIONA" is invalid.
  • Thor's name is both translated as "Thor" and "Soul" (both are written as ソール in Japanese) in-game.
• Leitmotif: Most of the non-HALZiNA playable characters each have one, indicated by the character being on the song art:
  • Yuito: "Transparent ZERO"
  • Isaac: "Secret Heaven"
  • Mirai: "More and moRe"
  • Johannes: "UNRE ALTER"
  • Micah: "EMERALD JEALOUSY"
  • Ohgi: "Be Born"
  • Nire: "Pillar of Fire"
  • Sayoko: "year of the wanter"
• Meaningful Name: Each ORGAN's function references the organ it's named after:
  • PANCREAS breaks the target down into its component materials, much like how the human pancreas breaks down food that's digesting in the stomach.
  • CORNEA affects the target's visual input, rendering them unable to see clearly. The cornea makes up the front of the human eye, being the first part to accept light.
  • LIVER releases toxins upon the target. The liver removes toxins from the human body.
  • COLON fires a gas bomb. As in passing gas.
• Killed Off for Real: Normally, Yuito's PANCREAS just neutralizes ("break down") the target, but if he needs to kill someone, he can say "Break down the target permanently."
• Mind Screw: The plot starts off seeming routine enough, with Yuito and Isaac investigating an incident in a disused subway system. But then HALZiNA announces an apocalyptic "Judgment" event wherein nobody can leave SEVEN's CODE and Yuito starts hopping from one body to another against his will, sometimes ending up in different time periods or timelines for unclear reasons.
• Nintendo Hard: Simple Mode is, well, simple enough to learn, with lanes of notes that you just need to press at the right time. Chaos Mode, however, instead puts notes all over a two-dimensional plane, and often throws polyrhythmic sections that feel like working on two entirely different tasks at the same time, much like the game's Spiritual Predecessor. There's no lifebar in Free Play mode at least nor is there a "ticket" system to limit how much you can play, but still, don't expect good scores without lots of repetition and studying charts.
• Not Completely Useless: Vulca's Skill is...None. That's right, it's literally nothing; she doesn't even charge up her Skill meter unless a Charge note is being held and even then the gain is so miniscule that it's still impossible for her to fill up her gauge. However, this makes her perfect if you are just focusing on Clear Rate or accuracy, as this means you don't have to worry about the yellow Skill button or the accompanying sound cue distracting you.
• Number of the Beast:
  • "Kimi to Mita Yume" has 666 notes on each of its Master charts. Which is very fitting, as the song is by HALZiNA, an group of idols who are actually demons.
  • Yuito's Leitmotif "Transparent ZERO" also has 666 notes on both of its Master charts.
• Public Domain Soundtrack: The game features a number of classical songs arranged into more modern genres.
• Production Throwback:
  • One of the classical song remixes is that of "Revolutionary Etude". NAOKI previously produced another arrangement of it (in collaboration with dj TAKA), "Kakumei", for DanceDanceRevolution. It also has the same tempo (148 BPM).
  • Another classical song remix appearing is "L'Inverno" (Winter). Its charts contain notes forming V's, a reference to dj TAKA's arrangement of the same piece, "V", from beatmania.
  • Entering "180"^note "PARANOiA", "300"^note "MAX 300", or "511"^note "5.1.1." into the code terminal will give you a data file stating that the keyword you entered "reminds you of [music/BPM] for some reason."
• The Punishment Is the Crime: HALZiNA's idea of punishing people for their sins is to cast a Judgment "spell" of sorts onto the person, making them act on their sin to such an extreme degree that they become a danger to others; the only way to stop the person is to kill them.
  • Wrath: Isaac, who has just seen his friend and comrade Yuito get attacked by Micha, assaults Micha and Johannes out of revenge.
  • Lust: Nire, who already has a creepy fixation on Johannes, straight up declares his intent to rape her.
  • Envy: Mirai mistakes Yuito for cheating on her with Sayoko and attacks Sayoko, putting up such an intense fight that it takes multiple ORGANs by Sayoko to kill her.
  • Sloth: Thor, not a huge fan of his job and instead preferring to dump all his chores on Vulca, becomes extremely tired and unable to outrun his pursuers.
  • Gluttony: Inui, who runs a food blog, becomes a Humanoid Abomination with Horror Hunger.
• Rank Inflation: The judgement ranks are, in order of lowest to highest: Miss, Hit, Burst, Critical, and Fabulous.
• Retcon: The idol group was originally called HARZiNA, but the September 2020 update re-romanized the name to HALZiNA.
• Rule of Seven: The number 7 routinely shows up throughout the game. There's the very title of the game itself, which is also the name of the city the game takes place in, HALZiNA has seven members who each represent one of the Seven Deadly Sins and its name is seven letters long, the versus matchup screen looks like two 7's laid against each other, and several charts feature the number 7 written in notes, usually Chain Notes.
• Running Gag: Whenever Ria is spying on someone (usually Yuito), it's common for the game to animate her peeking out from behind whatever she's hiding.
• Scoring Points:
  • First there is the standard score system, which is used to decide the winner in matches. You gain points based on judgements and your current combo. Activating Skills will apply a Score Multiplier for notes hit while the Skill is active, sometimes requiring you to get a certain judgement or higher to get the multiplier. However, some characters, particularly those with larger multipliers, also lose points if they miss notes (or in the case of certain characters, if they get a Burst or less) while the Skill is active.
  • Clear Rate works much like in CROSS×BEATS. It is expressed as a percentage out of 100.00%, and hitting notes with a Fabulous, Critical, or Burst adds to your Clear Rate with a 3:3:2 ratio (getting a Hit or Miss adds nothing). Unlike in CxB, there is no combo factor, meaning you won't lose up to 10% just for missing one note.
• Secret Level: Four of the unlockable tracks require methods that are only hinted at on the official website:
  • To unlock "conflict" — yes, as in the song by siromaru and cranky — you have to type "ALPACABEAM" into the code terminal.
  • To unlock "Halcyon", you have to type "A.14" into the code terminal.
  • To unlock "Party 4U", you have to type "NUM.1000" into the code terminal.
  • To unlock "酒池肉林", you have to type "OMOSAN" into the code terminal.
• Sequel Song:
  • "REDRAVE" to "RED ZONE", produced once again by NAOKI and Tatsh and featuring the same "speed rave" style.
  • "MAX SBY -428-" is this to NAOKI's "MAX" series of songs.
• Shout-Out: The April Fools' Day song, "Torapero", features floating notes in its Simple charts, much like in Arcaea.
• The Slacker: Thor is rather lazy and only took up a job at KUROKAGE for money. When Ohgi introduces him to Vulca, who Thor is meant to take care of, Ohgi tries to convince him by saying that Thor can dump all his chores onto Vulca. Thor's lazy attitude ends up drawing the attention of HALZiNA, one of whom almost casts him with the Judgment of Sloth, but he books it at the last second.
• Spiritual Successor: The Chaos play style in particular is this to CROSS×BEATS. The basic mechanics are largely the same, but with the inclusion of Chain notes.
• Stylistic Suck: The song jacket for the April Fools' Day song "とらぺろ" (Torapero) can be summed up as "Let's try to draw the 'Transparent ZERO' song jacket like we're playing Drawful!"
• Theme Naming: ORGANs are weapons named after organs of the human body, going hand in hand with the theme of the city of SEVEN's CODE being designed to emulate the functions of the human body.
• Toilet Humor: Thor's ORGAN is COLON, which fires a gas bomb, hence why he's so embarrassed about using it.
• The Unfought: Sayoko is never fought in Story mode because her Skill, KIDNEY, cancels the opponent's Skills and their Skill gauges, and since Yuito's Skills never activate in the middle of a song in Story mode, KIDNEY would lose half of its effect.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Matsutaro Inui is introduced in Chapter 9, but is only mentioned for most of the chapter and not seen because SOAT is looking for them. By the time Yuito finds him, it turns out Inui is the gluttonous monster that's been rampaging at HALZiNA Dome and has to be Mercy Killed before he goes berserk again.
• Where It All Began: In the final chapter, the final confrontation with HALZiNA and Aurora take place in HALZiNA Dome, where the climax of Chapter 1 took place.

---

TV.TROPES.WIKI
A community-edited wiki dedicated to cataloguing tropes, or conventions and idioms, in fiction media. For some reason, someone started a page on SEVEN's CODE on TV Tropes Wiki.

Diamond x 3 received.

---