Break Chance Memento (BCM) is a visual novel by Cyanide Tea, released on February 12, 2016.
Four years ago, Shuuki's world was turned upside-down when his twin sister, Fuyuka, died in an accident at just 12 years of age. His parents blamed her death on the negligence of their eldest son, Natsume. The Amamiya family was never the same.
One fateful morning, Shuuki stumbles across the gruesome sight of his brother Masaharu's corpse. When all hope is lost and Shuuki must come to terms with the fact that his brother has been murdered, the mysterious Kyousuke appears before him with a proposition:
"Do you want to bring your brother back? To fix your family's broken relationship? You can…if you learn to travel through time."
Before he knows it, Shuuki is caught in a plot far more sinister than he could have ever imagined. He learns that the key to traveling through time and stopping innocents from being killed lies in mementos: items that are a link between the past, future, and present.
The game can be purchased from Itch.io
or Steam.
This visual novel makes use of the following tropes:
- Academic Athlete: Masaharu is both a straight-A student and the captain of his school's basketball team.
- The B Grade: One memento you can acquire is an essay Masaharu got an A-minus on, much to his displeasure.
- Beneath the Mask: Yukimura acts polite and gentle in public but is more sadistic and blunt around people he's more familiar with.
- Big Brother Instinct: Natsume and Masaharu both display this toward Shuuki and each other, albeit in markedly different ways.
- Brilliant, but Lazy: Natsume gets top marks in Japanese literature and invented time travel in an alternate universe but sleeps through every other class.
- Brutal Honesty: One of the main reasons for none of Shuuki's relationships having lasted long. Yukimura also indulges in this if Shuuki gets a closer look beneath his mask.
- Childhood Friend Romance: Shuuki can enter one with Chiaki.
- Coming of Age Story: Shuuki becomes more mature and caring about others after repeatedly witnessing the brutal deaths of his loved ones and learning not to take them for granted.
- Despair Event Horizon: If Shuuki fails to save someone, the bad ending text will say that he became so overcome with despair that he withdrew from everyone around him and became a lonely shell of himself who's heavily implied to commit suicide soon afterwards to join Fuyuka.
- Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Fuyuka (or at least the echo of her) combines this with Red Eyes, Take Warning.
- Incest Subtext: Shuuki can get an ending with Natsume or Masaharu and while they don't have the same explicit romance that Chiaki and Yukimura's endings do, their routes do include Shower Scenes and Shuuki being called "cute" or "pretty" at least once by his brother.
Word of God even says that it's up to the player to decide just how "romantic" Natsume and Masaharu's routes are. - Inventory Management Puzzle: Shuuki's time-traveling watch can hold only five mementos at a time, so you'll often need to choose which mementos to keep and which ones to discard when you want to record new mementos.
- Ladykiller in Love: Shuuki, if he pursues Chiaki or Yukimura.
- Long-Haired Pretty Boy: Shuuki, who's rather vain about it and dedicates a significant amount of time to keeping his hair perfect in the morning.
- The Napoleon: Make a joke about Chiaki's height at your own peril. (He insists that he's of average height and all of the Amamiya brothers are just freakishly tall.)
- Parents as People: The Amamiya brothers' and Chiaki's mothers aren't bad people, but grief led both of them to resent someone who genuinely loved them and become alienated from their sons.
- Ret-Gone: Kyousuke was yanked from existence by Fuyuka as a child and his friend Shuuki has completely forgotten about him by the time they cross paths again. Played with in that Kyousuke's existence wasn't actually entirely wiped from others' memories; he thinks that his family completely forgot about him too, but they were actually too grief-stricken to stay around after his disappearance.
- Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Shuuki retains his memories of the original timeline even after he begins recalling past memories that his time traveling created.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Shuuki's motivation for going back in time to save Masaharu and later on, Chiaki, Natsume, Yukimura, and the entire universe too. Additionally, an alternate universe version of Shuuki attempted to save Fuyuka only for this trope to be horribly subverted for them.
- Stepford Smiler: Natsume acts so unfailingly kind and easygoing toward his brothers that neither of them are aware of how deeply jaded and self-loathing he has become from a combination of guilt over Fuyuka's death and having to repeatedly kill echoes of Fuyuka, to the point of taking illegally-obtained sleeping pills to quell his nightmares and even contemplating suicide.
- Temporal Theme Naming: The Amamiya siblings were all named after the seasons: Masaharu for spring, Natsume for summer, Shuuki for fall, and Fuyuka for winter.
- Touch of Death: Fuyuka, as an "echo" that's not supposed to exist in Shuuki's universe, kills anyone she touches.
- Tsundere: Masaharu is explicitly called one by Shuuki.
