You may have no idea what this game is, but luckily this page is here to tell you all about it. If you want to learn a little bit more than what's presented here, click the links on the sidebar for further reading!
So, what is Period Cube?
Like I said earlier, Period Cube is an otome game. If you don't know what that is, it's basically a female orientated game where the whole goal is to date handsome boys. However, it was originally a drama CD series, released in 2015 by Otomate Records. I haven't actually listened to the CDs, but from what I believe and from my experience with other series like this, I know how they work. They revolve around you, the listener, and the character featured on the cover of the case. To be quite honest, it's just some bishounen doing romantic stuff to you inside an MMORPG. You can see a list of all the discs released by clicking here.
I believe that there were six drama CDs released in total, as well as one bonus mini drama disc thing. Since these CDs are in Japanese, you can't really buy them in the West, so I honestly don't know that much about them. You can't really find them on YouTube either like you can with other drama CD titles. However, if you would like to purchase them for yourself, you can do so by clicking here and getting them off of Play Asia. They seem to be quite expensive though. On the Period Cube Twitter account I have seen advertisements for character song CDs, but the URL they provide is no longer active and I am having difficulty finding more info on these discs.
These are the covers of the discs. The art for this series is done by Kuroyuki.
This is a blurry image I got off of the Period Cube Twitter account of the character CD covers, or at least I think they're supposed to be the covers.
I have no idea how well these CDs sold, but they must've sold well enough because soon, Otomate decided to make Period Cube into a game! The release date, according to the official website, was the 19th of May, 2016. Otomate is primarily an otome game company, so the intent to make a game based on this was probably planned from the start.
The game was released for the PlayStation Vita, which may be a failure in the West, but it did well enough in Japan. Otome games are quite big on the Vita, since it's the perfect console for playing visual novel type games like these. You can get it as either a physical cartridge, or a digital download on the PlayStation Store. There's also a limited edition version you can get. According to its listing on Play Asia, this copy of the game comes in a big box (typical of Otomate limited edition games), including the game, an extra drama CD that may be exclusive to this box, and a booklet of some sort.
Instead of simply being called Period Cube, the game is called "Period Cube: Torikago no Amadeus". I think in Japanese it translates to "Amadeus of the Birdcage", which can really only be understood if you play the game. The plot is really similar to Sword Art Online, but there are some differences too.
The main character you play as is called Kazuha, but like most otome games, you're allowed to change it for maximum self-insertion. She's a bit of a blank slate compared to most of the more popular otome MCs, but if you just project yourself onto her, it doesn't really matter.
Whilst looking for her missing brother, Kazuha gets sucked into World V, a server in this MMORPG game called Arcadia. Instead of just playing it on a computer, players get put into a coma, while their souls get transported into the game world. Inside Arcadia, Kazuha eventually falls in love with one of seven boys, depending on what choices the player selects. That's all I can really give away about the plot without spoiling it.
In 2017, the game was translated into English by Aksys Games. It then became on sale in North American and in Europe. The title was changed to be "Period Cube: Shackles of Amadeus" instead of what it originally was in Japanese. EVerything about the game stayed the same, except for the Japanese text. Even the game cover looks the same as the Japanese version. A limited edition copy was never released in the West, unfortunately.
Even though Period Cube did well enough to be one of the few to be brought over to the West, it never did well enough for Otomate to produce a sequel, anime or even any more drama CDs. There's probably not even going to be a Nintendo Switch port of it either.
I don't know about Japan, but in the West it remains quite obscure, due to being part of a niche genre, and because it's only on a console that didn't sell very well. A lot of the people who did play it over here didn't think that it was as good as other translated otome games, like Code: Realize or Collar X Malice. To be honest, the plot has a lot of holes in it, and some of the stuff in it is very, um, questionable. But still, I think it's worth playing if you don't care about the plot too much, or if you're a big fan of yanderes and crazy bad endings. You can find the game quite cheap on Amazon now, or you could even import the Japanese version, the language isn't that difficult for learners to understand.
There's literally no fanbase for Period Cube. I only found five fanfictions on it, and if you go on Tumblr, a place where even the most unknown things get loved, there's hardly anything there on it. That is why I made this site, to bring awareness to something not many people know about, and also because I needed an excuse to make another website. Even though Period Cube's not my favourite otome game, I still had so much fun playing and reviewing it. Even though there are quite a lot of reviews on it, I couldn't really find much else on the Internet for it, so I wanted to become the person to make something about it, and to give it more love. There are a lot of other obscure otome games that deserve bigger fanbases, too, so maybe I'll make something for them one day also.
Hopefully somebody will get some enjoyment out of this website. It took me a while to type in the CSS and HTML to make it.
Click here if you would like to leave and visit my main site.
Please note: I do not own any of the images featured here, and I'm not trying to make a profit out of them. All of these belong to Otomate and Idea Factory.