Like the Ace Attorney series, Kira Game is a point-and-click adventure game with a plot revolving around the Death Note series. Light Yagami is trying to hide the fact that he is the Kira, while L is trying to find out who the real Kira is. You must both steer suspicions away from you and target the suspect. As L, you must find evidence to prove who Kira really is. You must interrogate other people and meet familiar faces from the anime/manga series itself.
Main Menu[edit]
The Main Menu is set up into squares, each one representing a different mode or option. Story Mode is a full story from beginning to end and split into episodes. You will control several key characters throughout the death note story to its thrilling conclusion. Well, the first part anyways. Single-player mode is a simple game of the Kira Game where you may choose which character you play as, your role (Kira, L), how many investigators there are (4-8), who those investigators are and other variables. Or set everything to random. Unlike story mode, single-player mode has nothing to do with the anime/manga series aside from the characters. Out of a group of people, you must decipher which character is Kira or L depending on the role you have, and then eliminate them. The final mode is VS mode. Play head to head against another person with the DS's wireless multi-card play.
Basic Gameplay: Influence[edit]
Influence is your only resource that you need to manage and use to successfully put Kira behind bars, or take out L if you are Kira. It is represented by the green numbers on the bottom right, and the standard game mode has you starting every round with 100/100 influence. Any action you take will require influence points, defending, accusing, agreeing, countering, debating, and specially super moves will drain your influence every round. However, every time it's your turn you will recover a certain number of influence points based on the trust other investigators have with you (More on this on "Trust and Doubt") allowing you to speak more freely and shape the investigation however you want it to.
Trust and Doubt[edit]
If influence determines how much you can speak, trust and doubt are the objectives you have while speaking.
Starting with Trust, it is represented by the blue bar beneath the other characters whenever it's your turn to speak. You can see the trust other characters have with each other by holding their portrait and looking at the orange bars. These trust levels are NOT random, every character in the game has a certain level of trust with the others depending on their relationship in the anime and manga. For example, Ryuzaki has the maximum starting trust with Watari at 80 and vice versa, but has the minimum amount of trust with all Aizawa, Mogi, and Matsuda, at 20. Because the amount of influence you recover every turn is based on the trust the other investigators have on you, this makes characters that have a high starting trust with many characters able to talk more freely and present their arguments. Aside from this, characters with a higher level of trust on you are more likely to take your side on the investigation, agreeing with your arguments and defending from bogus accusations. You can increase your trust with your fellow investigators by directly defending them when it's your turn, lowering their doubt and making them more likely to support you.
Afterwards, there's doubt. The doubt other characters have about you is represented by the red bar next to your influence points, and it starts at 25 points. At 50 doubt points, you'll gain a doubt marker, signaling you as a likely suspect of mass murder with a magic notebook, and at 75 points you'll get a second doubt marker, which is essentially a prison sentence if you don't remove it before the voting session starts. However, if it's not your head on the chopping block, you can use your influence points to accuse another character of being a mass murderer. However, doing so will decrease the trust that character has on you unless you spend more influence on your accusations, which may leave you more exposed to mass murder accusations against you, so be careful. Successfully countering/Winning a debate on an accusation will cause the doubt of the accused to lower, while counters to defending arguments will cause the doubt to raise, however in both cases the trust level will have the same effect as is nothing happened, either increasing, lowering, or doing nothing.
Apples[edit]
In the story mode episodes, there is usually an obvious objective and a bonus mission. Bonus missions are usually extra objectives like finding out who the Kira is in a given amount of time or finding Kira's true identity in one try. Apples can then unlock things like extras and hidden characters. Obtaining the highest amount of apples will unlock a secret episode featuring L's successors, Near and Mello. For how to obtain every apple from each chapter, go to the walkthrough.
Special Moves[edit]
If you don't want to go by the manual way or need a little boost or if your confidence is dangerously low, there is an alternative path and a way to get you back on track. When choosing your action, press on the box at the bottom-right of the screen with the red characters and the explanation point. This will give you a set of options to choose from. Pick one and your character will appear on a background that tells you a major action is happening. Your character will say a quote and then, when you return back to the usual screen, the other characters' statuses will have changed.
Voting[edit]
The final step to the investigation is voting. When you've decided you found who you were looking for, drag the blue bubble onto their picture and a result screen will show up shortly afterward. This screen will show who voted for who and how many votes each person got. If everyone happens to agree that you're the Kira, you'll be put in prison and lose the investigation. If you put the right person in prison, the investigation will end and you will have accomplished your goal. If you end up putting the wrong person in prison, the investigation will continue and you'll lose 20 Max Proposal Points, which gets your reputation down. If you keep putting the wrong person in prison, the choices will be narrowed down and the other (whether it be L or Kira) will know who you are by then, which will be a lost investigation.