Last week, Chip-Tune band Anamanguchi, notable for their work on the soundtrack for Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game and Bit. Trip Runner, announced that they would release a game called Capsule Silence XXIV. The game was developed by NHX and was described as a “story-based world exploration FPS with RPG elements.” Anamanguchi did the soundtrack for Capsule Silence XXIV and had a “hands-on” role in development. In the game, you play as an orphan named Larold who crashed on a mysterious planet, and it’s your job to explore the different areas of the planet to rescue the members of Anamanguchi.
But the game itself isn’t the strangest part of this story. Yesterday Anamanguchi sent out some negative tweets about developer NHX. The tweets have been deleted, but some of them include “INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY IS AS RIDICULOUS AS OWNING LAND. AND NHX IS LIKE A TERRIBLE F*CKING LANDLORD,” and “NHX WANTS TO PLUG THEIR BULLSH*T INTO YOUR BRAIN AND FIND OUT EXACTLY WHAT YOU WANT AT EVERY BREATHING MOMENT.”
Anamanguchi was so fed up with NHX that they released the game for free. Gamespot have a gameplay video up, and the game looks as strange as it sounds. The gameplay video shows the protagonist Larold examining what seems to be an alien planet. Capsule Silence XXIV was supposed to release later this year for PC and Mac, but from the game seems to be in early stages of development. At one point in the game, players are given a gun that doesn’t work, and after they shoot it they have access to “developer sandbox mode.” The player is then tasked to find cassettes of Anamanguchi’s song, all of them new and probably for their next album USA. Because of this, it’s most likely this is all a marketing campaign for the band’s next album.
There are many clues that point to this being a hoax. First off, there is no evidence of a company called NHX, and even the link the band put on the twitter page (now removed) doesn’t show anything about the game or any previous games from the company. Also, NHX is very similar to NX, the next Nintendo console that also had an elaborate fake leak. Second, the tweets by Anamanguchi are so vulgar and unprofessional that it seems planned. And finally, April 1st is two days away.
If this is all real, then that is a shame for everyone involved. If it’s fake, it’s one of the best marketing campaigns I have ever seen.