Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective

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1. #1Description

   Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is a 2010 puzzle adventure video game developed and published by Capcom. The story follows Sissel, an amnesiac ghost with supernatural powers, and his journey to rediscover his identity. Players solve environmental puzzles, interact with eccentric characters, and uncover the truth of Sissel's death over the course of one night. Gameplay is split into two sections: gathering information by navigating through the city, and saving lives by traveling back in time.

   Direction, writing, and game design were headed by Shu Takumi, creator of the Ace Attorney franchise. Development began after the Japanese release of Trials and Tribulations in 2004, with the goal of creating a mystery beyond what the conventions of Ace Attorney had allowed. The game was announced at TGS 2009, and released for the Nintendo DS in Japan in June 2010, and in North America, Europe, and Australia in January 2011. An iOS port released in Japan in December 2010, and internationally in February 2012. An Android port was released exclusively in Japan in November 2012.

   Ghost Trick was positively received, with praise for its characters, art direction, animation, music, and story, and criticism for its puzzle design and traversal mechanics. Ghost Trick was a commercial failure in Japan, leading Capcom to cite its performance as a cause for lackluster Q1 2010 revenue. The game was nominated for several industry awards, including Game of the Year by GameSpot and Nintendo Power, and has garnered a cult following. An HD remaster released worldwide for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One in June 2023, and for Android and iOS in March 2024.

2. #2Plot

   At 7:02 pm, an amnesiac spirit named Sissel regains consciousness in a junkyard. Seeing the corpse of a man nearby, Sissel assumes he has just been killed. Ray, a spirit possessing a desk lamp, tells Sissel about the nature of spirits and "powers of the dead", including the power to travel back in time to four minutes before a person's death. Sissel uses these powers, called "ghost tricks", to save a young detective named Lynne from an assassination attempt. Sissel learns that Lynne came to the junkyard at his request, and decides that she is the only lead to uncovering his identity. Ray warns Sissel that his spirit will vanish at dawn.

   Sissel and Lynne work together to save other victims as Sissel learns more about the past. Ten years prior, Detectives Jowd and Cabanela arrested Yomiel, a man falsely accused of foreign espionage. Yomiel fled into the nearby Temsik Park, taking a young Lynne hostage, but was killed by a fragment from the impact of a meteorite later named "Temsik". Jowd adopted Lynne into his family, including his wife Alma, daughter Kamila, and pet dog Missile. Five years later, Alma was inadvertently killed by a Rube Goldberg machine built by Kamila for a surprise party. Jowd hid the evidence and took responsibility for Alma's death to protect Kamila, going to prison under Cabanela's watch.

   In the present, Sissel and Lynne discover that Sith, a foreign agent, was behind Lynne's assassination attempt. Sith claims to have kidnapped the justice minister's daughter as blackmail to hurry Jowd's execution, unaware that his subordinates mistakenly took Kamila instead. Sissel uses his powers to free Jowd from prison, though Cabanela soon recaptures him. Sissel proves the minister's daughter is safe at home, leading the minister to call off Jowd's execution. He tells Sissel and Lynne his fear that a spirit known as "the manipulator" is behind recent events, including Alma's death.

   Cabanela is shot and killed while investigating Sissel's body. Missile, now a spirit with ghost tricks of his own, helps Sissel undo Cabanela's death. Sissel learns that his corpse was used by the manipulator to kill Cabanela and escape, and Cabanela reveals that the body actually belongs to the manipulator, Yomiel, whose corpse went missing shortly after his death. The body contained traces of radiation found in the Temsik meteorite, preventing it from decomposing.

   Sissel, Missile, Lynne, and Jowd follow Yomiel aboard Sith's submarine, rescuing Kamila and cornering Yomiel. Sith betrays Yomiel, extracting the meteorite fragment from his body, and sinks the submarine after fleeing. Yomiel reveals that powers of the dead are granted to those who die in the presence of Temsik radiation. He had been working with Sith's organization to retrieve the Temsik fragment and eliminate all those who knew of its existence, including Jowd, Lynne, and Cabanela. Soon after his apparent death, Yomiel's fiancée—also named Sissel—committed suicide. Yomiel had come to work for Sith as a spirit, and was promised the means to lead a normal life once Sith had the fragment.

   With no means of escape and dawn approaching, Sissel realizes that the group can travel to four minutes before Yomiel's death, as his corpse is no longer being preserved by Temsik radiation. Sissel, Jowd, Yomiel, and Missile all travel ten years into the past and prevent Yomiel's death, creating a new timeline. In the aftermath, Sissel discovers his true identity: a stray cat Yomiel adopted after his fiancée's suicide, having been killed when a stray bullet struck his cat carrier at the junkyard. Before returning to the present, Ray appears and tells Sissel the truth of his own identity: an aged Missile from an alternate timeline who failed to prevent Yomiel's death without Sissel's help and waited ten years to ensure his involvement, tricking him into believing he had only one night before disappearing.

   In the new timeline, Sissel has been adopted by Jowd, Alma, Lynne, and Kamila, while Yomiel serves out his prison sentence to rejoin his waiting fiancée. It is revealed that in this new timeline, Sissel was struck by the meteorite fragment instead, living as a spirit with the fragment in his body.

3. #3Gameplay

   Ghost Trick is a single-player puzzle adventure video game. Players control the character Sissel, an amnesiac ghost with supernatural powers, over the course of one night. The story is divided into 18 chapters, each titled after the time of night in which they take place. At the start of the game, only the first chapter is available to play; when players complete a chapter, the next one is unlocked. Gameplay is split into two sections: gathering information by navigating through the city, and saving lives by traveling back in time.

   Players can press the "Ghost" button to swap between the real world and the Ghost World—an alternate dimension in which time does not pass.[6] In the Ghost World, Sissel takes the form of a blue flame, and can travel between nearby objects. Every interactable object contains a glowing sphere of essence called a "core". Players can swipe from core to core to explore the environment.[5] In the real world, Sissel cannot move around, and relies on his ability to possess and manipulate objects: by pressing the "Trick" button, players can perform "ghost tricks", creating paths of traversal or influencing characters in the environment.[6] For example, moving a cart of doughnuts may prompt a character to chase after it, while also giving Sissel access to new areas.

   Possessing a telephone in use allows Sissel to trace the source of the call, add the number to his Phone Book, and travel to the location on the other end of the line. Additionally, certain locations have internal telephone lines, giving players the option to explore multiple rooms within a single area. As long as a functional telephone is nearby, players are free to return to any previously visited location. While moving from place to place, Sissel eavesdrops on characters' conversations and comments on his surroundings. As players interact with characters and discover locations, information about them is added to Sissel's record.

   At multiple points in the story, players will arrive at the other end of a telephone line to discover the corpse of a character. By possessing the corpse, Sissel is able to communicate with the victim's spirit and travel back in time to four minutes before their death. During these "4 Minutes Before Death" segments, players are tasked with averting the victim's fate, using ghost tricks to manipulate the environment before time runs out. If players fail to rescue the victim, they can rewind time and return to the beginning of the sequence. If players manage to delay the fate of the victim, a checkpoint is created in the timeline. In later chapters of the game, players are able to control Missile, the ghost of a Pomeranian who befriends Sissel. 4 Minutes Before Death segments during these chapters increase in complexity, as Missile's spirit is able to reach further than Sissel's, and has the ability to swap the position of two objects that are of the same shape. Successfully averting a character's fate brings them back to life in the present. Rescued victims also develop permanent cores, allowing Sissel to talk directly with any character who has previously died. Conversations in the Ghost World resemble the investigation sections of Ace Attorney, providing players with a list of topics to choose from and lines of inquiry to follow.

4. #4Characters

   Keys: Kamila, Cabanela, "One Step Ahead" Tengo, Sith, Beauty, Justice Minister, Yomiel, Ray, Emma, Lynne, Sissel, Pigeon Man, "Near-Sighted" Jeego, Amelie, Jowd, Missile, Dandy

   Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is a Nintendo DS video game developed by Shu Takumi in 2010. Like Takumi's other works, Ghost Trick has a strong emphasis on characters, while the plot's central theme is death and mystery. It stars Sissel, a ghost who is attempting to recover his memories. Other major characters include Lynne, who acts as a sidekick to Sissel and seeks to uncover a mystery of 10 years ago; Jowd, a detective accused of murdering his wife; Kamila, the daughter of Jowd; Missile, a Pomeranian who, after dying, chooses to stay dead so that he can protect his owner Kamila; Ray, a ghost who inhabits a desk lamp and initiates Sissel's journey; Cabanela, a detective and friend of Jowd who enjoys dancing; the Pigeon Man, the superintendent of the junkyard where the game begins; the Justice Minister, a man who the protagonists beseech to stay Jowd's execution; Yomiel, a ghost who seeks revenge for the events of 10 years ago; and the antagonists, an unidentified organization from a foreign country who seek to kill anyone involved in the events of 10 years ago.

   Ghost Trick's main character Sissel was originally designed to be a spy, and was designed to be a ghost so he could better interact with the other characters. Ghost Trick features a number of tropes that are found in other video games by Takumi; one such trope is the sidekick to bounce jokes off of each other, namely Lynne. He compared her role to that of Dr. Watson in the Sherlock Holmes novels. Takumi explains that he was growing tired of 3D animation; as such, he created the style used in the game by creating 3D models and rendering them in 2D afterward, creating what Video Gamer's Martin Gaston describes as "buttery smooth" animation; this was as opposed to using motion capture technology, which Takumi feels would not allow characters to have their own quirks to their design.

   The cast of Ghost Trick has received largely positive reception since appearing in Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective, both for their dialogue and design. In particular, Missile was called the most popular character in the game among fans by Takumi. The characters also received praise for most of them not being shoehorned into the plot, and for their unique personalities and attire. The characters have been compared to the cast from the Ace Attorney series, with 1UP.com's Justin Haywald calling them "over-the-top". The animation has been described as resembling that of a cartoon, and has been praised as having "some of the most impressive presentation work in the whole graphic adventure genre" by PALGN's Jarrod Mawson, "some of the most brilliant and unique visuals the DS has seen" by GameZone's Brian Rowe, and for being good enough to still be impressive if the animation was done on the technologically superior Wii and Nintendo 3DS by NGamer UK.

   Sissel:

   Sissel is the protagonist of the game, and the titular character as well. He is recently deceased, and as a ghost, attempting to recover his lost memories. He is tasked by a ghost nicknamed "Ray" with protecting a girl named Lynne from being killed. Ray teaches him of his powers, which include being able to manipulate objects and travel four minutes before the death of a person. After rescuing Lynne, they eventually team up, with Lynne using Sissel to help her solve a mystery of 10 years ago and Sissel using Lynne to recover his memories. He later teams up with a dog named Missile who recently died and, when revived, goes to save his owners, Lynne and Kamila. Sissel is eventually tasked by Lynne to check on the schedule of a prisoner named Jowd, a former detective, only to find that he has none, and as such, is scheduled to be executed. After finding Jowd dead, he rewinds time to save Jowd, and he works to save him from prison, though Jowd is later arrested by his friend Cabanela in the process. Sissel works to not only stay this execution but to rescue Kamila from her kidnappers. He succeeds in staying the execution, and over time, learns that the person he believed to be him was actually a man by the name of Yomiel, a ghost who has the ability to manipulate people.

   Sissel works with Missile, Lynne, and Jowd to rescue Kamila, the lot of them going onto the submarine where Yomiel and the antagonists that Yomiel was working with to kill Lynne and Jowd. However, when Sissel enters, he learns that the antagonists had betrayed Yomiel by stealing a meteorite fragment from his body, which was responsible not only for Yomiel's body's ability to not die, but also for Sissel and Missile's ghost powers. In order to save Jowd, Lynne, and Kamila from a sinking submarine, Sissel, Missile, and Yomiel, who helped the lot of them due to the betrayal, travel back to the event of 10 years ago in order to avert Yomiel's death, which was caused by a meteorite fragment piercing his body while he was holding up Lynne after escaping from a police questioning room. The three of them, using their powers, prevent these events, with Yomiel possessing himself to protect Lynne and being arrested instead of being killed. After this point, Yomiel reveals to Sissel that Sissel is actually the ghost of a cat who he found at the scene of his death and took care of for 10 years; however, in the process of getting his revenge on those involved in the event of 10 years ago, he inadvertently got Sissel killed shortly before the events of the game. This successfully undoes the events of Ghost Trick, and Sissel becomes Jowd and Kamila's pet cat; however, he retains his abilities.

   Lynne:

   Lynne is a female detective who serves as the sidekick to protagonist Sissel. She also acts as the caregiver to Kamila and the owner to Missile, a Pomeranian. Starting with her death near the beginning of the game, she is later noted for the numerous deaths incurred. She is targeted by multiple assassins sent by an unknown foreign country, and consistently gets in trouble, either from being suspected of murder or dying several times throughout the game. In the beginning, she and Sissel form a pact together of "using each other"; Sissel to recover his lost memories, and Lynne to solve a mystery from 10 years ago. She eventually beseeches Sissel to halt the execution of Jowd, a detective who was involved in this event from 10 years ago. It is later revealed that she was involved in the incident of 10 years ago as a hostage to a man who held her at gunpoint after escaping from a police questioning room and pursued by Jowd. During the investigation, Sissel and Lynne learn that Lynne was the one who killed Sissel, though neither recollects this. However, they learn that she was manipulated into this by the ghost of the man from 10 years ago seeking revenge on everyone involved. This man named Yomiel, while he, Sissel, and Missile travel 10 years in the past, eventually saves her and helps to undo the events of 10 years ago, as well as the events of the game.

   Ray:

   Ray, also calling himself "ray of light", is a ghost who helps protagonist Sissel in the beginning to recover his memory by convincing him to save a girl named Lynne, who dies in the beginning of the game, similar to Sissel. He teaches him how to use his powers, and informs him that he has only until dawn before his spirit will cease to exist, preventing him from recovering his memories. While he is not directly involved in the plot throughout the game, he appears at the end and reveals himself to Sissel to be the spirit of the dog Missile, though aged 10 years. He reveals that he, like Sissel, attempted to undo the events of 10 years ago; however, his limited powers made him unable to undo these events. As such, he waited 10 years to find someone who could possibly do what he failed to do. While Sissel initially declined Ray's offer to help him out due to focusing on recovering his memories, Ray decided to lie about Sissel's spirit disappearing by dawn and telling him that Lynne holds the secret to his memories to make him act with more urgency.

   Kamila:

   Kamila is a young girl who is taken care of by Lynne, and who is often in the company of Missile. She initially enters the game when protagonist Sissel finds his way to her house to find her tied up, Missile dead, and an assassin waiting for Lynne; he works to revive Missile and hide the both of them to ensure that this does not happen. She is tasked by Lynne to bring a music box to her, but is mistakenly kidnapped by one of the game's antagonists to ensure the execution of Detective Jowd, her father, takes place. During these events, Missile dies yet again, though he gains special powers that allow him to swap objects, which he uses to protect people from dying, specifically Kamila and Lynne. Players learn that Kamila seemingly created a "murder machine" on her mother Alma's birthday: a Rube Goldberg machine originally intended to light a party popper was later modified by Yomiel to light an old-fashioned gun which shoots and kills Alma as part of his revenge plot; Kamila's father Jowd takes the blame to protect her. Sissel, Lynne, Jowd, and Missile all make their way to a submarine where Kamila is being held captive; there, Yomiel possesses Kamila and tries to kill Lynne to finish his revenge. However, he fails, and eventually Sissel, Missile, and Yomiel go back to the past to undo the events of 10 years ago, causing the events of the game to become undone—meaning her mother Alma comes back to life.

   Missile:

   Missile is a Pomeranian who is first found by Sissel having been shot and killed in the process of planning to kill his owner, Lynne. However, he is revived by Sissel, who has the ability to avert peoples' deaths; after the killer leaves without killing him, he follows his other owner, Kamila, with the desire to protect her. In the process, however, he is inadvertently killed by a kidnapper who hits him with his motorized scooter. However, unlike before, Missile is granted with his own special ability to swap objects of similar shape. He and Sissel work together to use their powers, but instead of being revived again, Missile chooses to stay a ghost, wanting to use his powers to better protect Lynne and Kamila. However, he is blown away in the wind while possessing a leaf, and disappears until reappearing and reuniting with Sissel near the scene of a killing by a ghost named Yomiel. Missile and Sissel, at this point, begin working together to rescue the kidnapped Kamila. The two of them, along with Jowd and Lynne, go onto a submarine, where Yomiel and the antagonists are located. He and Sissel work to save Lynne and Kamila from a sinking submarine, and are aided by Yomiel in this task, who was recently betrayed by the other antagonists. He, Sissel, and Yomiel go back to an event from 10 years ago to save everyone, where Yomiel held a young Lynne hostage after escaping from a police questioning room. They work together to avert this event, which led to not only Yomiel's powers, but Sissel and Missile's as well.

   After averting the fates of the people in these events, the events of Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective are undone as well. Eventually, Sissel learns that a character named Ray who taught Sissel about his powers in the beginning was actually Missile from an alternate timeline; in it, he was murdered by one of the assassins in the company of Yomiel, giving him ghost powers due to his proximity to the meteorite fragment. He attempts to enlist Sissel's help, but Sissel shows no interest, apologizing and leaving to find his memories. He goes through similar steps to rescue everyone like had been done by Sissel, but without Sissel and Yomiel's abilities, he becomes trapped in the event of 10 years ago, and waits until time goes back to where it was in the beginning of the game. At this point, he tricks Sissel into helping him by telling him that Lynne is the key to his memories, and that he has only until dawn before he ceases to exist, in order to get Sissel to help save Lynne and Kamila.

   Justice Minister:

   The justice minister is a man of power who is central to Detective Jowd's fate and execution. He is seen in-game as an extremely nervous person, to the point where he goes into incredible panic attacks. This is contributed to by his wife by the name of Emma, who left him with his daughter, Amelie, who is beside herself toward her mother because of this. Because she refuses to answer his phone calls at some point, when he learns that his daughter was apparently kidnapped to force him to not stay the execution of Jowd, he is unabled to check up on her, though it is revealed that it was Jowd's daughter Kamila, not his, who was kidnapped; players also learn that his wife left him over his decision to not stay the execution. Due to the stress of the apparent kidnapping, the justice minister dies of a heart attack, though this is reversed by Sissel. It is learned that he only signed the execution order when controlled by a ghost named Yomiel into doing so; this resulted in him becoming paranoid about being possessed, making him nervous and standoffish to anyone who approaches him. He eventually halted Jowd's execution.

   Cabanela:

   Cabanela is a detective working in the Special Investigation Unit, acting as the group's top investigator. He is noted for frequently dancing in nearly any situation, and is respected by his subordinates. While Jowd was responsible for looking after Lynne, Cabanela takes over once he was arrested for the murder of his wife. At this point, his goal becomes attempting to get further in his career, with the intention of gaining enough power to aide him in his investigation of Jowd's wife's murder, believing a man called the "manipulator" to be responsible. He investigates this alongside a man identified as the "pigeon man", a former medical examiner who quit to investigate the case full-time. He attempts to help Jowd, but only through legal means, forcing him to return him to prison after Sissel helped him escape. Sissel, to Cabanela's relief, has Jowd's execution stayed. However, he later calls the justice minister and demands that Jowd be executed once the manipulator gains access to him and forces him to do so; afterward, he kills Cabanela, though Cabanela is revived by Sissel after saving both the pigeon man and Cabanela by tricking the manipulator into thinking that they were dead.

   Pigeon Man:

   The pigeon man is a superintendent who was a former medical examiner for the police department. He is an old bespectacled man with green hair and a blue pigeon who typically rides atop his head. After Jowd's wife was killed and Jowd accused of murder, he quit his job and became a superintendent of a junkyard so that he could focus on Jowd's wife's death full-time with Cabanela, specifically to discover the source of the powers of a ghost who has been manipulating people into doing things, believing in particular that this manipulator was involved in the death of Jowd's wife. As part of his research, he constructed a murder machine similar to the one that killed Jowd's wife. He and Cabanela later encounter the manipulator controlling a corpse, and though he is killed, the death of both him and later Cabanela by the manipulator's hands was undone by Sissel, who manipulated the situation so that the manipulator would believe that he had succeeded in killing them.

   Jowd:

   Jowd is a detective who was charged with murder and sentenced to death by his own request. Lynne asks Sissel to check up on him, only to learn that he is to be executed the next day. He had apparently shot and killed his wife, and was seen painting an apparent portrait of Sissel. He was involved in the incident of 10 years ago, particularly saving Lynne from an escaped suspect who held her at gunpoint, but apparently was killed by Jowd, though it is later discovered that a meteorite fragment had killed him instead. While he was executed, his death was undone by Sissel. At this point, Sissel helps Jowd escape from prison to prevent another attempted execution, though he was apprehended by his friend Cabanela, though it is eventually discovered that Cabanela trusted him, and was merely trying to save Jowd "by the books" by bringing him to the justice minister to hopefully prevent his execution. However, it turns out that his daughter, Kamila, was mistakenly kidnapped instead of the justice minister's daughter Amelie in order to force the execution to happen. His execution is eventually stayed, and Jowd, Sissel, and Lynne go to save his daughter on a submarine. However, Jowd is killed, and forces Sissel, Missile, and Yomiel to go to 10 years in the past. In the process, they learn that a present for his wife by his daughter was manipulated so that instead of causing a party popper to go off, it would cause a gun to fire and kill her, as revenge for what Jowd did. After they undid the events of 10 years ago, this undoes everything that happened in the game, allowing Jowd to have a normal life with his wife and daughter.

   Yomiel:

   Yomiel is the ghost of a man who died in an event 10 years ago. While his identity is unknown for a large portion of the game, it is eventually revealed that he is the ghost of the corpse that protagonist Sissel believed to be his. He is first seen controlling the corpse, killing both Cabanela and the pigeon man, as well as manipulating people in an attempt to kill everyone involved in the Temsik meteor crash or otherwise ruin their lives. It is eventually learned that a meteor fragment was what killed him, though the energy from it gave him special abilities, as well as make his corpse impervious to any pain or damage. It is also learned that anyone who dies near any of the meteor will gain similar powers. Among his crimes, he attempted to get Lynne arrested by manipulating her into shooting him, shortly before the events of the game; due to strong will, she is able to resist and misses, but the second shot hits. Another significant crime is the murder of Detective Jowd's wife by means of a complex device created by Jowd's daughter Kamila that normally sets off a party popper, but instead, lights an antique gun that kills Jowd's wife.

   He collaborates with the antagonists to get his revenge, but is betrayed when they steal his meteorite fragment, taking his abilities. At this point, he helps protect Lynne and Kamila while the submarine sinks, and to try to save Jowd who was killed on the submarine, goes back to 10 years ago with Sissel and Missile. This event has him holding up a young Lynne after escaping from a police questioning room in a park; through manipulation, the three of them work together to not only prevent the meteorite fragment from hitting Yomiel, but also having Yomiel possess his past self and become injured to save Lynne. It is learned that he was a top systems engineer, and is arrested under suspicion of being a spy, and that his revenge was due to his fiancée killing herself after he died. In the process, he reveals to Sissel that Sissel was the ghost of a cat that he found at that scene, and that he took care of for the 10 years following. He was intending to leave the country with Sissel; after Lynne shoots him, he possesses Sissel to flee the scene. However, he eventually learns that Lynne's abovementioned misfire had killed Sissel. After the events of 10 years ago were undone, this caused the events of Ghost Trick to be undone as well, and in the new future, Yomiel had spent 10 years in prison before he was finally released.

   Antagonists:

   Ghost Trick's primary antagonists encompass several assassins and other underhanded people working for an unstated foreign country who are identified by their blue skin. Players first see a member of this organization by the name of "Near-Sighted Jeego", a man who has good aim when at close range, trying to kill Lynne, the sidekick to the protagonist, but is killed. Players later encounter Sith, a regal old man who is behind this attempted assassination, as well as his robotic servant, who has a very large build. Players again encounter an assassin by the name of "One Step Ahead" Tengo, a rival to Jeego. He attempts to kill Lynne, but is thwarted and killed in a similar fashion to Jeego. Players also encounter a foreign agent posing as a doctor, who attempts to steal a corpse from a crime scene, but is found out by police inspector Cabanela. Finally, players encounter an apparent couple: a short, apologetic man named Dandy and a tall, domineering woman named Beauty, who kidnap Kamila, another important character to the story.

5. #5Development

   Ghost Trick was developed over the course of six years by a team of 20, headed by Ace Attorney director Shu Takumi. Shortly after the Game Boy Advance release of Trials and Tribulations in 2004, Takumi stepped away from Ace Attorney to create a "new type of mystery" without the restrictions of the series' conventions. He drafted a rough storyline for the project—codenamed Mansion—centered around an ensemble cast of strangers. His priorities were shifted back to Ace Attorney later that year, split between porting the series to the Nintendo DS (DS), writing a fifth episode for the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney DS port, and supervising development of Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney. In October 2007, following the release of the Trials and Tribulations DS port in Japan, the project became Takumi's sole focus. He rewrote his original draft, dividing the story into chapters to make it easier to understand, and full-scale development began.

   Takumi's initial design document was written for a "different portable console" capable of 3D visuals at the suggestion of Capcom, but was adapted for 2D graphics when development shifted to the DS. The game was tentatively titled Ghost Spy during pre-production, and tasked players with observing the behavior of mysterious apartment tenants from the perspective of a disembodied spirit. The game's Ghost mechanic was inspired by ideas Takumi could not fully explore with Ace Attorney's episodic format; namely, delving deeper into the personal lives of the game's cast. According to Takumi, forming meaningful connections with over 30 characters in a single night would prove "very hard ... [for] a character who is alive", and that the "best way is to have a ghost." As development progressed, the spy narrative was scrapped in favor of an amnesiac murder victim in search of answers, placing further emphasis on communication and interaction rather than observation. The title was eventually changed to Ghost Trick as a pun on toritsuku (取り付く), meaning "to possess", and the Japanese pronunciation of the English word "trick", or torikku (トリック).

6. #6Art and Game Design

   Ghost Trick's unique art direction resulted from Takumi's desire to create something that "looked more like an illustration than a game." The team prioritized bold colors, hard shadows, and distinct silhouettes to help character portraits and backgrounds stand out on the small screens of the DS. Characters were also modeled in 3D to populate environments, paired with dynamic animations to evoke the drama of a stage play. Exaggerated poses, deliberate choreography, and fluid motion were used to express the characters' individuality through movement, and to "[lend] an action element" that was not possible with the Ace Attorney series. Takumi insisted that characters be animated by hand, as he felt the use of motion capture would detract from their nuance and appeal. The team's first test sample—a short loop of Missile running around while Kamila snacked on a doughnut—convinced him that the process would be worth the effort.

   Due to technical limitations, however, the team had trouble rendering the 3D character models properly on the DS hardware. At the suggestion of Toshihiko Honda—the game's lead programmer—pre-rendering techniques popularized by video games like Donkey Kong Country were used to rasterize the models into 2D sprites, preserving the quality of the animation while greatly reducing system load. The game's spotlight animation was also the result of hardware constraints. Takumi found that shifting from 3D development on Resident Evil and Dino Crisis to 2D development on Ace Attorney and Ghost Trick significantly limited the practicality of using in-game cameras to direct players' attention. This restriction, paired with Ghost Trick's theatrical design language, led to the creation of what Takumi called the "mysterious light" effect, placing emphasis on whichever character or object was pertinent to a given scene.

   The original Ace Attorney trilogy was developed for Japanese audiences, and proved notoriously difficult for Capcom to localize for the West. According to Janet Hsu, the game's English editor, the team "knew [Ghost Trick] was going to be localized and ... took that into consideration" during development. Artists completely avoided using written language on buildings, objects, clothing, and other in-game assets. Character and location designs were also kept as culturally and chronologically ambiguous as possible. Apart from easing the localization process, this also gave what Takumi called a "fairytale-like" quality to the game's world.[28] However, much like Ace Attorney, certain characters' names are Japanese puns, specifically relating to concepts of life and death: Lynne's name is derived from rinne (輪廻), Jeego's from jigoku (地獄), and Cabanela's from shikabane (しかばね), for example.

   Lynne and Kamila's living room was the first location created after development began, and served as a prototype for balancing difficulty and establishing the rules of the game's puzzles.Producer Hironobu Takeshita was often asked to playtest the game for the team, due to his relative unfamiliarity with puzzle games. To accommodate for a variety of skill levels, a passive hint system was implemented. Those who felt stumped had the option to read additional dialogue in the form of interactable thought bubbles, while experienced players could choose to ignore them. To aid in puzzle construction, the development team would reference a "foreign book" speculated to be Baby Einstein's Wordsworth's Book of Words. According to an interview with Joystiq, the book contained images of everyday objects paired with names and descriptions, and "whatever caught [Takumi's] eye" would become part of a puzzle.

7. #7Music and Sound Design

   According to an interview with Gamasutra, the game's sound effects were written directly into the script. Takumi would leave notes at key story beats—detailing when and where to use sound effects—for programmers to reference at later stages in development. Yasumasa Kitagawa, who would go on to rearrange the soundtrack for the 2023 Ghost Trick remaster, assisted Takumi but ultimately went uncredited.

   The game's soundtrack was written by Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney composer Masakazu Sugimori. Takumi personally requested that Sugimori return, praising his "ability to create an original world" through music. Due to Takumi's hiatus from the project in late 2004, Sugimori was able to compose much of the game's score before development officially started. When full-scale production began in October 2007, he had already left Capcom to found Design Wave—a Tokyo-based music studio—but resumed work on the game as a contractor. Sugimori lists jazz and fusion as inspirations for the soundtrack, and wrote the game's title theme after seeing concept artwork of the Zone D Waste Center location. He was also heavily influenced by an untitled oil painting he owned of a black and blue night sky.

   Ghost Trick Original Sound Track, a CD set of the game's soundtrack, was released under the Suleputer label on June 19, 2010 in a limited edition bundle via e-Capcom. It was later distributed digitally through iTunes to celebrate the game's third anniversary on June 19, 2013. In August 2015, Capcom released an artbook bundle, including a compilation album of the game's most popular tracks and an original song written and composed by Takumi titled "I Am Missile" (ボクはミサイル, Boku wa Misairu).

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