【Alchemy】 Let's fulfill the taboo alchemy of a father who lost his daughter. My Lovely Daughter Reborn, with numerous further brush-up elements added toward the packaged version, decided to go on sale!

What if when you woke up, there was the cold body of your beloved daughter in front of your eyes? And if you knew that using forbidden alchemy might bring her back, what would you do? “My Lovely Daughter Reborn” is an alchemy simulation adventure thrusting such an overly heavy question at the player. The protagonist is Faust, an alchemist who lost his memory and is also a single father. Waiting for him who awoke in solitude was the unbearable reality of his daughter's death. Rather than accepting sadness, from advancing into the realm that must never be crossed—resurrecting the dead through alchemy—a dark and strange story begins to move.

Hearing “resurrecting the dead,” you might imagine a game gathering necessary materials and making experiments succeed. However, this work is not such a simple story. Faust creates “homunculi,” life created through alchemy, one after another to restore his daughter's soul. They are not mere experimental materials, but existences holding different personalities and characteristics respectively. The player raises them just like real daughters, spends time, and builds bonds little by little. What is troublesome here is the point that “raising with care” and “advancing experiments” never face the same direction. By the time affection springs up, the decision waiting beyond becomes even heavier. Precisely this contradiction is likely the horror of this work.

To take back his daughter, the souls of the homunculi become necessary, pressing the choice to sacrifice them whom you raised. What's more, because alchemy costs money, you must make homunculi work to earn funds and maintain research. In other words, while being a creator of life and a raising father, the player also becomes one utilizing that life for achieving goals. “If it is love for the lost daughter, is any act forgiven?” The more you advance the game, this question slowly takes effect. With a game system leaving a completely different type of aftertaste from defeating enemies, it is a feature that the simulation part itself is tied to the cruelty of the story.

You must not forget that Faust himself has lost his memory. Why did his daughter die? Why am I placed in this situation? While repeating experiments, lost memories gradually connect, clarifying the background of the tragedy. As a player, you were supposed to be pursuing the goal “I want to resurrect my daughter,” but the more you know the story, you might come to want to doubt that goal itself. Furthermore, because multi-endings are adopted, reaching the conclusion once does not necessarily mean being able to understand everything. There are secrets unlocked by playthroughs and letter collection elements as well, holding the fun of approaching the full picture of the world while picking up fragmentary information.

Reborn as “Reborn” from “My Lovely Daughter,” attention in this work also goes to newly drawn artwork. Unique graphics based on gothic fantasy strongly impress unrest, solitude, and madness rather than glamour. Furthermore, by adding heavy gothic-style soundtracks, Faust's despair and the strangeness of alchemy experiments can be felt more densely. Rather than merely showing scary things to surprise, it is a worldview as if slowly tightening the mind by combining art, sound, and story.

What is interesting in this work is the point that it does not make the player a simple hero. Looking only at the father's wish to save his beloved daughter, that feeling would be understandable. However, to fulfill that wish, creating another life, pouring affection, and yet demanding sacrifice at the last. Can that really be called “love”? “My Lovely Daughter Reborn” does not prepare that answer easily. Precisely because of that, hesitation is born in each choice. Not to mention people who like dark fantasy, for people seeking a work where even after reading through the story they keep thinking “Was that choice really correct?”, it seems it will become a single title leaving an intense impression.