Infinity (series)

Main games

The series consists of five video games. In Japan, the series has been published by KID, Success, and Cyberfront. In North America, the second game was localized and published by Hirameki International; this is the only game in the series to have been released in English.

Other media

Other media based on the series has been made. Ever 17 has been adapted into a manga, and Remember 11 has received a novelization in two parts. A promotional mobile game based on Code_18 was published prior to the release of Code_18. Drama CDs based on Ever 17, Remember 11, and Code_18 have been made.

Common elements

The games are all visual novels with stories about time travel and with science fiction elements. Starting with Ever 17, the series has featured the theme of "an escape from an enclosed space"; for instance, Ever 17 has characters trapped in an underwater theme park, and Remember 11 is set both in a cabin on a mountain during a blizzard and in a facility for the rehabilitation of mentally ill criminals. This theme was abandoned with Code_18, which instead is set in a school. Also starting with Ever 17, the series has featured multiple protagonists for each game, that the player can play through the story as; this, too, was abandoned with Code_18, which features one protagonist.

The player makes progress in the games by reading their stories. At certain points, they are presented with a number of options; depending on which one they pick, the story progresses differently, leading to different endings. Some of these choices affect subtle things such as whether the player character should take another character's hand or to look them in the eyes, while some can cause the death of a character; the player aims to avoid "bad" endings in which the player character or another character dies. Several of the games in the series include an in-game glossary referred to as the "TIPS" system, which explains various terms used in the story.

Development

The first three games in the series were directed by Takumi Nakazawa, and the first four were written and planned by Kotaro Uchikoshi and composed for by Takeshi Abo. Several artists have worked on the character design for the series, including Yuu Takigawa for Ever 17 and Hidari for Remember 11. Along with Memories Off, Infinity was KID's flagship series.

Uchikoshi was unable to make heavy use of science fiction themes in Never 7, as his superiors at KID thought the game would not sell well if it did not focus on dating game elements and cute female characters, so it was made with the main focus of developing a relationship with a girl, with light science fiction elements. At release, the science fiction elements were well received by reviewers, which led to the decision to increase the science fiction focus in later games; this was done gradually, with the second game, Ever 17, having a balance between dating and science fiction, and the third game, Remember 11, entirely focusing on science fiction. According to Uchikoshi, the series' theme of "an escape from an enclosed space" was intended to embody two of humanity's instinctive and primitive desires: the unconscious desire to return to the safety of one's mother's womb and shut oneself away from the world, and the desire to escape and overcome one's current condition.

When Abo composed the games' music, he first read the stories, so that he could understand the setting and characters fully. While doing this, he wrote down his impressions of the various events and situations that occur throughout the games. The things he considered the most important were the emotional flow of the stories, and his first impressions. He described this method as taking longer than if he just were to designate various songs to different points in the game, but said that it allowed him to create music with a better relation to the worldview of the games. Because of the series' science fiction and theoretical elements, Abo composed with what he refers to as "geometric music" in mind. As he enjoyed the stories, the music he composed strongly reflected his own musical tastes.

Development of the first game began right after Memories Off was finished, which was Uchikoshi's first visual novel. Never 7 was planned as a stand-alone game, but it was decided during the development of Ever 17 to connect the two games' worlds and turn them into a series. Development of Ever 17 was finished in May 2002, at which point Nakazawa came up with ideas for Remember 11; he and Uchikoshi planned the game's plot in January 2003, initially intending for the game to be unrelated to Infinity and to be titled Parasite. When development began in May 2003, however, it was given the project name of Project Infinity 3. Production of the title was troubled by creative differences between Nakazawa and Uchikoshi, who each had their own idea for the game's ending. In addition to their disagreements, they were unable to write everything they had wanted for the game, and ended up with an ending that Uchikoshi described as only being half-finished; at the time of the game's release, they planned to finish the story in a sequel.

KID started development of a fourth game, 12Riven, and planned to release it in 2007; however, on December 1, 2006, KID filed for bankruptcy due to debts of 530 million yen; this was due to KID having continued to release games for the PlayStation 2 throughout 2006 with dwindling sales, which was thought to be due to the success of the Nintendo DS in Japan. According to Abo, the company's employees were unaware of the problems until the very day KID closed down. In 2007, the company Cyberfront acquired all of KID's assets, and announced that development of 12Riven had been resumed; it was released in 2008, with development credited to both KID and SDR Project. The fifth game, Code_18, was developed by Cyberfront; as KID no longer existed, the otome writing group Run & Gun was hired to write the game's story. Meanwhile, sound production was done by the band Milktub. The development team saw the game as a reboot of the Infinity series, and despite initially planning otherwise, moved away from the "escape from an enclosed space" theme due to concerns of the size of the game's audience. Cyberfront also developed a remake of Ever 17, in collaboration with 5pb., using 3D models for the characters rather than the 2D sprites of the original version.

Reception

In 2010, RPGFan ranked Ever 17 as the 18th best role-playing game of the 2000s; editor Neal Chandran ranked it as number 3 in his "editor's pick" portion of the same feature.

Sales

By November 2011, total sales for the series were over 200,000.

Legacy

The series has been described as a spiritual predecessor to Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, a video game that also was written by Uchikoshi, and that has the same "escape from an enclosed space" theme. Uchikoshi cited the positive reception of Never 7 and Ever 17 as what gave him the confidence to leave KID and become a freelance writer.