page_title: The Silver Case
section_title: Development
hierarchical_section_title: The Silver Case / Development
caption_attribution_description: English: Goichi Suda at a London interview in 2008. Français&#160;: Goichi Suda lors d'un entretien à Londres en 2008.
context_page_description: The Silver Case is an adventure visual novel video game developed by Grasshopper Manufacture and published by ASCII Entertainment for the PlayStation in 1999. It was directed, designed and co-written by Goichi Suda. A remastered version was released digitally by Grasshopper Manufacture worldwide for Windows and macOS in 2016, while a port, a physical release, for the PlayStation 4 was released by NIS America in 2017; a Japanese release of the PlayStation 4 version was released in March 2018 by Nippon Ichi Software. A Linux port was released in August 2017. A port for the Nintendo DS was also in development, but never released due to Suda's dissatisfaction with the final product.
  The setting is contemporary Japan, and takes place in a universe which would be used by Suda in later works. Within a city called the 24 Districts, a series of bizarre murders occurs, prompting the 24 Districts Police Department to send two detectives from their Heinous Crimes Unit to solve the case. The killings are soon linked to Kamui Uehara, a notorious serial killer who supposedly died several years before.
context_section_description: The Silver Case was the debut title of Grasshopper Manufacture, a then-independent company formed in 1998 by video game developer Goichi Suda after leaving Human Entertainment following the completion of Moonlight Syndrome, a spin-off from Human's Twilight Syndrome series. The Silver Case, and consequently Grasshopper Manufacture, was born from Suda's wish to create something original, having only worked on pre-existing projects for Human. While the development team was independent, the production itself was supported by the game's publisher ASCII Entertainment, who had initially suggested a collaboration with Suda when he left Human, and whom Suda had approached with the concept for The Silver Case following the formation of Grasshopper Manufacture. When the genre had been selected, Suda's main challenge was to create something different from any other game in the genre. During development, the team was faced with severe financial restrictions, which further exasperated the problems caused by a small staff as they could not produce all the art assets normally needed for such a game. To compensate, Suda created what he termed the "film window engine": illustrations and text were relegated to dedicated windows. This allowed development to continue. Story sequences were also communicated through 3D CGI and inserted live-action and anime sequences.
  It was developed for the PlayStation with a five-person team, who created the basic core of the game. During the last six months of development, the team expanded to include ten people. Suda acted as both director and designer in addition to other duties, partially due to the constricted nature of development. The character designs were done by Takashi Miyamoto, who would go on to work on Grasshopper Manufacture's following title Flower, Sun, and Rain. His design was influenced by a large range of media, from books to films and television: many of those he used for influence for The Silver Case crossed over with Suda's own tastes. His drawing style was meant to be realistic, rather than in line with typical manga illustrations of the time.
  When designing the characters, both Suda and Miyamoto had creative input: Suda would explain the characters to Miyamoto and show him fashion magazines to demonstrate the style of clothing he wanted each character to have, then Miyamoto would create his own vision and make his own choices about clothing. The two would then agree on a middle ground and Miyamoto would then create the character illustrations. His dark artistic style was a conscious emulation of film noir. He incorporated general visual references to multiple films including Metropolis, Gattaca, Heat, and Seven. While it was set in the then-present day of 1999, it incorporated futuristic concepts drawn from the works of William Gibson. Suda told him to design characters Morikawa and Kotobuki to be like characters from the television series Taiyō ni Hoero!. The music was composed by Masafumi Takada, who would go on to work extensively in the video game industry and contribute to future games developed by Grasshopper Manufacture. One of the major parts of the score was the main theme, which was used as a leitmotif throughout The Silver Case. He used the main theme, in addition to other dedicated character motifs, to create remixes and tunes that highlighted important parts of the game.
  The game's two scenarios were handled by different writers: Suda wrote the "Transmitter" scenario, while the "Placebo" scenario was written by Masahi Ooka and Sako Kato. Suda's focus on the activities of a serial killer was in reaction to government censorship on general media following the Kobe child murders and its resultant controversy. To avoid trouble with the censors, Suda did not feature death from decapitation, in addition to focusing on the investigators rather than the murderer. According to Suda, before writing the scenario, the team created the setting and the social structure, with the main crime as the central event: rather than focusing on a particular character, the game instead looked a
caption: Goichi Suda, who would come to be known as Suda51, directed, designed and co-wrote The Silver Case. The story's themes would appear in Suda's later works.[1][8][9]
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