World’s End Club (NSP, XCI) ROM + v1.0.6 Update

World’s End Club is a puzzle action-adventure game developed by Too Kyo Games and Grounding and published by IzanagiGames. It was initially released as part of Apple Arcade for iOS and macOS in 2020 and for Nintendo Switch and Microsoft Windows the following year.

PLOT

In 1995, Reycho and his fellow members of the Go-Getters Club, a group of students on a field trip, survived the explosion near Tokyo. They wake up in an underwater amusement park called World’s End Land. There, a magical robot named Pielope forces them to play a “Game of Fate”, a life-or-death game of tasks. After Reycho saves his friends, Pielope attempts to start another game, but Pai renounces it on behalf of the mastermind hidden among them, before being hit by debris. After escaping the underwater amusement park with a submarine, the class arrives at Kagoshima and Pai manages to restore her memory.

They investigate all prefectures occupied by enemies and plan to return to Tokyo. But the group splits off over traveling routes to Fukuoka or Ōita with one group learning it is 1996 while the other recruits a girl named Yuki, each club member awakening their mysterious powers. They reunite in Shikoku, where they meet the Master of a cult dedicated to a powerful artificial intelligence called MAIK while being pursued by the damaged Pielope. After the incident of Kyoto and Osaka, the group meets the people at the cave and learns the existence of an Otherworld opposing MAIK and X-TYPES.

They conclude the truth Vanilla is the mastermind trying to undo MAIK’s brainwashing experiment, because the facility stored Vanilla’s body in suspended animation, with her ghost accompanying her friends. They ride on a train from Nara, but Pielope disables it, unlocking two ending scenarios. In one end, the group is captured by robots and manages to regroup at the Nagoya factory, when MAIK uses the Master. The gang escapes from the facility and the erupting Mount Fuji destroys the helicopter near the ruined Tokyo.

In another ending, the reunited group reaches Gifu and finds a magical mushroom for them to see ghosts. The ships damage Reycho, revealing him as a robot controlled by Pochi with the others leaving them behind without a second thought. Pochi reveals himself as a robot and is captured by the drones. However, the children hijack one of the ships and save Pochi. MAIK explains to the group that Nyoro’s father created it in 1991, predicting humanity had brought chaos. MAIK used nanomachines to turn humans into emotionless and subservient “sheep”, while all humans hid themselves underground.

But the Go-Getters are immune to nanomachines and possess latent abilities, with Reycho and Pochi placed among them as observers. This revealed that brainwashing was a surgical process to remove limitations while viewing various scenarios and illusions. MAIK plans for them to become humanity’s “shepherds” or it will have the nanomachines kill anyone.

The group learns Pielope is housing one of MAIK’s sub-personalities while learning Vanilla, whose ability is astral projection, is still alive and located near the supercomputer at the park’s HEAVEN facility. After the player collects clues from all timelines, Pochi is revealed to be an X-TYPE communicating with the Otherworld. After saving Vanilla, they plan to destroy MAIK’s core.

The Master reveals that Yuki would be erased upon its demise. Reycho, rebuilt by MAIK as a defense mechanism, attacks his friends, but their group’s song causes him to be self-aware and disable the core barrier. Yuki is revealed to be MAIK’s other sub-personality, directly being connected to the core. To overwrite MAIK’s main personality and save Yuki, Pochi, and Vanilla hack into the system, while the former directly uploads into the mainframe to stop MAIK. The group uses an administrator account to override the commands and Pochi destroys MAIK with a code intact. They reunite with Reycho and restore humanity.