Key in 2020 Roadmap

Contents
- Steam Releases
- Heaven Burns Red
- Planetarian Snow Globe OVA
- Summer Pockets Reflection Blue
- Kud Wafter OVA
- Unknowns

Steam Releases: There’s two releases on the horizon. Summer Pockets is being held up by Key and Valve apparently disagreeing on the game’s rating, but should be good for release when that is sorted out. I believe we have not heard anything regarding price or trading cards or such, but we’ll see what happens.
Rewrite was successfully crowdfunded back in November, and Sekai Project will be putting those resources to use. The game is estimated to release in November 2020. This will be the Rewrite+ version which features a handful of changes to the script, but also a number of quality-of-life additions. If you participated in the crowdfund, I hope you’ve filled out your surveys. You can find all known details on the project or join the “slacker backer” on the Kickstarter page.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sekaiproject/digital-and-physical-release-of-keys-rewrite

Heaven Burns Red: So this is an RPG in development for IOS/Android devices. It’s looking like a pretty important project as a collaboration between Key and WFS. The main story is handled by Maeda Jun, and the game is being pushed as Maeda’s “first original game in 13 years”(It’s counting from the release of Little Busters! in 2007.) It seems the game’s characters will have original designs by Visual Art artists that are then adapted for the game by experienced mobile game artists; the only one credited so far is Yuugen. Maeda is also making a series of vocal songs for the game that will be performed by Yanagi Nagi. These songs will be showcased on the game’s homepage one at a time with a new one every month until release. Maeda has said that he’s prepared over 10 songs, so it looks like the game will come out towards the end of the year. It’s been announced that there will be a promotional event for the game on Feb 28. Tickets were available at C97, but a general sale and more details about the event should come soon. So far we know that Maeda, Baba, and Yuugen will be at the event. Finally, the official site does feature information in multiple languages, but it hasn’t been confirmed if the game will receive a global release.
https://heaven-burns-red.com/en/

Planetarian Snow Globe OVA: This project was announced with a crowdfunding campaign which is still going on until Jan 24. Snow Globe is a prequel story to the kinetic novel and addresses Yumemi’s days spent working at the planetarium and her relationship with her co-workers. The original plan for the OVA was 25 minutes, but with the crowdfund currently being at about 170%, it has gotten extended runtime as well as extra music and stuff. We’ll see what the final product will end up being in about two weeks. After the Japanese campaign is finished, I wouldn’t be surprised if we got a crowdfund for a western release similar to what happened with Kud Wafter 2 years back.
https://camp-fire.jp/projects/view/202824

Summer Pockets Reflection Blue: An expanded version of the original game with tons of new content. If we compare it to Little Busters!, it would be like Memorial Edition or Perfect Edition compared to the original 2007 release. Reflection Blue is estimated to release in summer 2020, and the following changes have been mentioned so far:
- One new character named Kamiyama Shiki. She’s depicted as a younger girl with vibrant red hair. She is designed by Humuyun who also handled Nomura Miki and Misaki Kyoko’s designs. She says she’s never been to the island before and is there to search for some ogre/demon from local myths. She for some reason manages to find her way to obscure places not even most locals know of very well. She loves omusubi rice balls which are apparently completely different from onigiri rice balls on an “emotional” level. Shiki is partially inspired by the Summer Pockets’s Pokémon-esque mini game. The mini game has 3 attributes: Land, Sea, and Sky. Storywise, Shiroha and Ao have an affinity with the sea and sky respectively, so Shiki was made to have an affinity with the land.
- Four new routes! In addition to Shiki, we’re getting routes for older characters. Numora Miki, Mizuori Shizuku, and Kato Umi will have new routes in this version. Kai described Miki’s route as very chaotic. Shizuku’s route will apparently involve curry and a beach restaurant in some way. Umi’s route is non-romantic and will be about trying to get Umi to not be so prickly.
- The Common route will also be getting upgrades. Specifically there will be more events with groups of characters. After all, it was pretty rare for heroines to talk to anyone other than Hairi in the original game. Kai noted that this might make it more tricky to get into a character route.
- The game will feature a new main theme replacing Alka Tale and two other new vocal songs. It was confirmed that YURiKA will be performing one of these three. Kai also revealed that the heroines’ character songs will play sometime during the story. The character songs are performed by the heroines’ voice actors and were sold as part of an album called Sing; Umi also has one that released on a different album. It’s not confirmed if this means Shiki, Miki, and Shizuku also will be getting character songs, but that’s probably not too unlikely.
- The table tennis mini game will get a big upgrade in that you will be able to play 2v2 with the heroines. You’ll be able to form different teams which apparently unlocks different dialogue and team names. As an example, they showed Hairi and Ao playing against Shiroha and Tsumugi. A victory screen for Tsumugi and Shizuku was also shown.
[There’s a teaser video out on the Visual Arts Youtube. It’s at the top of my priority list to look at that, I promise. m(_)m /Helios]

Kud Wafter OVA: This OVA was originally planned for Sep 2019, but it was pushed back to Sep 2020. It was crowdfunded back in 2017 to be 40 minutes long and will have showings in cinemas. They also held a global crowdfund for giving it western localization which was successful. Animation is handled by J.C.Staff. Direction was originally handled by Yamakawa Yoshiki but it was handed off to Suzuki Kentarou when the release was pushed back.

Unknowns: Key’s 2020 teaser image has three projects that are still complete mysteries. It also has one that simply says “New Visual Novel.” That one looks vaguely post-apocalyptic, but there’s nothing else we can say. Baba released his regular start-of-the-year blog which revealed that they’re doing a KSL concert on April 29. It’s been two years since the last one since they did the orchestral concert instead in 2019. KSL 2020 will have a summer theming, and more information will be released soon.