ABYSS -Murder Club- ‘Kotoko Route’ [Festival]

Editorial Review

★3.7 / 5 — henhenta editorial rating (our own assessment, not the DLsite official user score)

ABYSS positions itself in the grimdark visual novel space where serial killer protagonists and survival horror blend with supernatural mystery—a niche that’s seen modest activity since works like Higurashi, but rarely with this explicit focus on ritualistic predation and systematic victimization. The multiple-route structure suggests character-driven narrative branches rather than a single canon path, which is increasingly standard for works exploring moral ambiguity through divergent perspectives.

What distinguishes this entry is its commitment to serial killer gameplay as the mechanical and thematic core. Rather than treating murder as consequence or background horror, ABYSS makes the hunt itself the recurring scenario: victims are selected arbitrarily, pursued, violated, and eliminated with ceremonial precision. The white-masked antagonist functions as both literal threat and philosophical abstraction—a being that collapses the boundary between myth (the rumor) and embodied reality. The Kotoko Route specifically expands what was distributed at Comiket 75, suggesting the developer has cultivated enough audience investment to justify iterative releases across multiple character perspectives. This modular approach to route distribution is typical of doujin productions with sustained fanbases, but indicates serious ambition in scope.

The dark and serious tags anchor this as psychological horror rather than exploitation, though the synopsis makes clear that sexual violence forms part of the ritualistic framework—a thematic choice that will either compel or repel depending on reader tolerance for sustained depictions of predation without redemptive narrative counterweight.

ABYSS appeals specifically to readers who treat visual novels as interactive spaces for exploring transgressive psychology, who value procedural horror over jump-scare mechanics, and who’re comfortable with protagonists embedded in systems of violence rather than fighting against them.

A genuinely uncompromising entry in the dark visual novel subgenre that doesn’t retreat from its premise: serial murder as game, ritual, and narrative center.