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With the genre listed as “center scramble death game adventure,” you should expect a pretty high body-count, no matter how cute the characters are.

As a given piece of video gaming hardware gets older, it’s often the case that more niche titles get published for it. With the PlayStation Vita now in its sixth year of existence, there’s a steady flow of anime-style romance and idol-rearing games for the Sony handheld, but how do you make your company’s title stand out from its many competitors that also star doe-eyed, earnest young girls in frilly costumes?

If you’re developer Witchcraft, you add a generous dash of violence. Publisher D3 has announced it will be releasing Witchcraft’s latest game, Idol Death Game TV. Handling the all-important character designs is illustrator Metawo Ueda, whose work has previously been seen in mobile game Sunaarashi no Shingekisen and adult title Black Dark. Shojiro Endo, scriptwriter for Liberation Maiden Sin, fills a dual role as writer and director on the project.

Currently, Idol Death Game TV has only a teaser site with the most basic of details, but the game is centered on a multi-vocalist idol unit whose members compete to become the “center,” as the Japanese music industry calls the singer who gets the most attention and is featured most prominently in ads and promotions. But while the winner of Idol Death Game TV get the glory and admiration of fans, the losers apparently end up dead.

Japan has a long tradition of making anime and choose-you-own-adventure-style visual novel video games based on such life-or-death contests, often with the lives of teenagers hanging in the balance. Mixing such calculated cruelty with perky idols is less common, though, and given some of the shocking instances of violence perpetrated on real-life idols in recent years, one could make the argument that Witchcraft’s upcoming dark fantasy is in poor taste. Whether or not Idol Death Game TV can find an accepting customer base is something we’ll have to wait until its release on October 20 to find out.

Related: Idol Death Game TV website
Source: Dengeki Online via Kinisoku
Top image: D3

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