Deka☆Musu

~ the goodbye ~

Deka Musu went live on 23 October 2015 on GREE and Mobage simultaneously, which in Japan at the time meant the money moved through a carrier account rather than a card. Two platforms carrying one game, and no practical way into either of them from outside the country. Pre-registration had opened on 27 August.

The setting is a nation called Amazoness, ringed by sea, whose economy runs on perfume and expensive cosmetics. Its population is girls sent there to study from everywhere else, and without warning those students begin growing to enormous size and wrecking the place, which puts the country's existence in question. The government's answer is to send for a man called RR-18, whose stated qualification is that he has understood women completely. He goes out with a supporter named Tsukino Arute to shrink the giant girls back down and find out who is doing this to them.

In play you walked a field until fog came in, which was how the game told you one of them was near. You could push on through the fog and trigger the fight, or turn around and go back to exploring. A party of five took on a single enormous opponent, and a beaten one came back to normal height and joined you. Clear every field in an area and an executive of the organization behind the whole thing turned up as the boss.

OrtDash announced on 26 February 2016 that service would end on 28 April. Sales of paid items stopped on 28 March, a full month before the servers did, so the last stretch of the game's life was played by people it was no longer allowed to charge.

~ the chronicle ~

~ the borrowed girls ~

An original property with no catalog behind it has to rent an audience, and Deka Musu started renting almost immediately. Its first crossover ran from 30 October 2015, one week after opening, bringing in the cast of Grisaia no Kajitsu. The second ran from 10 February 2016 with Hatsu Koto Naki Mirai Yori. Both of those are Frontwing visual novels, and both of them were better known in Japan than the game borrowing them.

The second crossover closed on 24 February. The closing announcement came two days later. Whatever the collaboration was supposed to do for the numbers, it had already been decided that it had not done it.

~ six months and five days ~

From opening day to the announcement is 126 days. From the announcement to the last login is 62. Total service life, 188 days, on a title the trade press described as completely original, which was meant as praise and reads now as the diagnosis.

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