Story

June, 1983.

The summer heat has arrived earlier than it does most years.
By day there are cicadas, and by night, the higurashi.

Hinamizawa, a small village in the Japanese countryside.
While there are fewer than two thousand people there, every year, 'something' happens.

For the past 4 years, someone has died, and someone else has gone missing.
This series of deaths and disappearances is connected to the local resistance against a now-abandoned dam construction project.
A murder during the construction, covered up by the local authorities, is being re-enacted year after year.
Is it a conspiracy? A coincidence? Or perhaps a curse?

Someone who was supposed to be there... isn't.
Someone who wasn't supposed to be there... is.

Someone who was alive last night is now dead, and someone who is here right now isn't alive.

There is no way to avert this tragedy. There is no choice but to give up trying.

But even so... please don't give up.

Gameplay

Higurashi When They Cry is a sound novel. The music, backgrounds and characters work together to create a world that is the stage of a novel for the user to read. They laugh and cry and get angry. The user takes the point of view of the protagonist to experience the story.