Nintendo has officially unveiled Emio – The Smiling Man: Famicom Detective Club, the next game in the Famicom Detective Club series.
Emio – The Smiling Man, the first new entry in the series in over 30 years, is coming to Nintendo Switch on August 29 and was teased last week with a cryptic trailer along with our first look at the titular Emio character.
Thanks to a brand-new trailer, we now know that the game will be a horror game where players must investigate a brutal death and its connection to an urban legend as a member of the Utsugi Detective Agency.
“A student has been found dead! His head was covered with a paper bag with an eerie smiling face drawn on it – much like the victims of Emio, the Smiling Man – a killer of urban legend who is said to place such a bag over his victims’ heads,” the synopsis reads.
“As an assistant private investigator, you are tasked with helping police solve this crime, which is reminiscent of a series of unsolved murders from 18 years ago. Has a serial killer returned, or is this the work of a copycat? Are these crimes inspired by the Smiling Man story, or the origin of it?”
Familiar characters from the Famicom Detective Club series will also make a return, including the protagonist from previous games, as well as Ayumi Tachibana, who will now be playable “in certain sections of the game” for the first time.
The first two games, The Missing Heir and The Girl Who Stands Behind, were released for the Famicom Disk System 30 years ago. The team behind the series are currently working on Nintendo Switch remakes for both.
Series producer and writer, Yoshio Sakamoto, also shared some insight into the creation of Emio – The Smiling Man in the latest trailer. According to the developer, while working on the remakes in 2021, he wanted to expand the series with a brand-new game.
Sakamoto explained that the urban legend was a culmination of everything he and his colleagues learned and the ideas they’ve accumulated from working on the previous games and their remakes.
“It’s the result of a lot of deep creative conversations and work with the intention to go all out on the screenplay and animations,” Sakamoto said. “I’m confident in saying that this is the Famicom Detective Club series at its best.”