Serial Experiments Lain (video game)

Serial Experiments Lain is a video game release in November 26, 1998 with the same name as the anime for the PlayStation.

It was designed by Chiaki J. Konaka and Yasuyuki Ueda, and made to be a "network simulator" in which the player would navigate to explore Lain's story.

A guidebook to the game called Serial Experiments Lain Official Guide was released the same month by MediaWorks.

Development
On November 26, 1998, Pioneer LDC released a video game with the same name as the anime for the PlayStation. It was designed by Konaka and Yasuyuki, and made to be a "network simulator" in which the player would navigate to explore Lain's story. The creators themselves did not call it a game, but "Psycho-Stretch-Ware". The aim of the authors was to let the player get the feeling that there are myriads of information that they would have to sort through, and that they would have to do with less than what exists to understand. As with the anime, the creative team's main goal was to let the player "feel" Lain, and "to understand her problems, and to love her".

Gameplay
The gameplay is close the visual novel. The player is limited to unlocking pieces of information, and then reading/viewing/listening to them, with little or no puzzle needed to unlock. Lain distances itself even more from classical games by the random order in which information is collected.