Serial Experiments Lain (video game)

Serial Experiments Lain is a video game release for the PlayStation in November 26, 1998 two months after the last episode of anime.

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 to 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.

The player can still follow a story as each information is in a chronological order (despite being available in a random order). For example, the player can read Touko's dairy (named Tda in the game) by following this order: Tda001, Tda002,... but the player may have access to Tda028 first since that's the closest to where you start from at the beginning of the game.

At the beginning of the game, the player can select files by moving Lain around the select menu. The select menu, called Site (there are two sites: A & B), has 22 levels that can be accessed by moving Lain up and down with each floor having one to nine parts accessible by moving to the right or the left.

Files are floating around each floor. You can separate each files in category:
 * Media:
 * Touko's diary (Tda): Touko's personal thoughts.
 * Lain's diary (Lda): Lain's personal thoughts.
 * Diagnosis (Dia): Lain's diagnosis after their interactions, provided by Touko.
 * Counseling (Cou): Lain and Touko's interactions.
 * TaK: Random quotes by Lain.
 * Dc: Videos.


 * Collectibles (P2)


 * Upgrades:
 * Mr. Recovery (SSKn): An "upgrade requirement" to unlock some media.
 * GaTE: A "gate pass" to unlock Site B

Sometimes, when you try to open a files, Lain will fall over and won't be able to open it, it means that the files is locked and need a Mr. Recovery upgrade to unlock it.

Collecting all the Collectible (P2) will give you access to two extra idle media files.

Fan Translation

 * Access to the fan translation at 3d.laingame.net

As the videogame has never been officially translated, a team of fans has recreated the entire game in English and made it playable entirely in a web browser. The translation was released at the end of May 2021.

The project was titled lainTSX and was in work since July 2020. The team opted for a Webgl implementation of the game instead of hacking the PS1 game. This decision made the translation, especially the integration of the subtitles easier, and gave the opportunity to smooth the gameplay and the animation using a better framerate and overall timing.