Introduction

”Welcome, one and all, to the Zodiac Race. Or rather, the Zodiac Trial.

You all live your lives with the awareness of animals. You go about, day to day, without a care in the world. Peacefully moving onwards, never stopping back to reflect or apologize for your sins.

You all deserve a chance to be punished. You all must be tried. So this is what we're doing today. A Zodiac Trial...”


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The Zodiac Trial is a visual novel game created and released by a developer going by the name of Themis. Originally a mystery story, the creator decided to convert their already written story into a visual novel, changing the plot considerably to better suit the new format. It released originally in January 2021, and is the first game in the 'Shuffled Deck Collection'. It tells the tale of twelve people who wake to find themselves in an unfamiliar school, with unfamiliar collars around their necks, and an unfamiliar masked man telling them that they'll have to play a game if they want to survive... stop me if you've heard this one before.

Like most VNs in this genre, The Zodiac Trial has a branching network of routes and many, many different endings to find- over 50 (!!!) to be exact. There was thread participation when it came to making big decisions, both in terms of what paths we headed down and the important decisions that arose along the route. This LP covers every ending in the game- upon reaching the best ending for a path, if we had managed to avoid any bad endings along the way, the post route bonus update would be where those were shown off, before we moved to the next. There is also some additional bonus content upon completing the game that the LP covered, though I won't say what it entails in this intro post as it could be considered spoilers (for that purpose, probably best to not scroll all the way through the Table of Contents, either ).

If you want to purchase the game for yourself and support the creator, the Steam page can be found here! (Warning: page may contain spoilers!)