Rewrite (visual Novel) - Development

Development

Rewrite is Key's ninth game, and is the first of Key's visual novels to feature a 16:9 image aspect ratio instead of the previously-used 4:3 aspect ratio. Rewrite is also the first Key game to be developed on Visual Art's' game engine Siglus. The project's planning was headed by Itaru Hinoue, who is also the art director and character designer for Rewrite. During the time when Key was developing their fifth game Tomoyo After: It's a Wonderful Life in 2005, Hinoue had more free time since she was just helping Fumio with the character design, and that is when Hinoue got the initial idea for Rewrite. Hinoue wrote a proposal for the basis of Rewrite's premise and passed it on to Takahiro Baba, the president of Visual Art's.

After the project was accepted, Hinoue consulted Key's former main scenario writer Jun Maeda on various game scenario writers to employ for Rewrite. However, the one writer Hinoue wanted on the project was Romeo Tanaka, who she had become a fan of after she played FlyingShine's 2003 visual novel Cross Channel, written by Tanaka. While he did not initially accept the offer, Tanaka decided to take the project when he was given the time he needed to do the job. When he accepted it, Tanaka was still unaware that Maeda had stepped down as Key's main scenario writer, and he became more interested when he was told that he would write Rewrite's overall story.

To the president, if something like poison were injected into Rewrite, an interesting chemical reaction would take place. Romeo's scenarios are very logical, and Key can do moe as a focus, so there was nothing that was "scary". Therefore, he had the sort of feeling that if Ryukishi's taste was mixed in, the result would definitely be something deep and interesting, I heard him say.

At the time, the only other scenario writer on the project was Yūto Tonokawa of Key, who previously contributed on Key's sixth game Little Busters!. Tanaka was tasked with drawing up the entire scenario framework, and during this time, Takahiro Baba suggested that one more heroine route be added to the story to bring the total to six, but to do that they had to hire another writer. Ryukishi07 of 07th Expansion, the creators of the Higurashi no Naku Koro ni and Umineko no Naku Koro ni game franchises, was brought in as the third scenario writer after Baba suggested in late 2007 that Key ask him to join the staff for Rewrite. Ultimately, Tanaka wrote the story leading up to the heroine's routes, Kotori's and Akane's scanarios, the Moon and Terra routes, and the bonus Oppai route. Tonokawa wrote Chihaya's and Sizuru's routes, and Ryukishi07 wrote Lucia's story. Tanaka initially planned on the length of Rewrite's story to be on about the same scale as Key's second game Air, but as it increased in size, he later attempted to keep it close to the scale of Little Busters!.

Rewrite marked the first time since Key's third game Clannad that Itaru Hinoue was staffed as the sole art director and character designer in a Key visual novel. The school uniforms for the heroines in the game are old designs that Hinoue created and used before in dōjinshi (self-published work). In particular, Hinoue spent much time on drawing the character art in Rewrite due in part to the design of the school uniforms, the fact that most of the female characters have long hair, and because of the increased aspect ratio. Six more graphic artists worked on Rewrite: Torino headed the background art, Ryou Shigawa designed and illustrated the monsters, and the computer graphics in the game were done by Na-Ga, Shinory, Mochisuke, and Minimo Tayama. The game's soundtrack was composed by Key's signature composers Jun Maeda and Shinji Orito, in addition to Maiko Iuchi of I've Sound, Sōshi Hosoi, and Ryō Mizutsuki. Maeda also contributed on the quality control for the game.