Review: No Sleep for Kaname Date – From AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES (Nintendo Switch)

The most rewarding question I can ask myself during a review period is, “What have I been missing?” I asked myself this early and repeatedly while playing No Sleep for Kaname Date – From AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES. By the time I finished, that question had changed to “What have I been playing?”

This game is bonkers in all the best ways. The characters are ridiculous, but somehow grounded and relatable. The story is unpredictable, but never cheats its way through the world it creates. The gameplay is unique, but well framed within the confines of the narrative. AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES is now on my short list of franchises worth adding to my backlog.

This means, of course, that I have no experience with the previous games: AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES and AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES – nirvanA initiative. My bad. Thankfully, you don’t need to have played those games to find out why Kamane Date isn’t getting any sleep. Although numerous characters carry over, they’re well-explained within the game, and this entry mostly stands alone.

That includes the gameplay style, from what I understand. No Sleep for Kaname Date is mostly an escape room puzzler. The premise is that an Internet idol named Iris Sagan is kidnapped and put into dangerous escape room situations, and it’s up to Kaname and his cohorts to solve the puzzles and free her from entrapment before she’s blasted off into space or whatever eventuality awaits failure.

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When not solving escape room puzzles, Kaname utilizes the help of his left eye (which is actually an insect-obsessed AI ball named Aiba) to run investigations and enter the dreamworld of suspects and unidentified people trapped inside mysterious pods that have sprung up around the city.

I suppose that last part bears further explanation. Kaname is a Psyncer for ABIS: the Advanced Brain Investigation Squad. This allows him and Aiba to “enter” brains to explore and break through mental locks to uncover truths and repressed memories. Their Psync time is limited, so they need to quickly locate and parse the information they need, then proceed efficiently to work their way out.

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Thankfully,  the countdown clock stops if you stop moving, so you’re able to think things through along the way. The choices you make will impact how quickly time decreases, and there’s a bonus system in place that seems to reward you for doing the wrong thing. I’m not sure I ever understood that, but I was still able to work my way through. Ace Attorney fans will be right at home with this, even if the approach and presentation are quite a bit more bizarre.

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A big chunk of gameplay involves investigation. In these sections, Kaname is able to examine various areas to collect clues and obtain information needed to locate Iris and uncover who’s behind her kidnapping. Again, Aiba is usually there to help you pinpoint what you need, but much of the game’s charm comes from checking out items and people that obviously have no bearing on anything. The narration and dialogue are tremendously funny in these segments, and the writers found many ways to bring the game to hilariously bad endings. Who knew that repeatedly clicking on lockers or fireworks could be so much fun? Even the occasional QTE combat segments are fun. If they do give you trouble, you can adjust their difficulty separately from the puzzles.

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The real challenge comes from the numerous escape rooms you’ll need to solve. These basically involve exploring the rooms to get clues, deciphering those clues, obtaining and combining items, and then figuring out where to apply everything. You’ll control different characters throughout, giving each a unique approach. The puzzles are never terribly difficult, although there was one room that had me stumped on how to even get it started. On another, my wife had to step in and help me work through one clue I was completely misreading. If you do get stuck, the game allows you to change the difficulty settings to decrease the vagueness of the assistance you’re receiving from other characters.

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Controls throughout the game are easy to use. This may not sound like a big deal, but considering the diversity of how the Joy-Cons must be used in the various sections, it’s actually quite impressive. Working your way through escape rooms is a clean process mostly free from camera positioning issues, and the UI for sorting your inventory and accessing items and abilities is easy to work through.

The anime-quality visuals are fine. The characters are cleanly and distinctly rendered, and they’re mostly voiced well. Per usual, however, the English acting on a couple drove me to use the Japanese voices. The background textures can be drab and muddy in places, but that just helps the foreground elements pop a bit more. Note that although I played the game on the Switch 2, my provided review copy was the standard Switch version.

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If I were to file any complaint, it would be that the game’s quite short. Without attempting to unlock all the bonuses, I reached the ending in a little over 22 hours. The benefit to that, however, is that there’s never a point when the gameplay is not engaging, when the characters are not endearing, when the dialogue is not funny. I got the feeling some of the wordplay jokes just didn’t translate well from Japanese to English, but that never became an issue. Kaname’s infatuation with porno mags, on the other hand, may be an issue for some. Anyone who supports printed magazines has my support, but I’ll suggest Pure Nintendo Magazine as an alternative much less likely to interfere with any eventual political aspirations.

It’s because of these characters and the writing that I feel fans of AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES won’t mind the apparent gameplay changeup in No Sleep for Kaname Date. In the hands of other developers, this goofy premise and mult-style structure could’ve been a mess. But Spike Chunsoft nailed it, mostly because the writers are able to keep things lively throughout. The narrative really shines, tying together not just the separate gameplay elements, but the people caught within them. You could put this cast in a first-person shooter or farming sim, and I’d still play it if it came from the same dev team.

So, count me in for the series, and count this game in as one of my top picks of 2025.