It happened during the sixth month of the sixth year of Kaei, on a windless summer day.
No foreigners. No chaos. And then, all of that peace—or the illusion of it—dissipated into thin air.
We would be thrown mercilessly into incessant, raging, unforgiving waves of chaos… And I never got to see the face of the man behind it all.
I wanted to know what he’d bring. I wanted to know what he desired. And I didn’t think I’d have the chance to find out the answer. To be swept up in Japan’s winds of fate.
Three different, character-specific routes. Seven endings. Tough choices with dire consequences.
A country’s fate, in your hands.
Ghosts over the Water: Changing the Tides of Japan's Future is an immersive strategy game built upon a familiar and accessible visual novel framework. The game incorporates over 130,000 words of meticulously researched text and lasts for around 10 hours.
It is the summer of 1853; a group of unexpected visitors have arrived on Japanese shores. A powerful fleet of ships commanded by Commodore Matthew C. Perry has stormed into Edo Bay, causing panic and threatening the possibility of violence. Over two hundred years have passed since Japan’s borders were closed, limiting trade to Chinese and Dutch merchants. Now an American fleet is at the country’s shores demanding trade and concessions.
You play as Tsumaki Naoharu: an ambitious and curious young samurai working under Abe Masahiro, the chief senior councilor of Tokugawa Japan.
In his elevated position, Masahiro has to decide how Japan will respond to this new threat. However, the answer to this question is far from clear.
You will discover that Tokugawa subjects are on edge, the opinions of powerful lords are at odds with each other, and there is disorder everywhere. But above all else, you will learn that nobody can decide whether to open up to Western trade or keep Japan closed entirely—and Masahiro is no exception.
Although Tsumaki Naoharu is the narrator of the game, the true “main cast” of the game consists of three historical characters:
Ii Naosuke, Yoshida Shoin, and Tokugawa Yoshinobu.
Each character represents a real viewpoint that existed in Tokugawa Japan at the time.
As they move through the game, players encounter a range of important historical figures who shaped Japan’s response to the Perry expedition.
There is no traditional sense of “winning” in Ghosts over the Water; the primary goal of the game is to explore and navigate the nuances of Tokugawa Japan's response to the Americans. You will discover what Japan feared, what it dreamed of, and what fate it pursued in the end.
Contact Us
Studio Unagi | studio.unagi.1854@gmail.com
Page design, logos, art by Alexis Wu
Character art by Eric Doddy
