L33t eroge/figurine news blog Heisei Democracy confirms that Rewrite is indeed the title of Key’s next original visual novel.

The official website has been updated with a full motion shockwave. Individual pages (character, story etc.) are not up yet, but we can expect them to be showing up soon.

My initial impression is that it seems like a hybrid of Key’s previous 2 visual novels which are Planetarian and Little Busters! The character design of the main Bishoujo looks distinctly like a Little Busters! bishoujo, and there appears to be only one Bishoujo like in Planetarian.

Even though I’ve only played through the Little Busters! demo in Japanese from what I know about the storyline, it seems to share some initial similarites with Rewrite. The characters in Little Busters! are caught in an alternate dimension and are supposed to build up strength before moving on. Seems that the main Bishoujo in Rewrite is going to have her life re-written instead of re-writing another person’s like in Planetarian. Yes, I finished playing Planetarian about a week back and its great stuff

What seems strong about this visual novel (which has been emphasised quite a few times since April Fool’s) is the team writing the script. I’ve played through some of Onikakushi-hen (first question arc) from Higurashi no Naku Koro ni (created by Ryukishi07 ) and it is dead gripping to say the least. As for Yume Miru Kusuri (script written by Tanaka Romeo), I was impressed by the easily obtained english translation of the demo and promised myself for months to import it in, but have yet to do so.

It is riveting to see a famous Japanese visual novel company denounce a famous western tradition with the announcement of their new game, which has already drawn some exploding responses from around the blogosphere ^^