Nichijou : Uchuujin

Nichijou: Uchuujin is a Japanese PlayStation Portable adventure game based on Keiichi Arawi’s surreal school-comedy manga Nichijou. Kadokawa Shoten released it in Japan on July 28, 2011, presenting the handheld title as a “daily life” adventure rather than a conventional action game.

The player is an off-world television producer at Galaxy TV, sent to observe the apparently ordinary city of Tokisadame. The assignment is to turn its strange schooldays, household mishaps, talking animals, robots, and deadpan non sequiturs into a documentary programme capable of winning extraordinary ratings. Princess Starla’s preferences give the cosmic framing a practical role in the game’s goal.

Its cast draws on the familiar residents of the source material: the energetic Yuuko Aioi, quiet prankster Mio Naganohara, unflappable Mai Minakami, and robot schoolgirl Nano Shinonome all appear alongside Professor, Sakamoto, and a wide selection of classmates and townspeople. The game uses voiced performances, including the actors associated with Nano, Yuuko, and Mai, to carry the rapid comic exchanges and unexpected reactions.

Play proceeds by choosing characters to follow across successive hours of the broadcast day. Those selections determine which short scenes and branching incidents are shown, so seemingly small interventions can set up flags, trigger traps, or steer the programme toward different outcomes. The structure turns the manga’s disconnected comic sketches into a producer’s schedule built around deciding whose “ordinary” life is worth airing next.

An antenna system lets the producer interfere from afar, with a roulette-style selection of devices that can enhance a scene or fail at an inconvenient moment. Audience-response segments such as the Galaxy Radio Beam Time affect popularity, and the rising ratings ultimately influence which character-focused ending the broadcast reaches. Collecting and replaying episodes is therefore tied to experimenting with combinations rather than merely reading one fixed route.

Designed exclusively for PSP, the game condenses its many short, voiced vignettes and menu-driven broadcast controls into portable sessions. Its single-player format suits dipping into a few observation slots at a time, while the volume of scenes and alternate branches rewards returning to Tokisadame to uncover another version of an event.