NIS America confirmed Friday that it will publish The Grimm Reapress and the Drearytale Monster (Shinigami Hime to Ishokan no Kaibutsu) outside Japan in 2027, bringing the picture-book-styled side-scrolling adventure to Switch, Switch 2, PS5 and PC via Steam alongside a new announcement trailer. The title already launched in Japan on those first three platforms back on April 30.
The story centers on Mono, voiced by Rena Motomura, an overlooked child in a family running an opera house who is doted on only by her older sister. When that sister contracts Paper Mortis—a disease that turns victims into living picture books and eventually monstrous ‘paper monsters,’ with teenage girls especially vulnerable—she is confined to a facility called an Asylum Library to await her fate, since the state has abandoned any search for a cure.
Determined to reverse the illness, Mono ventures into the overrun facility and its warped, memory-filled picture-book realms, where she strikes an uneasy partnership with a legendary paper monster named Mar (voiced by Makoto Koichi), who wants revenge on humanity but agrees to protect her along the way.
Kento Jobana, known for Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero and Disgaea 7, both wrote and directed the game, while illustrator Sayaka Oda handled character design and Takeshi Matsumoto composed the score—both returning from The Cruel King and the Great Hero and The Liar Princess and the Blind Prince. Vocalist Akiko Shikata, familiar from the Ar Tonelico series, performs the theme song.