BUZZ or DIE, a Death-Row Death-Game Variety Show Adventure, Launches October 28 on Steam

BUZZ or DIE is a point-and-click adventure about death-row inmates competing on a death-game variety show, launching on Steam on October 28, 2026. Kodansha Game Lab is Kodansha’s game publishing arm, and it confirmed the date today alongside a second trailer and voice cast reveal.

The game is developed by BON. Players are cast as a contestant alongside a man named Sagishima. The rules: dive into your opponent’s mindscape, dig up their secrets, and turn those secrets into short videos. Whoever gets the most likes wins a pardon and one wish. The loser doesn’t just die. They become a “slave android model” in an eternity of humiliation, per the Steam description.

The newly announced voice cast includes Iori Nomizu as the player character, Reina Kawamura as hacker Utsu Sayuri, and Toshinobu Iida as chef Kaniwari Sumito. A free demo covering the game’s first episode is already live on Steam (app 5137300, released October 12), and the full game will be playable during Steam Next Fest (Valve’s seasonal demo event) starting October 19.

The Steam page lists Japanese as the only language with full voice acting; English and Simplified Chinese are supported as text. No price has been announced yet, and the Steam page shows October 27 in Western time zones (October 28 JST).

Can you play it in English?

Yes — the Steam page confirms English text support, and since it’s a PC game on Steam, there’s no region lock. Japanese is the only language with full voice acting, so you’ll be reading subtitles through the performance. No separate Western publisher or console port has been announced. It’s a similar setup to SCREW IT! and PUKEY GODDESS SHOT TRICK, two other Japanese PC games we’ve covered that are launching on Steam with English text but no separate Western push. The Coming West tracker now lists BUZZ or DIE for anyone tracking which Japanese games are playable in English.

Our read: This is a very Japanese premise: death-game variety shows are a whole genre there. The English text support means curious Western players can try the demo right now. It’s been live on Steam since October 12, a day before the date announcement. But the voice-acting-only-in-Japanese setup means the full experience will land differently without it. The October 19 Steam Next Fest is the real test, since the demo only covers the first episode.

Edited by Kerwin Stewart, Editor-in-Chief · How we report