Earlier last month a new website launched celebrating the 10th Anniversary of Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata’s manga, Death Note. And a couple weeks ago, a countdown timer launched ticking to March 3rd 12:00pm JST. And now that time has passed, where the site has revealed that a real life game is currently in production. What a bewildering project, but nonetheless interesting. The new website launched in the style of the SPK (Special Provision for KIRA), the intellectual department tasked with finding out who “Kira” is in the series, and the site is headed by Touta Matsuda.

This real life Death Note game will be produced by SCRAP, and is currently coined as a “Real Escape Game”. SCRAP has previously produced similar games with other franchises, with a Shingeki no Kyojin escape game coming later this year. This new game will held in two locations: in Tokyo at the Harajuku Himitsukichi from May 30th to June 27th, and in the Osaka Himitsukichi from June 13th to July 27th. The games participants try to escape a wide variety of mysteries within a one hour time limit before “Kira” kills them. Information on the mysteries and nature of the game is yet to be announced. Tickets to this event will cost from ¥2,220 (~$22 USD) to ¥3,300 (~$33 USD).

In addition to a real life escape game, there is also a smartphone app escape game. This mobile game has been revealed to be releasing on April 7th this year in Japan. The game will be free and has the player stuck in a room where they must escape within a time limit, before “Kira” kills them.

Update: The game will be released on April 7th, but requires a password to log in. To find the password you need to solve the riddle on this page: http://www.j-deathnote.com/portal/letter.html

The last announcement, is the 10th anniversary manga for Death Note. Split up into two volumes, the manga are a republishing of the original manga, set to release on March 18th this year. The manga will come with a Kira card, amongst other goodies – for a limited run. Additionally, regarding the manga, a FAQ on the page asked whether there are plans for a reboot with the answer being: ‘Not at the moment’

Death Note started off as a manga by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata. The manga was first published in December 2003 and ended in mid 2006 for a total of 12 volumes. After the completion of the manga, Death Note has sold a total of 20 million copies in Japan alone and a total of 26 million copies to date. The series was popular enough to receive an anime adaptation by the studio Madhouse, which went on from late 2006 to mid 2007. Since then, the series exploded in popularity in Japan and overseas. Three films were produced; two based on the original manga and a new spin-off movie titled L: Change the World. A series of video games were also produced by Konami for the Nintendo DS. Two light novels were also produced for the series, one based on the manga and the other based on the spin-off film. And strangely enough, Hollywood has an interest in the franchise.

While this is an odd announcement, there is also one last thing. Apparently there is some form of a image caption page located here, where you can add a caption to this image:

Expect more information about it in the upcoming months and weeks. In the mean time you can check out the site yourself: http://www.j-deathnote.com/