Hotel Dusk team regroups to tell hard-boiled detective story on Nintendo 3DS

Fans of Nintendo DS detective game Hotel Dusk: Room 215 and other adult-skewing adventure games have a new one to look forward to: Arc System Works will publish Chase: Unsolved Cases Investigation Division — Distant Memories on Nintendo 3DS eShop this summer, according to its teaser site.

Director Taisuke Kanasaki, who led development on Hotel Dusk and its sequel, Last Window: The Secret of Cape West — which never made it to the U.S. — is overseeing production on Chase. He's joined by fellow ex-members of Hotel Dusk developer Cing on the project which, according to a translation by Gematsu, will tell a dramatic detective story reminiscent of the former studio's games.

Cing developed narrative-focused games like the Hotel Dusk series and Trace Memory on Nintendo DS, but shut down due to bankruptcy following the release of Last Window in 2010. Hotel Dusk, which featured a unique art style created through rotoscoping and had players hold the DS like a book, launched in the U.S. in 2007. Nintendo later republished the game under its Touch! Generations branding, which identified games that might appeal to the "non-traditional" gamer.

Although Kanasaki and other Cing developers moved on to other projects after the studio's closure, Chase is the team's first collaboration in six years. A Western release has not yet been confirmed.