who will be Rin's destined love; depending on which route the player takes, there will be between 8 and 12 multiple-choice questions. At a certain point in the visual novel, a translucent image of the destined character appears when the day changes indicating whom Rin has fallen in love with after which the multiple-choice events become almost nonexistent. Near the end of the game, two sex scenes will occur. After the story has been completed at least once, players can view CG (computer graphics) artwork they have observed, skip scenes or endings for characters they have viewed, and listen to the soundtracks they have heard in the game. The PlayStation 2 version varies from the PC version as all the sex scenes are removed. The player may follow two new storylines: Mayumi Thyme's and Kareha's. Additionally, Kareha's younger sister Tsubomi makes her first appearance in the PS2 version during Kareha's path. Shuffle! Essence+ allows the player to follow the storylines of seven heroines, including four new storylines: Tsubomi's, Sakura Yae's, Nadeshiko Benibara's and Daisy's. In Daisy's path, Erica Suzuran makes her first appearance as a secondary character and Ruri Matsuri appears as the second main heroine, but she does not have any sex scenes. Plot Setting and themes The story is set in a fictional universe where humans coexist with god and devil races. Both races are capable of mystical powers, which astounded humans since they had never seen anything like it. Despite their positive and negative stereotypes, both parties are essentially good-natured. Ten years before the story, the gateway between the worlds of the gods and devils was opened. Since then, people from all races have been immigrating between the worlds. The characters attend the multi-racial high school, in . All of this is done so that humans, gods, and devils can meet one another and learn to coexist peacefully. Nonetheless, some members of each race had been transported to one of the other worlds, where they married and had children due to mysterious dimensional tears. This is how some students with mixed lineage can be older than the gateway to the human world, such as Mayumi Thyme, whose human parent fell into the world of the Devils through one of those tears years before the gateway to the Human world was opened, and Ama Shigure, Asa's mother. She was somehow transported from the world of the Devil to