Archive for April 2025

Best Visual Novel Releases – April 2025



The month of storms and sunshine has once again lived up to its reputation, but things have been significantly less turbulent in the world of visual novels. There have been a number of high quality releases with one particular standout and a selection of others covering everything from idol spin off to murder mystery. Let’s dive in and find out what new games you should be playing from the past month.
 

Official Releases

 

Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club: TOKIMEKI Roadmap to Future

Steam     VNDB     Genre – Spin off, Idol, Music, Drama

Given TOKIMEKI Roadmap to Future’s nature as a spin-off title, it is easy to guess what type of experience you will be in for. This is a game firmly aimed at its fans with a story focused on the established cast of the Nijigasaki series and it never strays far from its source material. Despite its somewhat rigid narrative space, there is a lot of fun to be had as this strong cast of personalities interact and for such a character centric series this is key to holding the player’s attention. Each of the twelve members of the idol club gets their turn in the spotlight to showcase themselves in a way which feels natural while still maintain a brisk pace. Some effort has been made to try and accommodate any players new to the franchise since it mostly exists in its own bubble and does not reference events outside itself in order to not confuse them. This definitely would not be the recommended place to enter the series from but it if you choose to play it then it is still entertaining. Overall, this is a solid idol visual novel which leverages its existing characters to appeal to existing fans and for them it is a must play.

The Hundred Line -Last Defense Academy-

Steam    VNDB    Genre – SRPG, Apocalypse

Being from the creators behind Danganronpa and the Zero Escape series places a certain level of expectations upon this title and you can feel its awareness of this fact. The influence of the developer’s previous games is etched into how Hundred Line presents and engages with its narrative and themes. Large visual and stylistic cues have been directly adapted from Danganronpa into this new context and the game is aware of how apparent this feature is and even makes in-jokes about it. This is not to say Hundred Line is a clone but rather it uses a common narrative presentation and takes it in a vastly different direction. Instead of a murder mystery, the core mechanical element manifests as an SRPG with its own distinctive tactical flare which captures its somewhat macabre sense of humour. If you liked the creators previous work then this is an easy recommendation, but it probably will not convert anyone into a fan since it feels decidedly familiar even with the significant change in genre.
 

Battlefield Waltz

Nintendo Eshop     VNDB    Genre – Otome, Military School     Play Time – 40 hours

A good way to spice up the school setting so common in the medium is to attach something extra to it and for Battlefield Waltz this is its miliary background. The game uses this addition to add stakes to events while providing a legitimate reason for drama and action to occur naturally rather than from a plot contrivance. Its story follows a young girl named Lan who through the whims of fate ends up as the wielder of a cursed sword and is pushed into a life on the battlefield where she eventually ends up at Nirvana, a military school, where she rubs shoulders with the various suitors. Over the course of her time there she must balance training to bring the sword’s power under her control with blossoming feeling of love. Battlefield Waltz is a solid otome with a good spread of suitors and enough drama to keep fans of the genre satisfied from its duration.

Kindaichi Mystery Series: The Honjin Murders

Steam     VNDB     Genre – Murder Mystery, Detective 

Delivering a complete murder mystery experience was clearly the focus for The Honjin Murders and everything rotates around this core pillar. Its main mechanical element is the pulling apart of evidence and testimonies in order to pick out key truths and organising them into a picture of what really happened. This is almost like arranging newspaper clipping and has the same catharsis to it as it synchronises with the characters’ growing understanding of events and helps provide the game with a sense of momentum. Narratively it is tense murder mystery which puts emphasis on keeping a keen feeling of personal danger to the cast while still allowing the puzzle box nature of the mystery to be the focus. The investigation around which every part of the game revolves is a locked room murder and it constantly invites the player to reevaluate with each new piece of evidence. Overall if you are looking for a well put together detective story then The Honjin Murders will scratch that itch.
  

Love Curse: Find Your Soulmate

Steam     VNDB     Genre – Yuri/GL, Office Romance, Curse

One look at the promotional art for this game will immediately make it apparent what kind of story it is interested in telling. Pastel colours and beautiful woman surround Yan Wang Shu as her life takes an unexpected turn when she finds herself under a curse which can only be broken by finding her soulmate. There are plenty of women for her to choose from with a good range of personalities which bounce of her and each other for a lot heartfelt scenes. They range from the strict yet kind general manager Qi Yi to the upbeat childhood friend Xia Chi Mei. It is nice to see a yuri title where the protagonist and the heroines are all mature and have responsibilities with an office being one of the primary locations in which the story takes place. This lends it a refreshing air as it stands in contrast to the common early teens normally found in the medium and allows for an engagement with more adult issues. A sweet and wholesome girl x girl romance with enough drama to keep you engaged.

 

Exchanging Messages – An Anatomy Of Visual Novels


Fiddling With Your Phone

 
Almost everyone in the modern world uses some kind of messaging service each day from their text to email to old fashioned letters. Of course it was only a matter of time until this method of communication found its way into storytelling techniques and visual novels have started to experiment with this avenue. It trends a line between being distant yet deeply personal to great effect. The almost trivial nature of these messaging systems makes even a heart felt emotional plea come across as distant and cold text rather than seeing the living person behind it. At the same time it has unique elements of comic timing and connection to the mundane world which lend it a believability and flexibility to be able to fit a variety of narrative needs. When it is takes centre stage it can craft a visual novel which utilises the contrasting feelings of distance and humanity to deal with strong and emotive themes. It can also be second fiddle to the main means of story presentation in order to add an in-universe excuses for extra character nuggets. Let’s check our phones and find out how messages can tell their own stories.
 

So Close Yet So Distant

 
Every form of message based communication has some restriction of their length be that an artificial limit such as with a social media platform like Twitter, their conversational nature or simply space on the piece of paper. This feature means they can never fully express the complex emotions and intent present in a face to face conversation and it inherently lends them a slightly detached feeling. Of course humans naturally fill in this gap with what they think the other party is trying to express through their words, yet language is a tricky thing filled with double meanings or vague insinuations so it is hard to know for certain what the writer is thinking. Visual novels can take advantage of this ambiguity when using such messages as part of their narrative in order to tread a line between the personal and abstract which would not be possible in a traditional structure. Using them allows the game to shape an experience where the player unknowingly distances themselves from either their actions or surrounding events through a mixture of their assumptions based on they believe the character is saying and a general sense of watching something from afar provided by the lack of a standard personal presentation. Resulting from this basis can be a variety of different thematic and narrative tricks depending on what the developer is aiming for. It can be anything from pulling the rug from under the player by undermining the assumptions they made throughout the game to encouraging an almost archaeological examination of the actions of people from the distant past. 
A lot of this game comes down to messages and they hold a lot of power over how things turn out

Take NEEDY GIRL OVERDOSE as an example, here the players interactions with the main character Ame-chan takes place over a pseudo-LINE messaging app and they see more of her feelings through her multiple social media feeds. The player is tasked with managing her life and streaming career and this stat based gameplay helps the messages distance the player from their own actions. As a result they will experiment with activities which are evidently self destructive since they have unknowingly reduced Ame-chan to the sum of her texts so when things go wrong it comes as a shock. Despite these repeated disasters, the message system will lure them back into a daze where they will continue to dive into other problematic situations. Later the game makes more direct use of this distance to address the nature of the player’s relationship with Ame-chan and how it might not be healthy for either participant. This is a style of storytelling which NEEDY GIRL OVERDOSE could not have effectively achieved through a more traditional narrative presentation as it helps Ame-chan be someone the player is familiar with yet also someone they make do damaging things to in the name of curiosity.
 

Messages As Secondary Narrative

 
When the messages are not in the spotlight, their role gains a flexibility which makes them perfect to slot alongside the ongoing story. In most cases this takes the form of some supplementary messaging system, such a mobile phone or email inbox, which regularly shows communications from characters not present in a scene. These have no plot importance and instead aim to flesh out the cast while providing a few laughs and humanising them. It is the space where all the smaller events go so they will not interfere with the pacing of the overall narrative and this makes them an excellent place to explore their character quirks while keeping the player firmly in control of the experience. Over the long term they can still have their own minor plot threads covering a series of incidents from the character’s everyday lives crafted in such a way as to provide a sense of them not simply disappearing from existence the moment they are off screen. An approach like this one places an emphasis on the messages’ personal qualities since their distant feeling nature merges into their role as background elements which helps highlight the contrasting aspect. They are chatty and low stakes back and forths between two or more friends who are not expecting their words to be considered in depth and are just having a good time. 
Each character has a distinct style of messaging which makes them more memorable

Perhaps the most well know example of such a system is the text messages from Steins Gate. At regular intervals the player will receive texts from the cast and they can choose to reply to them by selecting a highlighted word from the text. These are entirely optional and filled with jokes and easter eggs for the player to discover alongside the various outcomes to the conversations. None of them have any form of tension and they are instead a catalogue of their everyday lives as each intersects with Okabe’s. This gives the game a sense of the greater world outside of all of the time travelling drama and how the mundane continues to march on. Due to the importance of the phone to the plot this message system occasionally gets hijacked by the story which feels like an invasion of a private space and helps underscore its significance.
 

Telling A Story Through Snippets

 
Encouraging an archaeological approach to engaging with the narrative is another way message systems can be used to engineer a unique visual novel experience. Through giving the player a series of written items covering a span of time for the fictional setting, the game can create the feeling of having uncovered the truth about what is going on as the player reads between the lines, even if in reality they are being lead by the nose. Promoting a sense of narrative exploration is important for games which aim to get the player to see a bigger picture where there is no clear cut person to mark as an antagonist and instead the problem is more inherent to the world they inhabit. The feeling of distance offered from these messages is put next to their often deeply personal perspectives on what is happening around them in order to form a patchwork of clashing facts and beliefs alongside the results of their interactions. It can also exist alongside more direct storytelling with characters on screen so long as they react in time with the player and promote the same overall themes as the messages.
If a game gives you a family tree then you know what you are in for

Analogue: A Hate Story perfectly embodies this use of messages as an archaeological expedition into a selection of themes and ideas. It puts the player into the role of someone sent to investigate the fate of the generation ship Mugunghwa and they must examine the dead crew’s logs to determine how things went wrong. These logs are the most intimate thoughts and recordings of these people which they never imagined anyone else would view. As such they contain snippets of their lives without context since the person who wrote it would not have needed it to understand what was going on at the time since they were there. This is cleverly used by the game to control the player’s perspective on events and quietly guide them through this tragic journey. Having a setting which is vaguely historical in the way it resembles classical Korea helps sell this feeling of the messages as a form of archaeology by placing it within a sense of the past despite the sci-fi setting. Accompanying the player on this expedition are a pair of AIs *Hyun-ae and *Mute who offer their contrasting opinions on what the player uncovers. *Hyun-ae has a modern perspective on the world and one the player is likely going to immediately identify with while *Mute is much more traditional in her sentiment, in particular when it comes to a woman’s role, yet still displays a sympathetic angle to the suffering of others even if she disagrees with them. They are a living manifestation of the themes presented through the dead’s messages and work to coherently present the core ideas of the work.
 

Conclusion

 
Adopting a message system as a means of presenting the narrative offers visual novels a great deal of flexibility with how they play with feelings of distance and intimacy. It can contort the player’s perspective on people and lead them to perform actions they might not otherwise only to be confronted with the consequence of their disasters. An archaeological approach to the messages can be encouraged in order to give the player the thrill of uncovering something new under their own steam while witnessing events from different angles. When the messages are a side element they can be a fun distraction which feeds the player all kinds of entertaining nuggets and character moments. Overall if you are looking for a strong and immediately understandable framework to add some distinctive avenues for expression which naturally flow into a visual novel then a message system might well be what you are looking for.
 
 

Crime – Genre Deep Dive


Go Do A Crime

 
What exists beyond the borders of acceptable society has a taboo allure to it and Crime is a genre of fiction which loves to take advantage of this tendency. The Crime genre cover anything from organised crime, in the form of groups like the mafia, to personal and violent acts such as murder. What joins this genre together is how the acts are specifically framed through their relationship to the normal world and their legality. Visual novels offer a way for the genre to leverage theses feelings from a more direct and personal angle than it can elsewhere. In its most basic form it can exist as a simple source of thrills to help provide stakes. When dealing with complex networks of criminal activity there is a focus on how it effects the people involved as the machinations around them threaten their lives. Exploring the darker parts of human nature commonly finds its way into the genre and rubs up against a world afraid yet mesmerised by it. Let’s see what lies bellow the surface and explore this genre’s relationship with visual novels.
 

Thrill Of Danger

 
Fiction offers a means of injecting a little excitement into our lives and the Crime genre is happy to use its illegal acts to deliver the desired shot of adrenaline. Rather than a realistic depiction of the activities and their consequences, these kind of titles aim for an exaggerated rendition of them where the threat is so outside the realm of the player’s own experiences they will not feeling uncomfortable about the acts involved. The worlds these games take place in are still familiar and modern enough to make it easy for people to place themselves into the shoes of the protagonist and enjoy this thrilling ride. Balancing these feelings requires visual novels to contrast the personal and intimate nature of its characters with their over the top actions in a way where the forward momentum prevents their absurdity from being the focus as it keeps moving on passed and does not stop until the end. They also attempt to avoid any themes or ideas related to the illegal acts beyond a simple good guy/ bad guy dynamic in order to not distract from the high octane and tense tale it is weaving. 

Dangerous and hot?


One particular other genre of visual novel loves to make use of this version of Crime and this is otome. The genre is used as an easy means of adding a sense of danger to the suitors and, by extension, stakes to personal conflicts. Since there are so many good examples of this type of Crime visual novel let’s look at a couple of them to see it in action. Collar X Malice over the top setting, where a terrorist group have essentially forced the government out of Shinjuku, immediately sets the tone for the level of believability the game is aiming for. With this established it proceeds to have the terrorists slap a poison filled collar on the heroine to provide a constant sense of tension. If it were not obvious this depiction of terrorists is not remotely close to reality and ends up closer to a conspiracy thriller, but they hold on to just enough of the associations of their real life counterparts to not be alien to the player. Their actions are the driving force of the plot and each suitor has a different relationship to them in order to make their routes feel different while forcing the heroine into new and exciting situations. The constant threat of the collar keeps the game moving at all times since it acts as a reminder of the terrorist’s presence and the danger they pose. Setting expectations and controlling them over the long term is why Crime makes for a good pairing with the normally slower romance genre. A slightly different angle on the use of the Crime genre in otome can be seen in BUSTAFELLOWS. Here it has the additional function of giving the suitors a sense of danger to them through their close proximity to the criminal world. Take Shu who is a bounty hunter and walks a bloodstained path which intersects with the darker half of human dealings and this makes his interactions carry the spectre of violence even if it never actual comes to anything substantial. It is worth noting that in this style of the Crime genre the protagonist rarely comes from a criminal background themselves and instead hold a set of conventionally correct moral values to make them easy for the player to empathise with.
 

Organised Crime

 
The institutions which form around long term and profitable criminal activities are another element the Crime genre loves to bring in as one of its core pillars. These stories place groups such as the Mafia or Yakuza at the centre of events and follows their chaos of complex and violent inner workings. For visual novels this often means games about navigating its messy web of families and alliances or being trapped within its tendrils and forced to do its bidding. Here the host of personalities already in various positions of power before the beginning and the way they are all stained with blood makes it a perfect playground for tense tales of secret pacts and betrayals. The fact the characters all come from morally questionable backgrounds makes their constant backstabbing feel more natural since this is the only world they have even been a part of and so it is the only way they understand how to do things. It is presented as a mire they have been dragged down into and have no way of getting out. As you might have noticed this is essentially a more evolved version of the basic thriller from before which trades its simple to understand narratives for one closer to reality with less clear-cut good and bad guys. It is still exaggerated but tries to balance the thrills with a sense of how dangerous the criminal world is for those involved. 

The dark underbelly is filled with over the top characters


Placing the protagonist inside an organised crime group can provide a constant sense of danger as they attempt to avoid angering those in charge such as can be seen in G-senjou no Maou. In this game the yakuza group Azai Kyousuke is a part of plays a large role in the lives of those he interacts with both because he is the adopted son of its boss and their own connection to the underworld, willing or not. He is a person deeply influenced by his experiences as part of the yakuza which has made him cynical and calculated and it is only through interacting with the heroines that he rediscovers the other parts of himself. This change often puts him in opposition to the criminal world he is a part of and this clash is the core of many route’s dramatic tension. It is a group wearing the mask of civilisation to conceal its violent nature and having the characters engage with it in a deadly dance is a large part of its appeal. In order for organised crime to function it needs a lot of people to do its work and Rose Guns Days takes advantage of this feature to play off its character centric qualities. Rather than making the criminal groups vague dangerous entities, the title instead breaks them into the thousands of people which make the group up and showcases the myriad of personalities within it. Each has their own aims and ambitions which converge and clash in equal measure to compliment the game’s overall focus on the clashes of individuals amongst a bigger picture. The criminal activity is downplayed with little time being given to the actual work of those within it and it is more a flavourful element since it does not want to in the way of the colourful characters and their distinctive web of conflicts.
 

Our Most Violent Impulses

 
So far the criminal activities discussed have all presented some kind of greater aim, be the monetary or idealogical, but what about the ones which stem from the darker part of human nature, how do Crime visual novels engage with them? One of the common ways they choose to do so is through the lens of a murder mystery where the protagonist and player are slowly exposed to what can be graphic content. The protagonist in these games is often either a police or private detective so as to have a justifiable reason to be involved in investigating a murder and not immediately run at the first sign of blood or gore. It also gives them a similar moral position to the player when it comes to the actions of the killer and they provide an easy to understand angle on an uncomfortable subject. When it comes to perpetrator they are often right in front of the player for most of the game without the player realising it. This serves the double purpose of being a big reveal and highlighting how the darker elements of human nature hide just bellow the civilised facade we all wear. Kara No Shoujo plays on this duality to great effect while it presents each horrific murder and there consequences in detail. Since this is a serial killer story the killings are a bit more dramatic than a simple crime of passion which gives the game room to explore around the circumstances which led to this outcome as the spectre of the inevitable next victim hanging over events. Through doing this it can tap into a simpler thriller dynamic to keep the player invested and cast the whole thing through the lens of how distant it is from our normal world.

Violence is often swift sudden and unexpected

 

Conclusion

 
Crime is as horrific as it is mesmerising and visual novels know exactly how to get the most out of this ride of the wild side of humanity. These games can use the genre as a simple source of thrills which does not explore its subject matter in detail and instead wants the player to enjoy the ride. When a title wants a web of personalities and violence to entangle its cast within, it can call upon organised crime as a means to tell compelling and tense stories of backhand dealings and betrayals. The genre can even tackle the darkest aspects of human nature in the horrific murders done for purely personal reasons and address it head on while still being an edge of the seat experience. Overall this is a wide genre filled with possibilities for visual novels and offers fertile ground for you to engage with a variety of subjects.
 

Stories From Sol: The Gun-Dog Review - After The War Is Over The Adventure Begins


Genre – Sci-fi, Mecha   Play Time – 7 hours    Developer – Space Colony Studios   Steam    VNDB

 

Into The Depths Of Space

 
Drawing from 80s sci-fi stories and anime aesthetics creates a powerful first impression and opens up a wide array of genre ideas to play off. This foundational choice of direction defines much of Stories From Sol’s narrative and mechanic features for both good and ill. It fully embraces the pulpy spaceship fantasy of the era with a suitably dramatic roller-coaster which sees its cast face all kinds of shipwide calamities. Each one of the crew has their own distinct and conflicting personalities and these lead to a variety of entertaining tensions and clashes from minor headbutting to those endangering everyone. Focusing on a PC-9800 artistic style results in an imaginative exaggeration of the period that plays into the best elements of the period in everything from mecha design to classy chiptune tracks. However, in embracing the period it has inadvertently brought onboard some of the issues of game design from the period in is adventure game parts. They suffer from the obtuse nature of the genre and this impacts what is otherwise a well paced experience. Then there are the problems with the writing in terms of consistency and resolution which rear their heads in the later sections of the story. Is the strong design direction enough to overcome these weaknesses? Let’s jump into our mech and find out.
 

Captain I Think We Have A Problem – Narrative and Themes

 
From the moment the player steps into the Gun-Dog, the game does everything it can to sell the ship as a lived in place worth caring about while still being just another run-of-the-mill military vessel. Each location has a specific member of the crew associated with it and they can be visited at any point for short conversations about the current situation or just some small talk. In doing this the game provides each space an identity and functionality through how its cast interact with it from the Chief's tinkering in engineering to Vanessa’s constant power plays on the bridge. The ship gains a collective character despite its regular lines and metal panels and it is a pleasant place just to exist within and invests the player in its safety to mirror the protagonist’s role as head of ship’s security. Later in the title when you visit another ship of the same class this familiarity is cleverly turned on its head as the spaces once filled with personality assume their natural cold metic nature to make it clear this is not home. This build up of the ship is important since once events start to be put in motion the player will be strapped into a roller-coaster ride which will not stop until the credits roll. There is a good variety of types to the drama and action from high octane fights in mechs to tense sleuthing with enemies breathing down your neck. It never rests on any one of these for too long as each are given the exact amount of time needed for it to feel complete before being replaced by the next narrative beat. The results is a pulpy feeling story which plays into all the right notes from the period it is drawing its inspiration and it understands what made the peroid appealing while avoiding all of the elements that have not aged so well. In many ways its is a rose tinted glasses version of a story from the time, but it does not ever come across as self-indulgent and instead as an honouring of an older kind of sci-fi.
New sitations are constantly pushing the player forwards

It is disappointing then when this roller-coaster comes to a juddering halt as the game enters its finale. The factors which make this conclusion feel weak stem from the way it neither offers proper resolution nor sets up anything concrete for the future. By far the biggest sin the game commits in is the way it tosses aside the crew of the Gun-Dog who are given a moment or two of screen time before being unceremoniously shoved into a metaphorical bin. They were the heart of the experience up until this point so not having a proper send off makes for a hollow note to end on. Then there is the way it hurriedly resolves the main conflict while not actually providing any solid answers about what is going on. Coupled with the fate of a number of characters being uncertain by the end and the result is an unpleasant taste in the mouth of a player hoping for some kind of resolution. It does not even function as a cliffhanger since it is too vague to feel dramatic while also lacking any sense of where this will lead or what it means for the future of the cast. Overall, it feels like the ending was rushed out of the door either because of budget or time constraints and big chunks of it were cut so what is left has holes in it which sour the experience.
Having a clear vision helps sell the experience in a way few other things can

A more minor criticism is game’s inconsistent presentation and understanding of how space works and in particular how deadly it is for humans. For example, at one point they enter a ship which has had its atmosphere removed and yet all this does is cause the crew to asphyxiate with no mention of how the change in pressure and temperature might influence the bodies. In and of itself this is not an issue, since this work is clearly not aiming to be grounded sci-fi, but rather how it is inconsistent with its established rules. One moment you will have characters wearing spacesuits and another you will have characters jumping through the vacuum of space in their normal clothes. This is a bit of nit pick, but the game is filled with these kinds of inconsistencies and they build up to be distracting from the core experience.
 

A Motley Crew – Characters

 
Any story focused around a ship needs a crew with good spread of interesting personalities and Stories From Sol truly delivers on this for the Gun-Dog. The breadth of characters on offer serve a series of important functions in such an isolated setting where they occupy the majority of what the game’s narrative has to work with. On their most basic level they provide a sense of the wider universe which the game does not otherwise address since their different viewpoints speak to where they came from. The brusque Chief clearly comes from a vastly different background to the bubbly Cassandra and they both contrast with the laser focused Dylan. While no specifics are ever given to their lives before being assigned to the Gun-Dog, outside of a crumbs here and there, the player can easily draw conclusions about what the world beyond is like. Their strong identities make them easy to remember and recall quickly which is important given how quickly the game moves in its later parts. As events spiral to their conclusion it is good to have a simple frame of reference so the player immediately knows how each event is going to impact the characters. Crucially their personalities constantly clash against one another in dramatic and entertaining ways reinforcing the idea of them as individuals with their own aims and values. Their interpersonal interactions form the backbone of a lot of what makes the game’s moment to moment so engaging as they bounce off each other in fun and sometimes dangerous ways. The Gun-Dog’s crew have just the right amount of depth while also being memorable to make them the most enjoyable part of the entire game.
Every character has their own lovable personality even those who can be antagonistic

Retro Is The New Future – Visual, Audio and Technical

 
Style appears to have been at the top of Space Colony Studios’ list of priorities and it oozes from every inch of the game’s presentation. Its artistic vision is one which emulates the limitations of classical hardware through the flexibility of modern technology to create a larger than life vision of this era of games. What this means in practice is intricate pixel art images which lean into the PC-9800 sci-fi aesthetics to form a space where their angled nature can feel right at home. There are lots of nice touches that help sell the spaceship and characters with the most prominent being the motion on constant display. Each portrait has their own selection of emotive movements matching the character's personality while backgrounds and CGs have dynamic elements that change to reflect what is going on in the story. Character portraits even have three different versions which change their colour and the complexity of their designs to more directly resemble their inspiration. The soundtrack follows a similar philosophy with its chiptune music embodying an upbeat and energetic tone. While it is not without its darker and serious tracks, the general feel of the music is one focused on the idea of a big space adventure and how cool all of this is as it looks longingly at the giant mechs and fantastical ships. All-together this style creates a consistency to the experience and further pushes the core feelings present in the narrative.
From the moment you start the game it makes its artistic choices clear

As for the gameplay which lives alongside the narrative, it is a solidly built adventure game with little beyond what you would expect from the genre. It offers the player the option of one of several commands, such as look and use, to interact with the environment and progress. The visual novel narrative is the focus here and the adventure game parts are a means of pacing the player while giving them something to do with their hands in between key plot moments. However, it does suffer from one of the common pitfalls of the genre, unclear progression. What this means is the course of actions required to progress operates on a logic which is not immediately apparent and this leads to confusion and a stalling of the experience. Stories From Sol does not have the esoteric solutions present in many of its peers, but it does have moments where the player is required to perform actions on things seemly unrelated to the matter at hand. None of these are going to stall a player’s progress for any extended period of time and yet their repeated presence does lead to some frustration.
 

Conclusion

 
When a game knows exactly what it wants to be and directs everything into it, the result is a vivid and memorable title as it is with Stories From Sol. Focusing solely on selling this 80s style spaceship fantasy gives it the ability to craft a roller-coaster ride of drama and emotions with a strong sense of direction. Its characters are large and contrasting, allowing for all sorts of interesting interactions and conflicts to naturally arise. The retro mix of pixel art and chiptune emulate period styles while using the advances in technology helps create striking locations and emotive characters. While the ending does feel rushed and there are issues with its adventure game parts, none of these overshadow the game’s wholehearted commitment to its vision.
 
 

Verdict – 

Vivid 80s style and a strong vision craft an unforgettable sci-fi story with lovable characters and suitably pulpy drama. However, the lacklustre ending and the pitfalls it inherits from adventure games do bring down the title’s overall quality.
 
 

Pros -

 
+ Knows exactly what kind of experience it is and firmly sticks to the best elements of 80’s sci-fi while avoiding the parts which have not aged well.
 
+ A roller-coaster of a story which sells the spaceship fantasy in a suitably dramatic manner.
 
+ Its characters are an endearing spread of personalities who constantly rub against each other in this boiling pot of a ship.
 
+ Having a strong retro aesthetic and musical direction makes each moment a feast for the senses.
 

Cons -

 
- The ending feels rushed and has neither the conclusiveness to satisfying nor the impact and set up needed for an engaging cliffhanger.
 
- Suffers from some of the classic issues with adventure games relating to their sometimes obtuse requirements for progression.
 
 

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