Jupiter-Saturn:testing conviction

It feels like Saya no Uta, reimagined in space. With some Planetarian: The Reverie of a Little Planet mixed in as well.

Coming across this in recently released titles, and only $5, I think it is worth giving a try. . .

If you have watched KKHTA, it is very similar stylistically.

This VN has a feeling of curious humanity to it. The art style, although appearing rudimentary and basic, has soul. Dialogue is sprinkled with witty remarks, funny jokes, and comebacks, even when translated or adapted to English, adding levity to the heavy narrative. I did enjoy all the character's interactions. The game is a mix of religious and sci-fi themes in equal measure, and the characterization is strong. Also enjoyed how interactive certain scenes felt, not being a static background, but having to click on the screen in certain areas to advance, and seeing the result.

However, my first path was long (3+ hours) to complete, and path branching was only available from the 1st hour, then none for the 2nd hour, and then merely a final choice in 3rd hour of playthrough. Reader engagement can waver with this structure. Even adding some smaller choices, that merely change brief dialogue branches, but not actual endings, would have helped with feeling engaged.

In mushroom path, certain dialogue advancing will cause the game to crash while in English. I had to switch to cyrillic to advance the text, then save at this later advanced point, before switching language back to English to avoid crashing. This crashing may occur in other areas of the game, though I am unsure, I have only done three routes so far, and plan to complete the other paths eventually.

The textbox could maybe have an option to not be fully transparent; or change text color to be more visible. White text against snow/white background makes it difficult to read.

For 'Chip', although all its thinking is prefixed with '-', I still felt it could be denoted by a name above the chatbox. Or alternatively, differently colored text. If not paying attention and reading the dialogue through at natural speed, it can be easy to confuse Oleg and Chip's thoughts.

Certain parts are not fully translated, playing through in English, roughly 1 out of every 10-15 lines is still in cyrillic text untranslated.

Music and sound effects were sparsely used, but did add nice impact to certain scenes. I think more sound could have been added to create better immersion.

Despite the above nitpicks, I will say this is one-of-a-kind, and the making of this VN came from the heart of the developer. If willing to see through the hiccups, there were many beautiful concepts both addressed and posited to the reader. I want to thank the dev for having the courage to put this out here. Hope to see more from them in the future.