This review was originally written on 02/19/2018.

Technical Information

Developer: Team Salvato
Publisher: Team Salvato
Release: Sep 22, 2017

The plot is pretty cliché: you meet four girls who are part of a high school literature club, and you end up joining it too.

Visual novels need a good story to keep the player engaged, and I’ll say right away that this game can be quite boring at the beginning. I insisted on continuing because of the positive reviews. After a certain point, the game starts to get interesting, each girl’s psychological side is explored subtly, and you become increasingly curious and invested in what’s about to happen.

The game contains a warning; it’s not recommended for children or for people who are easily disturbed. Its shocking content is more tied to the surprise factor than to what actually happens. But don’t expect anything like “ooohh my god, I’m never sleeping again.” There are games that are way more disturbing (both in terms of violence and suspense).

The graphics are super simple, the animations extremely static (which makes the game visually poor). It’s common for visual novels to use images to show each character’s mood and expressions, but this game really fails hard at that, making the whole thing look quite amateurish.
There are very few character images, and from a certain point on it feels like everything’s just being recycled.

Call me crazy, but the way they drew the girls’ hands bothers me. I look at them and always feel like they’re out of proportion 🙁

Your interaction with the game is very minimal, leaving the gameplay completely focused on dialogue. There aren’t many decision points, and the few that appear offer very few choices. It could have had more dialogue options. At least in that sense, I’ve seen games of the same style that were much deeper.

I grabbed this image straight from the official website. Judge me!!11!!1 hahaha

I finished the game in about two and a half hours, and I believe that’s the average for most people who are fluent in English. They talk A LOT! At several moments I was basically just skimming through the text. The game is worth it for the story experience, but I doubt it will make you want to replay it from the start, especially since it’s very linear.

I completed the game… but I got curious to understand why there was suuuuch a huge hype around a horror visual novel. So my research led me to the discovery that it’s possible to mess with the game files, which ends up affecting the story.

Hidden messages, altered assets… honestly, it’s a very interesting thing to play around with. Personally, I wasn’t in the mood to start the game again right away just to test these easter eggs, but I thought the idea was pretty cool hahaha

[blur]In my playthrough, Yuri kills herself, and I found that somewhat predictable. I already knew something involving death would happen, I just didn’t imagine Monika was the culprit. During the game the girls themselves say things about Monika, but for a while I thought it might be just drama and that in the end she would be the “good girl” of the story.

I tried to save Yuri, I kind of invested in her route. But I already expected her to die. Life happens, right? :/[/blur]