Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog Review – Review
PC-88 never died in this retro-future.
The first time I saw the trailer for Space Colony Studios’ Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog I felt micro-targeted.
Styled to match the adventure games of NEC’s venerable PC-8800 series of Japanese personal computers, I was pulled back to being a kid online in the late 1990s, transfixed by stunning pixel art from games I now know to be Valis, Ys, and Snatcher, splashed with text I couldn’t read and on systems I’d never heard of.
Likewise, I could see homages to anime series I had just started to fall in love with in that same timeframe, most chiefly among them Gundam but also other space operas like Macross. After completing the roughly six hour story, I feel largely the same way – people like me are squarely this game’s target, but I do have a couple reservations.
Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog is an adventure game/visual novel, patterned on the genre as it existed in 80s and 90s Japanese consoles and home computers. A central “view” shows characters or settings, occasionally accompanied by some animation. The view is framed by a text box at the bottom and menu options on the left-hand side. People who played games like Nintendo’s Famicom Detective Club games will feel at home here.
The menu lets you: “Move” to a connected room, “Look” at or “Use” the items in the room, “Talk” to people present, or use an “Item” from the inventory. Gun-Dog avoids the hunt-and-peck unfriendliness that is sometimes an issue in this genre by letting you press Left and Right on the D-Pad to iterate through every interactable item in the room. It also actively prompts item use only when interacting with something that needs an item. It is basically impossible to get stuck. Most rooms have no more than four items, so it isn’t a big deal to try using all of them. Likewise, your character’s data-pad always lists what the current objectives are and lets you fast travel to anywhere on the ship.
At times, the game asks you to make a choice. An example would be what crew member you decide to partner with to confront a challenge, or how you react to a fellow crew member’s provocations. Some of these are timed, but there’s always enough time to understand what’s being asked and briefly consider it.
It would be understandable if some players find this kind of gameplay restrictive, but it works well at letting the story unfold while still giving the player some agency. Choices do create branches in the plot, though they ultimately all resolve at the same place. As a casual fan of these kinds of games, I found the execution to include just enough creature comforts to maintain the vibe of an old game but without the frustrations that are usually included.
For an adventure game or visual novel, the quality comes down to the plot. Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog puts you in the shoes of a former mech pilot-turned security officer who finds themselves suddenly reassigned to the Swift class JFS Gun-Dog, a small support ship stationed beyond Jupiter as part of the Jovian Colony Fleet. The Gun-Dog’s tiny crew is made up of rejects posted to this backwater assignment on a seemingly unimportant vessel. Tasked with assisting the investigation into some strange signals, things quickly degrade due to a mix of this crew’s eccentricities and the mystery the Gun-Dog was sent to solve.
The story has multiple moments of high tension, that each crest waves of rising and falling action. At times, things can feel languid – as you’d expect on a mundane assignment on a spaceship, and at others tense and even stressful, even approaching some horror elements. Having multiple cycles of conflict-denouement gave the plot an episodic feel. It makes it possible to play for a short period and feel like you got a complete story arc.
However, this game is meant to serve as part of an anthology, and is clearly setting up a larger narrative. The resolution, likely as a tease for what’s next, feels a little hollow.
Without getting into spoilers, a mystery is set up in the back-half of the game and goes largely unresolved. This is not a bad thing, and the fact I care speaks well of the plot, but it would be nice to know when that resolution is coming. There are fun ideas here, and a lot of ways to potentially go from this point, but it does mean the ending feels like it lacks a little payoff.
The cast of oddities on-board JFS Gun-Dog creates a similar mix of feelings. Broadly, they all fit into archetypes common in the space opera anime genre. Having such a narrow cast can help in giving each of them more substance, but many of them – including some of the chief instigators – feel a bit one dimensional. It’s not true for every member of the crew. Cassandra, the ship’s number two, is both immature and irresponsible while also being genuinely funny and likeable. It’s not that the cast doesn’t work, they’re fine and their visual design is superb, I would have just liked a little more time to get to know them before everything hit the fan.
Look at the trailer; this game is a stylish beauty. Like I said, the character design is excellent, everyone’s look conveys exactly who they are. The background art nails the PC-88 era, but leverages technology unimaginable to artists of that time. It’s instantly reminiscent of those titles – but with more clarity and detail than those systems could ever hope to produce. But, for purists, there are three “modes,” including a green screen version, if you need a little more grime in your retro game. The handful of animated sequences effectively leverage limited motion to match the era but still have impact. It won’t appeal to everyone, but to me the game just looks sublime.
On seeing the first trailer for Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog, I was instantly captivated. It has style, and hit all the right spots in my brain. After playing it, I’m happy with the final product.
Space Colony Studios did a fine job with their first effort in the Stories from Sol series. It definitely isn’t going to appeal to everyone – players who haven’t enjoyed adventure games won’t likely be won over here, but if you’re like me and felt some real nostalgia looking at the game’s screenshots and trailer, I’m pretty sure you’ll have a good time. Now I guess I’ll have to wait for the next entry in the series.
