Stories From Sol: The Gun-Dog is a classic sci-fi tale wrapped up in a visual novel. With warring factions in the Solar System, conspiracies, and relationships between crewmates aboard a small confined space of the Swift class ship known as The Gun-Dog, tensions can rise very quickly.
Stories From Sol: The Gun=Dog’s events take place after a war that rocked the Solar System. The forces of Earth, known as the Solar Federation, have been beaten by the combined forces of the Martian Territories and the Jovian Unified Colony Fleet. Your character, whose name and gender you assign, was a cadet pilot in the war and was meant to fight in the final battle piloting a Frame – essentially a mech. However, your Frame failed to launch and the rest of your squadron, bar one other pilot, were lost in the battle. A few years post-war, you find yourself as the security officer of The Gun-Dog, a ship for screw ups and others that are to be kept out of the way.
The Gun-Dog is a small ship, which means it has a small crew. However, among this crew your character already knows two people. The first is Cassandra, aka Cassie, the second in command and the game’s love interest. The second is Hansen, the other survivor from your former squadron, who has blamed you for the deaths of the squad mates lost in the war as you were not there when they needed you. Other characters include Captain Barthlomews, Lieutenant Vanessa Lord, Chief Engineer Cathays, Cadet Dalton, Ensign Haru, Weapons Officer Dylan, and Doctor Rosarium, the ship’s physician.
Some of these stand out more than others. Cassie is the strongest of the bunch, as you spend a lot of time with her as the plot unfolds, but there is also a lot of interaction and friction with Hansen and Lieutenant Lord. In fact, the developers have to be commended on Lieutenant Lord, because I have not felt such visceral hate towards a character in such a long time. The epitome of self-serving who would step on anyone to get ahead and save their own skin. It’s like Othello’s Iago was the inspiration, but at least he could feign liking Othello. Lord has no such compunction to pretend to like anyone.
Other characters fade into the background, having smaller parts to play. Though they are all unique, Haru is like a hanger on of Hansen, and Dylan is someone you’ll rarely interact with either. These are all decently written characters, and they do have some hidden depths to them, though you will recognise common tropes that they build upon.
A visual novel’s core focus is the flow of its story, and it starts off strong. The Gun-Dog is sent to assist the O’Brien after some strange readings have been detected on the edge of Jovian territory. From early on you can work out that these readings are bad news, but it takes the characters longer to reach that conclusion. What follows is a plot where you essentially becoming a detective to work out what is happening, as well as managing relationships with key characters.
jvbhknjUnpicking that mystery through the story is decent and interesting, but not totally unique. The ending can be impacted by some of the choices you make as well, choices in both responses you give and actions you take. Â Stories From Sol: The Gun-Dog is also supposed to be the first entry into a wider universe of visual novels, so there are some story points left open at the end. I do want to see what happens next, but I don’t really feel that immediate desire to play the next instalment right away.
The gameplay wrapped up in the narrative is pretty straightforward. The presentation of the user interface gives six options to click on, with those being Move, Use, Look, Talk, Item and Function – all pretty self explanatory. It could arguably even just be five, as Function features a map alongside its database and task log that makes Move redundant. Much of the time you will be reading and interacting with the other characters, though there are some puzzles to solve to make progress. These puzzles are pretty simple to work out, so you will not be stuck in place for too long.
The game also has three graphic types. Doujin Mode gives you access to the early visual concept of the game with quite a cartoonish. Studio Mode looks like 90s style anime but in a green palette similar to that of the Game Boy, while Vivid Mode is like Studio Mode but in full colour. You can swap between these at any time. I switched between Vivid and Doujin mode, having used Studio during my playthrough for the preview, and ended up favouring Vivid as it gives so much more detail in the environments.
