It is rare I pick up a VN, but something got me to buy this game, don't remember what it was. Maybe it was half drunk browsing of weird or old games on Steam that I do from time to time, but eventually I found this in my library and was like "wtf? I have this game? Well lets try it, might as well".

And I turned it on with an open mind and got really surprised. This is not the standard 2012 japanese VN type beat that I think everyone kind of got bored of since they can go on for longer than an anime that was never really that good but releasing endless spin offs and arcs that are barely entertaining to keep going. This was structurally different, quite innovative for my taste. Command prompts, having to figure out what is up and then having to sift through a whole bunch of what I assume to be Korean names and put things in boxes.

"This guy is from here, this girl is from that family, this guy is a dumbass".

But, it talks about a really interesting purposefully vague concepts and stories that you have to extrapolate which is genuinely really fun. It feels like the movie principle of "Show, don't tell", but for a game. Genuinely cool that it talks about such topics as I do have exposure to Korean culture and I see where its coming from, yet you are still left guessing how did a internally closed culture managed to regress that hard on a ship that you know nothing about. And its a great concept to toss that you mull over in your head as you read entries and sift through various accounts of people being naturally old culturalistic and sexist and Hyun-ae's perspective which the player would likely align to. Juxtaposition with Mute is great as well, having to bounce between two AI's and chatting about it all felt really cool, although I still don't know how Hyun-ae became the AI, but hey I am fine with ambiguity.

Anyways, the stories and weird aspects of that life that we get shown are really enticing and keep you going all the time. The reactor minigame is great as well! I felt like with this game the formula was switched up every so often and you can go do this and that, it sometimes made you forget you are just a guy on a ship there to download logs, but then you have to go use the terminal and get reminded of it.

Overall, great game that keeps switching things up at a healthy pace to where its always something new. Characters and logs feel well written and Hyun-ae is pretty cool as a character as well. Definitely worth to check out on a couple of evenings you feel lazy to play your multiplayer games.