Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog is a visual novel with adventure game elements. There is a side menu where you can move, look, use, talk and use and item. However, there are no puzzle in the traditional sense. Everything you do is laid out and telegraphed. There is a handy tasks screen that tells you what to do if you’re lost. Like I said, this is a visual novel, and it is quite a good one at that, that tells a good sci-fi story.
Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog stars you, who can be he, she or they, and you chose your whole name. You are a security officer on the star ship Gun-Dog who has to meet up with another star ship and investigate mysterious signals. Your star ship is full of anime tropes, but its ok, they’re well written and mostly three-dimensional. This includes your love interest, who spends most of the time out of commission. There are twists and turns and branching paths, though the main story isn’t affected much by those paths. For example, early on, you can shoot a person with a stun-gun, and that will affect your relationship with them.
The biggest problem with Stories from Sol is the text is confined to the bottom of the screen and cannot be changed, causing me eye-strain at times. Also, again, the characters fall into well-worn tropes, but that’s really a nitpick. On the plus-side, there are three different visual options, like this one:
It is neat that Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog has them, but they don’t change the actual game at all. Despite that, all of the graphics are well done with some neat visual touches thrown in. Overall, I enjoyed this greatly and give it a Recommended with an eight back-end score. If you’re looking for a sold sci-fi visual novel, you cannot go wrong with The Gun-Dog.
Overall; Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog is a solid science-fiction visual novel that is entertaining and pretty to look at!
Verdict: Recommended
| Release Date | 2/20/25 |
| Cost | $19.99 |
| Publisher | Astrolabe Games |
| ESRB Rating | T |
P.S. The closest thing I’ve reviewed is actual adventure game called Monolith!
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Zom
I read through a good bit of the first game in this series. It was competent. I will likely pick this up whenever it is on sale on Steam and read through it on my Steamdeck.