There is something so special about playing a game that feels comfortingly familiar, but wonderfully new at the same time. I don’t think I’m alone in that, given the recent prevalence of retro-inspired games. We’ve seen the NES-likes, the SNES-likes, and the PS2-likes, but Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog is the first game I’ve seen that rewinds the clock back to the PC-9800, a series of computers popular in Japan around 1980-1990.

Even if you’re not familiar with the PC-98, you’ll identify right away with the art style, inspired as it is by sci-fi anime stories of the 80s to early 90s. It gives me Gundam vibes, but take that with a grain of salt, as I —perhaps shamefully— haven’t watched a single episode of the series. But that might change soon, because if Gundam is anything like this excellent visual novel, I’ve been missing out.

Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog presents an extremely strong identity as a retro-inspired title. Pc-98 games are fondly remembered for their beautiful —and I mean beautiful— illustrations, often far more detailed than another platform could manage at the time. The images were often encased in a thick, decorated frame which also often incorporated the UI and menu options. Their soundtracks could handle far more complexity than other platforms too, and listening to them today, you’d be hard-pressed to improve them. Games on the PC-98 could also be pretty NSFW, from titles featuring big-breasted anime women and problematic tropes to straight-up porn games. Their influence on Japanese video games and visual novels isn’t small. Sadly, the majority of these games are not accessible through legitimate means, as they were rarely rereleased for Western audiences.

The game incorporates some modern design elements, like the standard-size text tox at the centre-bottom for both descriptions and dialogue. It’s a classic look, but the choice of text font is perhaps ill-advised. If the sentence is longer than the box would allow, instead of just moving on and replacing text as it goes, it tries to stuff the whole sentence into the space by reducing the font size, making it tough to read, even if you switch the font to a more readable option.

In a galaxy far, far away…

Stories From Sol begins by introducing you to your protagonist’s traumatic backstory. Unlike what you might expect, you aren’t traumatised from a deadly battle you survived with horrifying aliens; it’s from sitting in the dark, still safely aboard the command ship inside a malfunctioning mech as you listen to the incoming signals of your squad, who are busy dying without you on the battlefield. It sets quite the tone, arming you to face the idea that the most terrifying thing in space is not the enemy; it’s sudden equipment failure. 

I admire the restraint at the lack of flashy colours and sharp, sleek angles on the Armoured Frames and the Gun-Dog itself. Often, games and anime are tempted to make their mechs as flashy as possible, but it so often comes at the expense of believability. I love how big, blocky, and utilitarian everything is; compared to the over-designed mechs of the 2010-present, it’s actually refreshing. Likewise, instead of facing enormous aliens, the antagonist of Stories From Sol is more thoughtful and introspective. It takes a while for it to become clear that there even is an antagonist beyond the unsympathetic, unhospitable, expanse of space, but you’ll be so caught up in the who, why, and how, that you won’t care that there hasn’t even been one mech battle yet. 

Like most visual novels, player input is mostly limited to progressing dialogue and navigating your way around the Gun-Dog, inspecting points of interest as you go. In most cases, this will just provide you with flavour text that fleshes out the world, but in some key story moments, you’ll need to do some investigation before you progress the story. There will also be some decisions to make along the way about how your character behaves. While there is only one ending, the route you take to get there depends on your choices, and it will also slightly affect some of the ending’s details.

Multi-choice visual novels with light adventure elements are nothing new, but there is one element to the gameplay that I believe is new, and that is the way using an item works. In most games, you can open your inventory and select the item you want to use at any time, but that’s not the way it works in Stories from Sol. You can’t use items anytime you wish. Instead, whenever you reach a point in the story where you might use an item, the Item button on the mechanical frame that borders the scene will subtly light up. If you miss the cue, the story will carry on without a fuss. Sometimes you might be able to trigger the moment again to use the item but sometimes you’ll miss your opportunity for good.

I love this. It treats items like a secret to discover, as if remembering to use my gun in a shootout is a puzzle I solved and not like, common sense. I actually wish there were more instances of these throughout the game (although I suppose I simply could have missed a bunch).