Sunlight Scream Review
Developer and Publisher - Faithy
The hero moves to a new city. However, along with him comes a masked killer who begins to kill his friends one by one...
Make decisions to build your adventure. Can you stop him before it's too late?
Have you ever played Doki Doki Literature Club? Do you enjoy Psychological horrors? You may enjoy Sunlight Scream! Though it is not quite the same as DD-LC, regarding the bloody/gory scenes, you may be enticed by the long storyboard and the multiple endings this game offers!
Sunlight Scream creates a rich story and atmospheric gameplay, which will suck you in with its rich drawings and detailed scenes.
Choose your path wisely, it's either get killed or see someone killed.
Featuring multiple choice scenarios which can play out towards different endings and an interesting battery mechanic, you'll be invested like I was!
Max, our newfound hero from L. A comes back home to Sunlight City, as news of his mother's passing makes him move, upon his arrival he meets his brother, Chris who whole-heartedly welcomes him with a fresh new apartment!
Finding out about his father's death from Chris, and then later being in a car crash, Max is now alone with no family members alive.
Luckily, a few of his new-found friends Sarah, Samantha, Leon and later down the line Erika all bound together. But nothing lasts forever as a masked killer is out to rob Max of his life force.
Can you save them all? Or will you fall prey to the killer too?
(Note: This game has scenes of excessive and detailed written violence and sexual moments, viewer discretion is advised)
Gameplay
The classic visual novel games that we all know and love are here, starring a simple click-and-point, story-driven narrative, who needs a tutorial to click through different scenes?
It's a no-brainer on how the controls work. Use your keyboard to skip, auto-run play the next scene, or simply click the mouse button or scroll back and forward with the mouse wheel.
Whatever works for you, I'm sure you will find some comfort as you try them yourself. I found a mixture of mouse clicking with the Space bar depending on my seating position worked best.
Sunlight Scream offers the player options in the form of choices throughout the game, some are meaningful, while others have dire consequences.
Pick the wrong option, and you'll find that you will have 2 killers instead of 1... Like I did... Somehow...
To know the difference with how your story will go, there is a battery icon when a decision must be made, depending on how full or empty this battery icon is in the top right corner, will affect the near or far future outcomes.
The lower the battery, the less it will impact the story. In the middle, it may lead to some consequences or it may not it's up to the player, if the battery is maxed out, you better think it through on how you want your story to play out. Someone is either going to die or survive.
(There are 7 parts in total, viewer discretion is advised as some scenes may be disturbing)
The game offers many different scenarios, and scenes in which you can unlock VIA achievements, with exclusive photographs when you unlock a specific route, the player can choose to use the back button if they don't like a specific outcome. I only did that once, around the end of the game.
Scenarios like a math test could very well lead to something good! And yes, there is a math test in the game... My head still hurts from it...
I am a simple guy, I love the general aesthetics of games, and this one has some remarkable scenes with great artistic talent for the characters. when you unlock a specific route, it's a lot more noticeable, and it's great to see characters in a different light.
The soundtrack is also on a good winning streak with me, with multiple different music and sound effects throughout each scene.
Each character is so well designed, Sarah, being my favourite, with her hacking skills and beautiful orange hair with an infectious outgoing personality.
Samantha the pink-haired shy outcast with a love of writing stories, slowly becomes an important piece to the story and slowly but surely makes us her friend and in my case a lover, which was a route I wasn't aiming for if I'm being honest.
Leon is the blonde super-rich kid, with a passion for skipping grades and taking the easy life.
There are other characters like Nate, Erika, Mr. Johnson, Scarlett the nurse, and Elisabeth the Police officer, who also have rather amazing character designs as well.
Final Thoughts
The downside of the game is that you will not see a single bit of blood or gory kind of scene, I was expectingly waiting for one the entire time that I played the game.
I did not expect to see any kind of sexual presence, only romantic kind of stuff like kissing... It's funny that these scenes are present with detail in sound effects and writing, but there isn't a presence of blood... I was sad to see that.
After losing my favourite character to a bad choice I made, I slowly lost interest in the game, I was aware I could go back but chose not to as that would just ruin it more.
Also, since this was made by a Russian developer, there will be some broken English lines and incorrect grammar with sometimes bad word placements, a little bit more effort in localisation would have made the game better in my opinion, but the story still sounded good for the most part.
Rating
I would rate this a 3
I'm not one for Visual novels, but since I played DD-LC, I was hoping for something of the same nature, but the game lacked the gory scenes. It did make up for the atmospheric scenes and setting the mood though.
With better localisation, I would upgrade to 4 stars.
I rated it a 3 for the graphics and atmospheric storyboard!
(5 being the absolute best)
Links
Epic,
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