// Stories from Sol: The Gun Dog – Review
Stories from Sol: The Gun Dog is developed by Space Colony Studios. They are an independent Welsh developer who have come together to create Sol as their first title.
This is the first game in the Stories from Sol anthology.
Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog is a retro-anime inspired visual novel. From the moment I saw the first screenshot, I quickly shot to the top of my, “Oh yeah, I gotta review that one,” list.
It’s a four-man team consisting of a writer, developer, artist, and composer. They each bring unique talents and inspirations to the project, including anime like Bubblegum Crisis and old Capcom games.
The vibes and style dripping from this thing are immediately apparent, but does it have the substance to back that up? Read on to find out.
// Planetary Calendar 214
The game is set in the year 214 of the Planetary Calendar. This is far enough in the future that we’ve ditched the current year system and humans have colonies all across the solar system.
The character you play is a security officer assigned to a ship – the Gun-Dog – with an urgent mission: To investigate a ship called the O’Brien and some strange signals coming from that area.
You spend the trip there exploring your ship. The game does a good job of giving you the lay of the land and introducing the cast in a way that feels natural. The events that drive the main plot proceed to kick off after that.
// Your Crew
The crew of the Gun-Dog is only a handful of people. It’s easy to remember and get to know all of them. The characters very neatly fit into different archetypes. You have the rival from your past who hates you because he doesn’t respect you, you have the engineer who is riddled with anxiety and jumps every time you talk to him, you have the robot-like doctor who takes everything literally and cannot understand social cues at all – these are archetypes you’ve seen before, most likely.
If you take a first guess at where these characters arcs might take them based only on that description, you’re probably right.
But despite being a bit cliché, they are well written and fun to engage with. Some of them anyway. Some characters you will absolutely hate. Not because they’re poorly written, but in a Geoffrey from Game of Thrones way. They are written very well to be simply hateable.
The last key NPC I’ll touch on is Cassandra (or Cassie, as she goes by). She was just assigned to the Gun-Dog as the second-in-command, and she surprises you when you arrive on board. She surprises you because she’s your long-distance girlfriend! This legitimately caught me off guard. I had not anticipated there being a romance angle, but if there had been, I probably would have guessed it’d be more of, “pursue one of the crew,” kinda things. The idea of having a partner on the ship with you right from the beginning, and how that balances with her outranking you at times, was a very interesting new direction that I really liked.
// The Mystery
The plot that unfolds after you’ve met the crew is quite interesting. The mystery revolves around the ship you are trying to make contact with – the O’Brien – and expands out from there.
Generally speaking, the game projects where it’s going. At least the broad strokes. You will figure out what’s going on long before the crew begin to, which can be frustrating at times. This is broadly speaking though. The minute to minute discoveries and details of what’s going on are still fun to uncover, and there are plenty of genuinely fun reveals and events.
It can at times leave you with a sense of wanting to solve the problems that you as a player can see, but being unable to because the plot hasn’t progressed there yet. It’s a minor gripe, but it’s worth noting. It’s important to remember that this is a visual novel you’re playing through, and not a full on RPG where you can decide the outcome of everything whenever you want.
Speaking of decisions though, you’ll be making a lot.
// Choose Your Own Adventure
The decision-making is more akin to a choose-your-own-adventure book than it is something like Skyrim where you can just kill a dude if he pisses you off. From what I’ve seen in my playthrough and read about others, your choices have significant weight to them.
What you do or do not do will have impacts on solving the mystery at the end. Who you align with at times can have major impacts. Different members of your crew can live or die depending on how things play out.
The game makes it easy to create multiple saves whenever you want to encourage trying out different story routes. I was happy with my result, and felt the consequences of my actions appropriately.
In terms of the result, it’s important to remember that this is the first part of an anthology. This story just being the beginning of something larger. Despite being part one of a story, the climax of this game was thrilling, and I was glued to the screen the whole time.
You’ll be craving the next part when you hit the credits.
// Pointing and Clicking
Gun-Dog is a true point and click adventure game. You have the options of LOOK, USE, TALK, ITEM, and MOVE to interact with items, people, and navigate around.
There is also a Function button you can use to access a map of the ship, see your to-do list, and read up on the lore if you choose.
Each room on the ship has a set amount of things you can interact with. They’ll offer up descriptions unique to the circumstance even if you have nothing to do there at the time. There has clearly been a lot of effort put into accounting for everything possible action at every possible time. I never got what I felt like was boilerplate, “this is the wrong thing,” text while wandering around.
With that, you won’t need to spend much time simply wandering around. The frustration of, “getting stuck,” in an old point and click is unlikely to happen here. The game does a good job of indicating what you might need to do next, and the to-do list helps greatly in this regard. It’s a very accessible game if you have little experience in the genre, like I do.
You’ll even be give brief flashbacks to key moments when they become relevant again later on, on a couple of occasions.
You’ll spend the majority of your play time on the ship. There’s a great sense of place on board, and you can envision the 3D area of the Gun-Dog very easily.
If you’re someone who likes a really crunchy, difficulty point and click, you might find this too easy. If you just want that style of gameplay – to feel like you’ve solved some problems and experienced a cool story – this is for you.
// Comms
The writing quality is good here. The characters all feel like unique individuals with their own voice. The descriptive text as you navigate the ship helps you envision yourself in the shoes of the main character.
The pacing in this regard can at times be slow. It’s great for things like taking the time to look over a gadget in the mess hall, or checking out all the clutter in Cassandra’s room. The plentiful descriptions are great when you’re exploring the ship and wanting to immerse yourself.
Conversely, I found at times of intensity later on in the game there was a bit too much descriptive text for me, personally. I would catch myself skimming it. I’d get the gist of it – the tunnel I was crawling in was dark, and I bumped my arm – so I could get to the next section of dialogue or sequence of events.
It’s testament to the story that I was so eager to move on. However, I would tune back some of the descriptive text just a little. YMMV will likely vary on this depending on your tastes and preferences.
// Old School Anime
The thing you see people talking about the most in regard to Sol is the style. It’s very clearly inspired by retro anime, and the devs have said as much themselves.
To nobody’s surprise, the game looks great. The artwork is high quality and nails the style they are going for. While most of the game is static, they have added some animations here and there to add some life.
These mostly come by way of character animations and the occasional animated scene during key moments. This is definitely a quality of quantity situation, which I will always take. It’s also typical for the genre. Given the small dev team, the level of polish is quite remarkable.
You have an option to play between three different style modes depending on how much you want to lean into the vintage look and feel. I went with full-colour, but you can go for a really vintage looking monochrome style as well.
I really can’t say enough great things about how this game looks!
Credit goes to Kevin Butler, the pixel artist / animator on the team. I highly recommend you check out his website for a taste of the art and animations you’ll find in Gun-Dog.
// The Future Sounds Great
The music in Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog is great. It nails the retro vibe it’s going for. Beyond just matching the vibe and sounds, the soundtrack is very well composed. The music is fun and upbeat without becoming repetitive while exploring the ship. Intense or quiet moments have songs to match the scene perfectly.
Daniel Goodman was the music man for this game.
His bio on their website reads:
“He has always been enamoured by videogame music and as a child would record soundtracks from Mega Drive games onto cassette tapes for fun. He has been writing electronic music, with a preference for trackers over DAWs, for over a decade.”
Now I won’t pretend to know what a tracker or a DAW is, but it sounds like they got the right guy for the job. He certainly delivered.
The SFX sprinkled in are a nice touch as well, although used sparingly. Usually a knock on a door or footsteps, something like that. If you’re like me and turn the music levels way down when you play (instead of adjusting my overall volume on my PC because everything else was just right), they jump scare the shit out of you every time because I kept forgetting to adjust the SFX volume level down.
// Final Report
All in all, Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog is a good game. I don’t think it will take the world by storm, but if you’re a fan of the genre, it is 100% worth the time and price of entry. If you’re new to the genre, I think this would be a great entry point because it’s very accessible.
The characters are fun and likeable (or hateable, but in a good way) and the mystery that unfolds around you keep things interesting at every turn.
The style – both in the visuals and audio – are certainly the most standout features.
I spend about 10 hours on the Gun-Dog.
I look forward to seeing where the Stories from Sol anthology goes next!
Looking for more story-driven goodness while you wait? Check out Lost Records: Bloom & Rage.
