If you've seen any visual novel made in the last 10 years, you'll likely have noticed that their appearance is low-budget. You get streams of text, and a background with images of character's, overlayed on top of the background, occasionally switching to a CG image displaying a scene when something important happens. That's not what Overflow decided to do. They took a route most developers avoid these days. Instead you are treated to an interactive anime where you make decisions to influence the outcome of the story. While the visual novel does a good job, there are a few issues that keep it down.

The story is about a first year high school student named Makoto Itou who has taken an interest in a girl from another class. He's a bit nervous though, so he asks his friend Sekai to introduce her to him. Of course you know how this plays out. He successfully goes out with this girl, but Sekai also ends up falling in love with Makoto, leading to a messy love triangle with all sorts of ups and downs. Gameplay is pretty much non-existent as you are but a spectator watching an anime play out, with your only interaction being the decisions that you make at regular intervals. The decisions are also timed, which makes non-responses another choice for the player to make. The novel even plays out like an anime, complete with episode opening and ending sequences, with title cards. There are a whopping 20 endings to achieve, offering a great deal of replayability. The general tone of the game is full of drama and there isn't much levity. Some of the scenes get pretty dark or at least uncomfortable if not slightly disturbing at points. It's also and adult visual novel, so there is sexual content. It's a rather moderate amount, even considering the fact that it's animated. 

School Days HQ has some nice character designs and it's 'animated story' approach is interesting, but it's lacking in a few things that keep it from being great. For one, I noticed that animations can be a bit stiff at points, and voice clips can be de-synced from the animation. Some animation errors can occur as well. Some of the routes re-use the same clips, but with different scripts. While that works sometimes, certain character reactions make not make as much sense when you consider what might have happened in parts leading up to that moment. More to that point, actual character development is a bit weak. You don't get a good sense of why Makoto feels the way he does about any given character at any point. Then there's the two main female leads and their own motivations. Even less developed are the supporting leads. Another thing that's weak about the game is the flowchart. It's supposed to show you which ending you are working towards, but the game doesn't label any of the decision points. Even more frustrating is the fact that you can only warp back to points that you've already been to, and only on the route you are currently playing on. There's no master flow chart to jump to any point from. You can skip any clip, and even fast-forward through previously viewed ones, but you shouldn't have to do that. It's a nice experimental approach, but hopefully the story and GUI issues are addressed in the upcoming sequel Shiny Days, which should be out by the time of this publication. But if you still are interested in an adult visual novel that does something not many others are doing, go ahead and check it out. 


The Bottom Line : An interesting take on the visual novel, using an approach that was often used in the 90's for live action adventure games, but it suffers from a lack accessing parts of the game and weak character development.


Acquisition Method: Review code provided by JAST USA.