PQube’s latest visual novel has a haunting, melancholic, and unsettling tone, entailing a glitchy children’s storybook that often spills out into violence and bloodshed. It’s a tale of female friendship with a lovely melodic soundtrack smashed together with trauma, a bit of John Wick, and some discordant electronic bleeps and bloops.
Do these ideas work together? Let’s start at the beginning and try to unravel this.
This is a visual novel with no gameplay elements – something that can feel a little superfluous. We’re often left perplexed as to why some (but not all) visual novels need to be in video game form but ghostpia does a good job of justifying itself. Its graphics are drawn like a child’s storybook, with a kind of broken, glitchy CRT filter over the top. The graphics, along with ghostpia’s awesome soundtrack do a great job of complementing and elevating the writing, really selling the feeling of disquiet. In fact, we’d say that ghostpia is one of the most visually sumptuous visual novels around. Its flair leaps from the screen and nothing ever feels static or staid, with clever and interesting animation and movement.
Visual novels, however, live or die by their stories.
Here, we follow Sayoko – a self-described ghost who lives in a town with 1024 other ghosts, ruled over by a shadowy church and with a giant, unexploded bomb in its center. Sayoko doesn’t really remember much and frequently comments on how she has lost track of time. In fact, no one seems to be able to keep track. All she knows is that as the sun rises, she literally melts, and she wakes up again at night ready to start again. Everything Sayoko feels is dreamlike. From the not-quite logic to the vagueness of the flow of time. It’s at its best when it leans into this off-putting tone.
As we start ghostpia there is a new ghost in town, which hasn’t happened for countless years. Sayoko and her friends Anya and Pacifica decide to investigate the newcomer. Along the way they try to piece together their memories and try and work out how to escape a town that they feel eternally trapped in.
ghostpia can easily be considered visually sumptuous and narratively ambitious. The translation here is generally good, too. However, the tone and plot both have issues. During situations where the tone is one of unsettling isolation, ghostpia is great. When it tries to bring its plot into focus and move the action along, it’s far less successful. Sayoko is called ‘ninja’ by the other residents, and as the plot starts moving along, she starts to inhabit that nickname more fully. We found these action settings jarring. I think they’re supposed to be. They are certainly violent. But they also clashed with the quiet, low-stakes tone. I liked being with these characters and trying to understand their secrets and lives. I didn’t need guns and explosions to keep me diverted. It almost feels like some of that stuff is there because the developer was afraid to let you just…hang.
There’s also the matter of the pacing. ghostpia Season One comprises of six chapters, and each last more than a couple of hours. The story dragged in places, and we would have loved the whole thing a lot more if it had moved quicker. It’s even more of a blow when you reach the end and realise there’s a big ‘to be continued’ here. This is only the first half of the story the developers want to tell.
We really want to recommend ghostpia. Its visuals are so surprising and unique, and it’s had a truckload of love poured into it. It should be a perfect introduction to the pure visual novel after the stepping stone of something like Danganronpa. But it’s just a little too slow paced and a little too tonally inconsistent to really fly.
If you’re after something a bit quirky and want a rest from the relentless interactivity of some of Switch’s more hectic titles, you may find a lot to love. No doubt there will be some audiences who connect with it completely. Unfortunately, that just wasn’t us, and we fear others will find it jarring too.
Chosuido’s ghostpia Season One is out now on Switch and Steam.