Developer: Summerfall Studios
Publisher: Humble Games
Platform: PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S
Tested on: PS5
Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical – Review
Visual novels have always been a somewhat special genre of games, as some tread more towards simply being digital books. Many of these games often don’t involve too many choices, making player agency somewhat non-existent. Other games, such as Utawarerumono: Prelude to the Fallen also follow a fixed story, only to throw some other gameplay elements in between story segments. Then, there is the final option, visual novels that give the player the power to steer the story with the choices they make, and this is what Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical is all about. And, as the name clearly states, it’s also a musical, which is certainly a unique take on the genre.
Story
Stray Gods takes place in our modern day and age, where Grace is struggling to find her way in the world. When she had an encounter with Calliope, a supposed singer auditioning for Grace’s band, she didn’t expect this chance encounter to change her life. After the two parted ways, Grace was later found by a bleeding Calliope who tracked down where Grace lives, only for her to die in Grace’s arms. Things turn more bizarre when Grace is forced to follow a person called Hermes, who appears out of a portal. It soon becomes clear that Calliope was in fact a so-called Idol, which is basically a god. Calliope’s power now resides in Grace, but the council, with Athena at its head, suspects Grace of killing Calliope to take her power as her own. Grace does manage to sway the opinion of the other members, and she is now given a week to prove her innocence before she is to be executed. Grace’s world will now change, as she will have to question other Idols to learn the truth, while also trying to stay human in the process.
Overall, the story is quite interesting to play through, even if the game didn’t have us hooked from the beginning. The more choices we made in the narrative, the more interesting things did become. It also made us wonder what would happen if we were to make different choices, immediately creating a great incentive to play the game more than once.
Graphics
Graphically, Stray Gods is a very pretty game, for the most part. The artwork shines brightest when looking at the character designs and their different emotions, which are portrayed by still images. The varied and colorful cast does help sell the overall vibe of a musical, as well as that of a rather magical and divine experience. The linework is for the most part impressive, but things come apart at the seams when looking at the backgrounds. A lot of the game’s backdrops look a bit sloppy, under-detailed, and at times even unfinished. Of course, the game does still have a lot of nice background scenery, but a bit extra attention to detail in certain areas would have made the game’s atmosphere even better.
Sound
As is made clear by the game’s name, the experience of Stray Gods is to emulate that of a musical. The game does have a great soundtrack, and while there won’t be constant singing, we still very much enjoyed what was on offer here. On top of that, the lyrics change for pretty much all of the game’s songs as you’ll have to make choices during singing. These choices may steer the soundtrack to more cheerful tunes or slightly heavier rock influences. The soundtrack is complemented by great voice acting, which creates a very alluring whole. Sadly, the immersion is sometimes completely shattered by horrendous sound mixing, as the game suffers from extreme volume fluctuations. We were unable to enjoy a lot of the game’s dialogues without having a remote control nearby. We suppose a lot of the dialogues were recorded in different locations and under different circumstances. Sadly, it’s not pleasant having to crank up the volume to simply hear what is being said to be deafened by the next character in that same dialogue. We hope this gets patched in the future.
Gameplay
Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical is in essence a visual novel with a lot of music and the freedom to shape the story via the choices you make along the way. There is in fact not that much to say when it comes to the overall gameplay, as you simply make choices during dialogues, and that’s basically it. You have the option to turn off timed choices, which does give players who stress out easily some more room to breathe. Sometimes it’s not very clear what your choices will end up doing, but that’s also part of the charm. You do get some extra power at the beginning by being able to choose Grace’s personality type. This mechanic further expands later in the game.
Overall, we felt the choices we made did end up impacting our playthrough, especially when it came to growing closer to some of the game’s characters. This is one of those games that will still remain rather interesting and entertaining to play through again, simply to make different choices at key moments. While you probably won’t do a few playthroughs in a row, it’s certainly a title that is fun to come back to or to play with some friends who help you steer the course of the narrative.
Conclusion
Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical is certainly a very entertaining title with great music to support the intriguing story of gods in our modern society. The voice acting proved to be superb, the soundtrack did captivate us most of the time, and the choices we made ended up steering the narrative to one of the game’s different conclusions. This is a title we can easily recommend to fans of both musicals and visual novels, but we do hope the issues with the volume fluctuations get patched in the future, as it really detracted from the otherwise charming experience.
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