It’s the age of the Selenon. With no one to stand in their way, they rule over humankind from the dark side of the moon. Step into the role of Violet and become a part of SPECTRA, an organization working to protect the citizens… but from what?
Selenon Rising is an sci-fi noir, episodic, mystery visual novel. Episode 1 released recently and I was eager to dive head-on into it. You’ll take the part of Violet, a SPECTRA agent, and will be working towards trying to uncover what is going on around the city. This “city” is comprised of two parts – the outer city where those without money live, and the inner city that receives protection from the debris that gets hurtled towards them. Once you step into this story you will have a hard time pulling yourself out of it.
While Selenon Rising primarily is composed of visual novel elements, there will be points in which you need to do some investigation into the truth. These investigations are comprised of two parts – seeking out clues and getting the truth out of someone related to what you’re investigating. In Episode 1, you will perform this investigation sequence at two key points, and both of them will make you wonder what it is you truly need to do. The second time around, I felt completely lost as I had run out of ideas as to what I should even do to get the information out. I didn’t feel this was a bad thing however, and was glad that the game really made me think.
The writing in Selenon Rising Episode 1 is absolutely fantastic. As I said, once you step foot into the story, it’s going to grab hold of you and not let you go until you finish. I was somewhat sad when I saw the end of the episode line come up, as I knew it would be some time still until I’d get to read more. I felt that all of the characters were wonderfully written, and the story will definitely lead you in a direction of wondering who it is you can truly trust. As soon as you feel like you’ve figured out who you can trust, a new twist will be thrown in, making you question everything all over again. You’ll also be able to make choices throughout the story that will align you with either the law or the rebels, and these choices will affect future episodes to come. For now, I’m sticking with law, but we’ll see if this stays true whenever I head into the other episodes.
On top of the fantastic writing is some fairly good art. Some of the proportions did feel a bit off when you got full body shots. Namely, the legs felt like they were out of place compared to the body, and they felt like they were in weird angles compared to how the rest of the body was positioned. With that said, I still enjoyed the art quite a bit, and I can say the same about the music present.
While I generally did not notice any grammatical or spelling errors, I did notice one main error in the dialogue boxes. There are times in which there is a bit too much text for the box that was present, causing it to go out of the box. There was only a handful of times where this actually happened, but it is still something that is worth noting.
If you’re up for stepping into a world in which you never know who might be your allies then be sure to check out Selenon Rising. While, at the time of writing this, only Episode 1 is available, the price of it is more than worth what you get content-wise. It has been stated that each future episode (there will be 4 in total) will all cost the same as Episode 1, so you’ll be looking to $5.99 per episode as they are released. If each future episode provides the same high quality story that was available here, then I absolutely cannot wait for the next parts to be released. With that, I easily give Episode 1 of Selenon Rising a recommendation. With around 2-3 hours of reading content available, you’ll definitely get your money’s worth out of it (not to mention going through to try out the different options for how you’ll side on things).
Selenon Rising Episode 1 Review Score
4.5/5
Selenon Rising Episode 1 is available now on Steam.
I would like to thank Sekai Project for providing me with a copy of the game for review purposes.
That is unusual, I already noted and fixed the textbox issue, but maybe I forgot to update the actual game. I should be releasing a patch soon to fix that.
It’s possible you did put out a patch after I had played through the game (~1 week ago, only had a chance to post today). I don’t recall seeing a patch since I did so though, since I usually try and check into patches if I see them before I post.
Thanks for the comment! ^^