Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog Steam Charts & Stats

This game's a real gem. Perhaps not everyone will get it, but this is a fresh throwback to classic anime and gaming. So many times I have asked myself "where HAVE all the giant robots gone?"

Absolutely worth the $15. Very memorable cast of characters.

I enjoyed this. It's short (around six hours), so it doesn't overstay its welcome. There are a few neat surprises in the narrative and it ends in a way that leaves room for a sequel, but is satisfying. It works well on both PC and Deck. Key to Know: This is 99% a narrative experience you mostly read. There is limited animation. There are a few minor puzzles, but you can count them on one hand. There are a few key choices, but again, it's like 3 or 4 (and I only played once, so I'm not sure how much they all matter). If you like military science fiction, Robotech, that sort of thing, it's a good, quick read, err, play.

In playing this game, I have found out that I don't really like Visual Novel style games. In that, your choices don't really matter and the agency you're given as a player is very, very little. That being said, they market this as a visual novel and so in that capacity it is a good one of those. Definitely wanted more from this game, though. Probably won't play any future titles in this series.

An excellent Visual Novel with great graphics, characters, and a fantastic soundtrack. I put in just over 11 hours and had a great experience … very enjoyable and endearing!

this game is something else. Strong art direction, Good OST, and to top it all off a solid story. shit this game got it good. def recommend

I'm not great at writing reviews, but as everyone else has stated and from even the trailer & preview images, this VN takes a strong inspiration from Gundam; from the aesthetic, character personality, character design + naming conventions, the mechs, and the story itself. It makes me want to know more about this fictional universe and I really want another entry that's a complete stand alone. This game is worth full price and I still have yet to get all the achievements and experience all of the other dialogs

I really liked this! It's a kind of strange combination. The art and aesthetic are very obviously inspired by 80s sci-fi anime, especially Gunbuster, Gundam, the more military ones. But the writing is clearly western. The dissonance is kinda bizarre--not bad, just very weird. The converse would be like watching Terminator 2 except everyone is using japanese honorifics and talking like it's an anime translation. One nice thing is that the characters don't fall as hard into anime archetypes as I was expecting from the art. Even the quirky genki girl is played in a less heightened way than you'd expect from a japanese script. None of them are super deep, but there's a little more to them than it seems at first glance. The overall vibe felt very old-school sci-fi, kinda Heinlein-esque. The characters have lots of anxiety about technology and space. The story is good, and pretty well-paced, but when I got to a certain point I started having the bad feeling that the game was going to end up feeling like chapter 1 of a much bigger story. And that's kind of the case. The ending I got was sort of a cliffhanger in the grand scheme of the plot, but it was an actual ending for all the characters. Less "half a story" and more "the threat isn't over..." I will say that I didn't get the impression that most of my choices mattered all that much, although it shows you a chart near the end that had quite a few decision trees I didn't even touch, so maybe it was more tuned than I thought. Overall, feeling pretty positive on it, although if your tolerance for ambiguous endings is low you might be frustrated at the end.

Excellent little VN with a gorgeous visual direction and a satisfyingly clunky sci-fi vibe. Fans of seeing sci-fi locking mechanisms slide open in real time, this one's for you.

I can't say The Gun-Dog was bad - more like... Disappointing? It's definitely well made, looks good, and the setting is interesting. But from my perspective, its problems lie in areas that are too critical for a visual novel game: namely, the quality of the writing and the lack of payoff in the story. The game relies too heavily on long descriptions and explanations, which hurts the overall pacing. When you're in the middle of "action scenes" the game becomes much more interesting and engaging, but too often you're required to "explore everything once again" and these sections are really hit or miss, often quite dull. As for the ending, [spoiler]I like the overall tone and the direction of the final scenes. But I feel like the game fails to conclude the "investigation" part of the story in a satisfactory way, and that kind of ruins the overall experience.[/spoiler] I sincerely wish the studio good luck with the next project and will be following their work. However, as far as their first game goes, I personally can't fully recommend it.