SYNESTHESIA

INITIAL REVIEW: Not sure this is gonna work out; bought it on 65% discount, and while the premise is exciting, the flickering / frame rate / transitions of various animated sections might make this unplayable for me. Might keep it with the goal of sharing within linked household accounts... but I just got done talking to my neurologist about how to avoid getting airsick on an upcoming trip; I'm not trying to make problems for myself in my recreation at home... ya know? If the devs tweak it to be less disruptive visually for those of us who are sensitive to motion sickness or what have you, I'll probably really enjoy this game. But right now? It's a no from me. Migraine hangover status brain says "NOPE" EDIT TO ADD, October 27- the developer has been in touch with me trying to workshop a solution; if you don't have issues with framerates or rapid animation type stuff, it's DEFINITELY worth a try! I may or may not end up being able to play, myself, but I'm keeping my copy because 1) I like the idea of the game 2) I respect the developer's engagement on noticing my review 3) family share via Steam means I can let other people use my copy that live with me and whatnot. EDIT TO ADD (2): well, my migraines are finally under control & I'm delighted to report that I have started chapter 1 in earnest as of October 9, 2025. Flipping my "recommend?" to YES. Glad I held onto my copy & didn't request refund. The writing / narration tone for the opening is solid & I owe the creators this prompt update around the 20 minute mark for having left it as a "cannot recommend" all this time.

This VN is more of a shonen than the previous installment. VII Enigma focused mostly on the technicalities of Steins;Gate's D-Mails, and expands on it. It was a fairly serious story with lots of urgency, though it had some big flashback sections in the middle. This VN focuses on reading steiner, and links it to consciousness. There's some light commentary on duality and simulation theory too. The golden ratio stuff pushes the VN into urban fantasy though - somehow the golden ratio is a more important constant than all the others for no apparent reason. "It's the universe's number", I guess...but what about all the other important constants used for critical things? e? Pi? The omega constant? Honestly, e gets a LOT more use in nature than the golden ratio does. Though I guess it would be harder to use e for the spiral thing the VN is going for (Euler spiral aside) This VN has a male student going to school with his friends in Japan. I'm sure you know how this sort of thing goes. The opps roll up, and the MC is like, "We should take down these obvious bad guys". Things happen, and then the typical shonen ending is stopped abruptly in favor of, well, [spoiler]have you seen 2001 A Space Odyssey[/spoiler]? The art is a lot better than VII Enigma, though the ai voices can be a bit stiff. Imagine Microsoft Sam telling you a big evil monologue about how he'll do awful things, with a little bit of intonation. I think VII has the superior story, though. The resistance group you see here is massively underused, and a single crazy man with a gun gets away with far too much. In fact, Team Good Guy actually tries to jump the crazy man at one point, but we don't see it. All we get is a "Yeah, they lost the fight, I guess." There are routes, but you have to do most of them in order. The only route choice you get to make is whether you want to do Eris' or Isla's first. That's it. That being said, there is some in-story justification as to why it's a kinetic VN pretending to be a VN with branches, but the important thing to know is that this should be treated as a kinetic VN. I may appear to be harsh on this VN, but I think it has more positives than negatives. There are some decent twists here, and I enjoyed the bits where the lore of the world is explained. I just want to note all the notable issues I had with this VN so you know what you're getting into.

Since this game compares itself to Steins;Gate in its promotional material, players will inevitably judge it by the same high standards. I won’t deny that, as a sci-fi reading experience, it does capture a bit of that “flavor.” The pseudo-scientific theories, the philosophical discussions about dimensions and abilities, and the way these ideas are delivered through the characters’ conversations do have a certain familiar appeal. However, I think the game has several unfortunate shortcomings. First, the art style is simply not very appealing. For a visual novel, the visual presentation matters more than one might expect. An art style can be niche, but it should not look rough or unpolished. [spoiler] Second, the character writing feels somewhat flat. One of the reasons Steins;Gate became such a classic is that it spends a great deal of time developing its characters’ personalities and interactions. Only after the player truly comes to care about them do the later emotional climaxes and twists hit with real impact. That is admittedly not easy to achieve in today’s fast-paced entertainment environment, but by the time I finished this game, what stayed with me was mostly just concepts like “higher dimensions” and “parallel worlds.” What exactly is Ziek’s personality as the protagonist? He does not leave a strong impression the way Rintaro Okabe does. Among the three heroines, Maya is clearly the most important one, yet she barely interacts with the protagonist in the early parts of the game. Then, when she suddenly disappears later on, the protagonist abruptly starts caring about her as if he has lost his mind? The mystery at the heart of the story seems to revolve around lines like “I can’t say,” “I can’t tell you,” and “something huge seems to be about to happen.” But in reality, the stage is limited to a school, a few university students, and a handful of professors researching philosophical questions about the collapse of the world. Because everything becomes so abstract and metaphysical, the story ironically loses much of its suspense and tension. It may also be because the art is so weak, but even the character death scenes had almost no impact. [/spoiler] These are the aspects I found disappointing. That said, the game’s presentation and music are genuinely quite good. Even with the flaws mentioned above, it still reads fairly smoothly as a sci-fi visual novel, and the writing is solid enough to make you want to keep going. It is suitable for a relaxed weekend playthrough. I would still give this game a positive review, because I have to admit that the story becomes quite engaging in the later parts. You can also really feel the care and effort the development team put into it. I look forward to seeing their next work become even better.

A really nice short VN with science;adventure vibes. The dev is really active in the community and super open to feedback and improvements, which was awesome to see. Definitely recommend this to anyone looking for a short VN experience which is still very satisfying!

MUILTIVERSES! TIMELINES! WHY CANT WE MAKE WHAT TO MAKE IT, BUT WANNA MAKE IT!!! for a indie vn, pretty impressive on the sci fi elements that really reminds me of root double especially not a huge fan of ai gen voices only if actual vas are hire (or even volunteers greenheads) thats my only gripe and the side routes are short and to the point like nonary/sominuim files games and give some insight on side characters and iris was my favorite cant wait for any upcoming titles from this dev! (and if a sequel is done, how in the world you can achieve that is the true ending but looking forward for it!) its nice

Synethesia isn't going to blow your mind, but for the price it's a decent enough game/story for those who enjoy visual novels. The base concept of the story is pretty interesting, though the side elements with the relationship drama feels out of place and shoehorned in. You don't need romance in every story, people! The graphics are fine, with some nifty stuff done around the Synethesia events. The voice acting is passable, though it does sound robotic in places, whereby the tone is completely off for the line that's being delivered, but it wasn't offensive or laugh out loud bad. Jase was the one that felt the most off, but then Jase just disappeared by the end, so I'm not convinced he was even intended to be in it originally and was just shoehorned in near the end to resolve some plot issues. The puzzles are ... there? There's some intriguing ideas presented by the superpower our protagonist has, but it does feel like they could have gone a lot further with this. It's also worth noting that some of the puzzles rely on colour, which I can imagine could be a problem if you're colour blind, but there are in-game methods to just skip them if needed. My biggest complaint would be that it plays it safe. For a story with a flowchart element much like The Nonary Games that it's modelled itself after, there isn't much complexity involved. For the first half you're literally following a straight line. When it finally does split, you have to go through one branch first before you can access branches two and three, and only after you've done those does branch four open up which is a straight run to the end from then on. For a story that built itself on the concept of there being multiple worlds where information is transferred subconsciously between them, there was real opportunity to play around with multiple routes based off decisions or the use of the casts various powers, that themselves lead to learning details that can be used to resolve puzzles in other routes that branch out into more world lines, all leading to a crescendo when all these differing journeys come together in the big climax at the end. What we got was a generic visual novel with a flowchart element grafted onto the top, which is a pity for such a cool idea, but again, for the price it's serviceable.

Honestly, I'm a bit uncertain how to feel about this. It's a nice change of atmosphere from the other two games in the series, at least. Though I felt there was potential for so much more. There were abilities that were simply there, of course for plot reasons, but still. And there was no real point to the adventure parts as the exploration and places you actually went were incredibly limited. Surprisingly, or not, this ended up being the shortest of the games, though I do have rather inconsistent reading speeds. And there were a number of lines that had words missing or some other small problem, and the backlog had some issues as well. I also, didn't really have much to say about the art unlike the other two games, though that was really because it was mainly just there, and didn't distract from the experience. Ultimately, I felt that among the three games this had some of my highest enjoyment, though being able to predict a number of the plot twists did wear me down a little. I also felt, overall, this was on par with Advent of Dawn, both having potential that was not fully realized. The VII Enigma > Advent of Dawn ~ Synesthesia 8/10

I tentatively recommend this game. While the premise and general outline of the story is interesting enough, I found it to be done in a too-rushed manner in some places. Some of the character motivations felt a bit too weak, and the pseudoscience felt just a bit off at times. It's mostly okay I guess. I don't regret buying and playing it.