Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog Review

Despite being a certified “youngin’”, I do sometimes find myself enjoying games and movies with a more retro bent. Space Colony Studios’ Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog is one of those sometimes, a visual novel adventure game harkening back to the PC-9800 and ‘80s sci-fi stories. As a huge fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation, there was no way I wasn’t going to be interested in this. Heck, not only is the plot about a starship (the titular Gun-Dog) investigating strange signals, much like in that classic show, but several minor characters’ names are direct references to people from all over Star Trek as a franchise. However, does The Gun-Dog live up to its inspirations? Can I ignore my obvious bias in the game’s favour? I’d say yes!

As alluded to, the story of The Gun-Dog starts simply enough: four years after the end of a brutal war between planets, your nameable protagonist — whose entire squad was nearly obliterated in their first battle at the tail end of the war at the start of the game — is reassigned to serve as the security officer on the Gun-Dog, a Swift-class ship full of the military’s rejects. The crew’s first mission is to support another ship deep in space that’s investigating strange signals. However, between mysterious power outages, no assistance, and copious amounts of terrifying laser beams, conspiracies emerge and even when all the crew has is each other… not all of them are what they seem.

Interestingly enough, the protagonist is a fully realised character, even though you get to choose their name and pronouns; I, for one, went with Rin Ravell, she/her extraordinaire, and for the sake of not having to say “the protagonist” every time, I will be using her name here as well. I usually expect games with customisable protagonists to go through limited characterisation, presumably to allow the player to feel free to imagine their avatar however they wish. Yet, while Rin had plenty of her decisions dictated by the player, her personality came through with ease. Every decision feels consistent with how she feels in a given moment, even when those choices vary wildly. Plus, you get so much of her thought process through her lovingly detailed narration that it becomes easy to get attached to this stressed-out, snarky goofball.

You tell 'em, Rin! Cubes are silly! Resistance is futile!

While a large part of Rin’s fantastic character can be attributed to her emotive narration, it’s also because of all the personalities she interacts with. The Gun-Dog’s nine-person crew is a small but varied cast, each with something unique about them to make them immediately stand out from one another. Adding to that, most of the cast also gets plenty of development and brilliant spotlight scenes, giving each person a bit more depth. The best part is how each of them builds on and feeds off of each other, especially Rin. This comes into play with people she knew before, like her amazing goofing-off champion of a girlfriend, Lt. Cmdr. Cassandra Quinn, and the inimitable jackass pilot, Ens. Hansen Crwys, the other survivor of Rin’s initial squad! Yet this also applies to everyone she meets aboard the Gun-Dog, whether they be the constantly tunes-jamming gunner Dylan Dees or the conniving Vanessa Lord.

My favourite in the cast is one Chief Engineer Mackenzie Cathays, or “Chief” to the rest of the crew. She’s gruff and doesn’t have much time for nonsense, as can be seen when she chastises Cassie for losing pens in her engines, but she also has an analytical mind and a complicated, confusing well of engineering knowledge. Rin quickly develops a healthy fear of the Chief, but also a deep respect; this helps to make the engine room a sanctuary from problems on the rest of the ship and helps to put the Chief in a sort of mentor role. She then continues that role more literally with Junior Engineer Cdt. Dalton Grange, a young lad with clever ideas and a wealth of anxiety who both Rin and the Chief can provide some much needed encouragement and assistance.

I will say, while I did only make one full playthrough of the storyline (outside of a few replays of the different endings), I noticed that a few characters got sidelined a bit. I understand, of course, that the main cast having the majority of the development, characterisation, and screen time makes sense, so I have no real problem with there being a disparity between how much I can get to know Cassie, the Captain, or Hansen versus the rest of the crew. Even so, when I took my approach of trying to talk to everyone at every opportunity, my attempts were far more fruitful with the Chief, Dalton, and Vanessa than with the others.

The remaining trio (the aforementioned Dylan, Hansen’s sunglasses-toting co-pilot and best friend Haru Rumney, and the ship’s overly literal Dr. Seifer Rosarium) do still get their chances to shine, but they're either few and far between or dependant on easily visible moments. I was particularly disappointed that I didn’t get to see more of Haru, as their few highlight scenes showed them to be a very funny character, easily bouncing off of Hansen’s bully routine or finding the exact right places to tease Rin for maximum embarrassment. All this is not to say that these three didn’t shine as interesting characters, but all of them could have been highlighted more.

Speaking of different possible routes and how they change which characters are prominent, I found The Gun-Dog to have a fantastic memory of my decisions. Yes, some choices do that thing where they meld different outcomes together but with differing tones, but this visual novel still did a fantastic job keeping track of different things that I did or didn’t do. For instance, early on, you have a chance to check out Rin’s quarters before Cassie takes her on a tour of the Gun-Dog. In my playthrough, she turned out the lights before leaving, because that’s just what you do when you leave rooms, gosh darn it! Then, at the tail end of the tour, the dating duo went into Rin’s quarters… only for the lights to still be off and Cassie to start teasing her girlfriend about it. There are a great many scenes here that only exist if a few other events have already happened or that reference information you only may have obtained, all without holding the player’s hand. Each and every one of these was a delight to behold, showing off the care and attention that went into both the writing and skill with the Ren’Py engine.

Beyond that, there were also some fun point-and-click elements, with a few things to interact with, either to Use or Look at, on every screen. The different options available to you are shown with big, chunky buttons on the right side of the retro-futuristic UI framing the screen, including Talk, Move, Item, and opening your personal datapad to look at Tasks, Info, and a fast travel Map system. With the setting primarily being the Gun-Dog herself, there’s admittedly not a wide amount of variety in location, but the fact that the results of every Use or Look option change with the plot moving forward really helps to make the ship feel like a lived-in, changing space.

The visuals and audio mostly stick to that retro-futurism, with chunky tactile ship parts everywhere and sweeping sci-fi chiptune tracks for the soundtrack. In regards to that music, one standout moment for me was in a few of the endings: there’s a sequence where you have to check over your facts before proceeding, and there’s this track playing that is both tense and determined, sounding a lot like something out of an Ace Attorney title in a dramatic scene. Honestly, it’s too bad the soundtrack isn’t on Spotify because I would love to add this to my playlist.

Another way that The Gun-Dog reminded me of Ace Attorney was in its character animation. They’re represented with your typical visual novel-style sprites, though occasionally, there are some neat cut-in moments with special animation for important or funny scenes. Plus, each member of the crew has at least one sprite featuring limited but very expressive animation. In a nice touch, you also get the option of picking between full-colour, green greyscale, and less-detailed green greyscale visuals, with the cast and ship still looking very nice in each iteration.

Before I close out, I’d like to quickly talk a bit about The Gun-Dog’s ending as well, but I won’t be able to avoid spoilers in this next paragraph, however mild. Skip to the last one if you’re wary of those!

Though The Gun-Dog comes with a variety of different paths, it ends in roughly the same way for two of its main cast, with little room for change. Every part of the main plot was resolved in an interesting fashion and the only questions left unanswered are the ones raised in the ending itself (at least if you know where to look). Even so, there's a foreboding note that drowns out the catharsis in this otherwise hopeful story. Yet that hope isn't absent, as the game leaves open a few plot hooks that show Space Colony Studios has every intention that this is only the start of a longer series.

With those last few semi-spoilery notes out of the way, Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog is a very solid outing for science fiction and visual novel fans alike. There’s a lot here for people who love to look at everything and talk to everyone in their games, especially if you can appreciate a well-written protagonist and fun references to other works. Outside of some personal opinions about the writing, I can’t find much to fault The Gun-Dog with. Sure, this isn’t the most complex thing out there, but it doesn’t need to be. This is a good story told well and, sometimes, that’s all you need.