Sound Of Drop - fall into poison -

Sound of Drop is a indie horror JVN by aiueo Kompany. It uses Ren’Py, a fact I didn’t realize until the credits rolled. It’s about a schoolgirl named Mayumi who visits Manten Aquarium at the urging of her best friend Himeko, who is obsessed with urban legends. Manten is rumored to be the site of strange phenomenon and Mayumi is reluctant to go for personal reasons but she acquiesces. Shortly after arriving, she get experiences the strange phenomena firsthand.

This indie VN has refreshingly solid production values, with a limited but effective soundtrack. It’s an unvoiced branching game with a total of 31 endings, 4 of which are true endings. Four playthroughs are required to complete the entire story. Red choices possibly lead to death and blue choices don’t affect the storyline. There is a neat feature to auto-quicksave before each choice, which can be useful when ferreting out the bad endings. The translation is a bit stiff.

This game feels like Corpse Party at certain points. It’s not as visually gruesome, but it features haunted spaces, fueled by grudges, that overlap with our reality. I really enjoyed the eerie imagery, and the corpse-party-vibe exploratory segments are the strongest points of the game. Unfortunately, there are too many bad endings and some are repetitious and don’t add to the story. After the first ending the metaphysical explanations and rules for the Aquarium’s state become more convoluted and a little difficult to follow. I wasn’t sure if that was the script or the translation or both.

I finished my first PT in about 5 hours and 100% the game in 12. Looking at the cheev stats, 42% of players have started the game, which is unsurprising since this was in a Humble Bundle. Probably 20% beat the game once, 15% start a plus game, and 10% fully complete the game.

This was a game on my list that happened to be in a really juicy Sekai Project bundle. aiueo Kompany’s next game, Fatal Twelve, should be out in English this month. It sounds more like a supernatural mystery/thriller than a horror title, and I’m interested in trying the demo, but I’d like to see a stronger translation.