SYNESTHESIA

Spiral Stairway to Heaven
SYNESTHESIA seems to be almost an antithesis of The VII Enigma, the developer's previous game I reviewed last year. Colourful vs drab; anime stylised vs western graphic novel look; typical (if compressed) VN route structure vs a procedural TV-show-like composition; a ragtag bunch of high school college kids, a Scooby-doo gang vs a professional, mission-oriented band of freedom fighters; in-jokes vs progress reports; in contrast, grand cosmological, eschatological concepts vs dystopic down-to-earth time travel. Yet, they're more alike than first meets the eye, eclectic at their core, scooping from many soups, as if following a recipe. It certainly seemed that this novel tried to stuff as many ingredients as to the point of overflowing, almost like this is the last pot.
Both are unabashed in their love for the meticulously technical sci-fi, resting on diligently crafted rigid (faux)scientific jargon that can prove overwhelming for those unaccustomed. However, SYNESTHESIA was, on the whole, more fun to read. The most substantial improvement is in pacing and exposition. I can't even say it's a fundamentally different approach, but while The VII Enigma was guilty of rather crude, dry exposition and relentless, extremely dense technobabble, SYNESTHESIA was enriched with something crucial that was missing previously: a sense of mystery, awe and wonder. So... mystybabble? ;P
And that is in no small measure thanks to the major Steins;Gate influence. In a lot of ways, it felt like SYNESTHESIA was following this classic VN's template just in a rather compressed form. And by that I don't just mean that there's a tsundere girl-genius, Eris; a kind girl next door, Isla; a cryptic one you must protecc, Maya; and the criminally underused best guy friend. Jase who? We're missing a catgirl and a femboy, but I digress. Familiar Japanese VN tropes are abundant (hell, this is an ELVN, yet it's set in some near future Japan), but more importantly, where this influence really paid off is in a gradual spread of mystery.
A big part of it is a route structure built around one true path, while all the others are side threads, leading into it, collapsed states that happen when you'd rather postpone the inevitable by prolonging simple, carefree days with your friends, seize them while they last, stretch the moment to eternity, the fleeting wonderful everyday. Thankfully slice-of-life is kept here at the bare minimum as all the side routes are compressed which, on the flipside, makes for unconvincing character backstories and motivations, most evident in Isla's story. There are even some light romantic moments, remnants of a truncated harem structure, but they're not the focus. Despite the shortness, these routes do their job in building up (to) the next. And therein lies a thematic resonance: they're like worldlines building off each other's failure for that one single, perfect line to succeed. The golden thread, the spiral stairway to Heaven, "a staircase built off the corpses of our alternates..." Even though character routes had left me underwhelmed, the road to true ending was paved, resulting in a much more satisfying read going forward. A cumulative effect of sorts.
Multiple routes seen as parts of one whole, slowly knitting the big tapestry is ripe for implementing the playable flowchart, like in Zero Escape. Even if the order of play is semi-enforced and divergence limited, it was refreshing being able to just jump between branches and onto specific forks. A lot of the things I wished for have been included, like interactive elements for one. Don't expect much, they're quite rudimentary, but those exploration segments and a few colour-based puzzles contributed to feeling a bit of agency in revealing the mystery. The designative synesthesia is interwoven throughout, as a gameplay and story element alike; not to mention, it makes for a colourful and illuminating world. This tingly, chromatic quality extends to music with a few memorable tracks, especially the tangibly vibrating one during mysterious revelations. It manages to transform what could've easily been many a dry lectures into something more awe-inspiring.*
"True resonance cannot be forged"
All of this is just a frame though. Mystical, cosmological concepts; paradoxes, conundrums and (pseudo)philosophical speculations are the meat of this VN, just wrapped up in a colourful anime package. It's a cauldron of a bit of everything: hard problem of consciousness, universe experiencing itself, propagating patterns and teleportation paradoxes in relation to identity and its continuity, nature and (super)structure of reality, higher dimensions, the shape of the multiverse etc. All of it caught in the mystery of the Golden Spiral and with it themes of repetition and endless cycles of death and rebirth with no exit. Ouroboros, the poor snake destined to devour itself for eternity... Add such ideas like conscious reach and karmic impression - which is just a more technical way to say that desire is born from pain and the will makes the world go round, or as one character put it: "true abstract longing of all reality" - the VN referenced plethora of questions from theoretical physics to metaphysics to mystical, spiritual traditions, especially Hindu cosmology. It's like an anime version of a unified theory of everything; heh, string thread theory. Ambitious and quite grandiose!
But is it in tune with the Music of the Spheres? Is syn(es)thesis achieved? The biggest challenge in science/philosophy-heavy fiction is how to organically weave it into the narrative fabric without it appearing artificial, superimposed, or pretentiously preachy. And it's a mixed pot here. It's meticulously thought out and strung together in abstract, exposed mostly through lectures, research, night visions and monologues. But it doesn't fully resonate emotionally for me, even though it strives to be emotive, a result of those compressed routes and simplistic characterisations. There's a discrepancy between typical anime melodramatic sentimentality and momentous, fundamental questions about existence and true nature of reality. My impression was that they are what the writer really wanted to answer, everything else is just a familiar, borrowed, almost ready-made casing. On the other hand, this hotchpotch of grand and silly is so anime in its own right and requires a taste for operatic flamboyance to fully appreciate. It'll sooner be transcending your mind than its VN roots.
Still, there's a lot to ponder in this litany of abstractions, but going deeper into it all is beyond the scope of this review, not just because of spoilers; I... don't have much to add. I know, preposterous! The game already said it all. Understated it ain't! On the contrary, it's overstated, overexplained, over-elaborate, especially the finale which I felt would've benefitted from more surrealism* (I’ll overexplain my pet peeve in the comments.)
Despite appearing like I got caught in winding convolutes trying to untangle all the threads, I genuinely enjoyed it. One question still lingers though. Is the spiral descending or ascending? Whichever the case, the only way out of the cycle is by... letting go. Not a spoiler, that's an ending all of us ought to know from the beginning. Right?!
"Don't look back, don't even look within. Look beyond..."
Follow Drugoja In The Dreaming down the spiral staircase

A very solid VN.
Some of the animations/CG are really visually pleasing and cool to watch for how abstract they are, you will see when you see them.
Music is solid too, arcade is a banger, other songs really sets the mood, my other favourite song is probably the "creepy" music (no idea how to call that)
Story was very well done and interesting, it introduces a LOT of scientific knowledge , but they are mostly very easy to understand and very interesting to follow ; Some good twists, although some a bit too predictable ; I love flowcharts, and this one was ... fine, the game doesn't really have a whole lot of choices, which is a both a + and a - , depending on if you like that or not (i personally like a more linear story)
It was hard for me to really relate to the characters and feel very emotional about them, they're kinda basic and not that interesting, though the special abilities was a neat touch ; Special mention to Jase which is the best character, but seem to also be a bit underutilized and just... there. Voice acting (which is semi-generated if i understand it correctly) was fine, though a bit too robotic (but that's to be expected)
Be wary that there's quite a bit of typos and weirdly translated sentences, which did makes some sections less impactful to me ;
I would definitely recommend this VN if you want a short, but solid story , which will fuck your brain, but in a very good way. I will definitely think about this game for a while because it talks about some really interesting subjects that kinda passionates me . Nothing is really revolutionary , but what it does, it does it really well.

Overview
Ziek and his long term friends Jase and Isla are college age teens with unusual cognitive talents which make them stand out from the crowd. They attend classes at a special educational facility solely for people like them; which also serves as a research institute secretly looking into this phenomenon. When a new girl Eris transfers into town and joins the class, their group of 3 becomes 4 and so begins their designs on discovering what goes on behind locked doors in the institute, why they have these abilities, and what can be done to stop them.
Ziek's own talent is that of the game title, Synesthesia, and for ease of understanding, he sees meshes of colours in places that either are or will become important to him. With Jase's ability to read emotions of other people, Isla's talent for advanced knowledge of what is about to happen (albeit only a few seconds ahead) and Eris' extreme intelligence taking precedence over her hidden talent, the teens are well set to conduct investigations. The group becomes expanded when Ziek meets the mysterious loner Maya, who just might be a figment of his imagination.. or is she?
In the classroom, early scientific theories expounded by their teacher Ms Keller can be somewhat cerebrally taxing, to the point that skimmers/speed readers are probably going to become lost over what is going on pretty quickly. The story does demand your full attention, so you should consider carefully if you are committed to observing the narrative carefully before taking the plunge. As the bigger picture emerges, theoretical expositions do become easier to follow, so even if you find it overwhelming to begin with but are enjoying the story, it's worth sticking at.
Graphics and sound
Overall the graphics are comfortably up to expected standard for the price bracket of the game. Backdrops range from straightforward to quite detailed, sprites blink and appear from different angles and look pretty good (apart from the diamond nose on two characters face-on, that looks so bad).
CGs are great and some animations are impressive.
All non-MC characters are fully voiced, and whether any of that voicing is synthetic or not really doesn't matter, they sound good and appropriate for the characters they represent. The MC is not voiced, which I know that some people prefer, but that decision does create an on-off experience with voicing whereby both protagonist and narration is silent but everything else is spoken. I wound up turning the music down (although, as I recall it was also above standard) because I wanted the audio to focus on the voicing.
U/I
The game scores very highly here. Aspects like a progress flowchart, character pen pictures (with graphic), in-story hyperlinks to reference explanations... is anybody else thinking Gilded Shadows? Honestly, if you're going to apply rarely seen features in your VN, falling in line with those seen in a genuine classic can only be a good call. When you consider that the main players in the story also have cognitive advantages, it would be easy to make yet another connection between these two games, but I can assure you that this is a totally unique tale; not a hint of merely being a variation of the other. You can safely play both without any sense of deja vu.
Saving and loading are accessed from the same menu button, and each individual slot has its own discrete button for each action. How many times in other games have you accidentally saved over a slot you meant to load? Yes, I've done it too. Clever design here makes such an accident far less likely in this game. Even tiny extra touches such as loading upon startup lead to the cursor moving directly to an option to load from the last save point. You don't even need to reposition the cursor. Little things like this add to player convenience, and therefore aid the overall experience.
Extras
The tips section (accessible from within the story in addition to the main menu) contains all of the reference descriptions in addition to the flowchart. This chart isn't solely to show you options not taken – there aren't actually a huge number of choices in game, but just enough to give the player agency – but as you progress, you will be able to use this to “jump” back to certain moments passed in the story and continue down a different path; thus lessening the chances of having to replay a large chunk of story because you didn't save at just the right moment. In addition to this, when you hit certain bad ends (and you will, but it's not a fatal game over situation), the game facilitates a direct jump back to the last divergence point so that you can continue down an alternative path. Nice.
Once you have been through all of the routes – namely Ms Keller, Eris and Isla, you will unlock the true route, and upon completion of this, you then gain access to brief epilogues of both female friends and “Maya” .. but not Jase. From a female perspective, although we're playing as a male MC (I did find both Eris and Isla to be so well rounded that I could almost progress the story as though either one was the MC – for a time, at least) I did find it a slight let down that Jase, as the best friend, felt more like a convenience character than a fully developed one. Then once through all of those, clicking the door on the main menu gives you one final extra sequence.
Verdict
Initially, do not come into this game lightly. It isn't easy reading for a half hour's relaxed session before bed. That said, as a well conceived and unusual story, Synesthesia unquestionably stands up very well within the visual novel genre and offers more than most of its competitors in the price range. Ultimately, the story trumps any romance, which means I didn't get the ending I'd have most wanted, but it isn't without some building of affection along the way; and with its strong storyline and set of interesting participants, it's a game well deserving of your library.
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Synesthesia is solid western VN.
This isn't dating sim and it is not a happy game.
Instead Synesthesia is sci-fy thriller where even true ending is kinda sad.
Story is pretty good and it will remind you of Steins;Gate a little.
Developers either did tons of research on the topic or pulled tons of **** out of their ***** (or both), I can't say which it is but the materials you go thru feels pretty good.
Game has English voice acting that isn't terrible.
I have to complain a little about English in game. I am not sure where Spire Games are from but some sentences didn't feel entirely English. I am not native speaker eihter so maybe it is just me but some parts of game felt like they were translated from another language.
Also the game is set in Japan but the names didnt feel Japonese. For example MC is supposedly from Sapporo but his name is Ziek and not only that is not Japanese name but I believe it can't be writen in Japponese unless you molest it horribly. (instead of si/zi they have shi/ji)

We would like to thank the developers for providing us with a free copy for reviewing purposes
Story
It is the year 2029, and people in the world have been awakened to new powers that they can control with their minds. The Huntley Scientific Research Institute has opened up to try and learn about these powers while teaching the students so they can harness their strange abilities. These abilities are called Synesthasia and each student at this academy has a different ability.
You are playing as Ziek, who has a unique ability of Synesthesia, where he can detect significant objects by splashes of color that will only appear in his vision. He just wants to live out a comfortable life with his friends, however, he is soon caught up in something that will change his ideal life at this school.
Pros and Cons
Pros
An amazing story that will twist your way of thinking
Great characters that have different personalities
Multiple endings
Beautiful art style
Cons
A few plot points were not explored fully
Certain characters were not fully explored
Speech synthesis AI voice acting
Story/Characters
The story for SYNESTHESIA is something of an oddity, it’s very Steins; Gate, and I loved it. There are times when I felt that the story made sense but also when I was just confused about how to put the pieces together on certain plot points. One character is telling me how this thing worked in the world or with the human brain and it made sense to me but I still had questions following it through my head.
I honestly loved this aspect of it and I wanted to experience more of the story, it was very unique in how it presented its theme and the character's abilities as well. The characters are a bit generic at times but they still shined at being well-thought-out characters, and that’s a good thing in my books. My favorite character had to be Jase, he stood out throughout the story and I enjoyed seeing him around throughout the story.
The story itself has also this science-like feel sometimes when it talks about certain things, like the threads being a part of the visual novel's world. Thinking about all of this stuff was confusing, yet I knew in a way what the characters were talking about. It also made my brain hurt sometimes but I think that’s what makes it special. Like it told you about all these other threads and how there could be other parallel worlds out there, it all just blends in to make a unique story.
There are a multitude of endings for you to get throughout the visual novel and each has a different outcome. Your choices do matter in the story, so make sure you get the correct choices if you want a certain ending. There are a total of nine endings in the visual novel and there are three bad endings for you to get, plus three epligioes if you so wish to view those. I liked how the branching paths were done for each of the routes and they all felt unique.
There is a lot to this visual novel that I could explain but it would be a little confusing if I did explain some of the stuff. It does not even spoil the story fully in a way, you just have to read the visual novel for yourself so you can understand what is going on, also you can even find some keywords to look through, which was a nice touch.
Although there are in fact two issues I did have with SYNESTHESIA, and the two issues are in fact, tied together. Certain plot points in the story were not fully explored and two key characters were also not developed fully to make sense of those plot points. The first character I want to talk about is Trace, who hates people who have Synesthesia abilities and the college they are in. Why does he hate them though and how did he get a bunch of people to agree to his cause, well, the visual novel never explored that, and because of that it just leaves an empty feeling.
There is also another character called Dr. Crane, who comes out of nowhere, works at the college can shut off Synesthesia abilities, and has certain technology to help aid them. It’s like he just pulls these things out of his pocket and expects me to just roll with it. It’s a little awkward and I just can’t find myself to really make any sense of the character. What are these machines or abilities that can do these sorts of things, well, it’s not fully explained either. I could give Dr. Crane a small exception to this rule, as I believe the writers were trying to give us this mystery-like feeling for the college and everything we see in it. Also, the fact that he was a surprise help to the group, was kind of interesting in a way.
Other than those issues, I did enjoy the story for SYNESTHESIA, I loved the ideas that were presented.
Graphics and Performance
The art style for SYNESTHESIA is really beautiful, everything is crafted in vibrant colors and feels very alive. It shows different areas of the city the characters are in and I like how it includes both bright and dark scenes. I tested on an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB, AMD Ryzen 5 1500X Quad-Core Processor 3.50, and 16 GB of RAM, I experienced no issues.
There is one issue I do have is with the voice acting. The visual novel uses speech synthesis AI, if you turn on the voices, they will sound a little robotic at times and this is because it does use artificial intelligence. I should point out that there were voice actors in the visual novel but they did not do all the lines and thus speech synthesis was used. Take this con as you will, I just did not like how they sounded with the robotic-based stuff. The only character who can’t speak is Ziek and there is an option to turn the voice acting off.
Also, one final note just to be clear, everything else in this visual novel is, in fact, handmade, so the art, character models, story, etc are human-made, just to make sure for those that are wondering.
Final Verdict
Overall, I think SYNESTHESIA is a pretty good visual novel for those who love sci-fi and mysteries. With its multitude of endings of different routes to go along with it, I can safely recommend this to those who love deep stories that make you do a lot of thinking, especially if you love Steins;Gate and are looking for something very similar to it.
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Spire games does a great job of blending intellectually sophisticated plot with compelling character arcs that make you question life in a way that only good story telling can (they literally get me in the feels every time and I hate it). I thoroughly enjoyed "the 7 enigma" and was keen to give this one a try and it did not disappoint. A word of warning though, if you're not into wrapping your head around abstract concepts and sending your brain into deep dives to stay ahead of the plot this might not be your gig (or maybe I'm just slow :P). Personally, I love the challenge and intrigue and it gives the plot depth and complexity. As someone has already mentioned, it's the kind of novel you keep thinking about well after it's finished and find yourself discovering hidden layers and connections, which is an oddly satisfying experience.
There are already some great in depth reviews here that do a great job outlining the basic plot so I won't go into the ins and outs of it (lest I spoil more than has already been written) but I will say this. The research that has gone into making the sci-fi premise feel believable genuinely impressed me. Of course, a good sci-fi mechanic is always a little outlandish, as is this one. But the hooks in real world concepts and theories are so well thought out, it makes the plot almost conspiracy worthy and for that it has my admiration.

A compressed version of Steins;gate.
Yes, that means the highs aren't as high and the lows aren't as low as S;G, but we also get into it so much faster.
The pacing is good, the characters are interesting and realistic, the science / tech jargon is accurate but not over-explained, the art is engaging and animated, the puzzles serve the story and are infrequent (so a nice change of pace), the music pulls you in, the romance feels natural, and the voice acting (though the game implies it is AI-voiced) is good. This visual novel is quite polished for a small dev team.
My minor complaint is the main character, Ziek, is a bit of a player-insert. He feels most defined by his relationships to others; though he does have a bit of personality himself. That's not my preference, but is more of an intentional design choice than a flaw.