Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog is the first game in a planned anthology by indie devs Space Colony Studios. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth buying
Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog Review Overview
What is Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog?
Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog is a visual novel adventure game developed by Space Colony Studios and published by Astrolabe Games and Meridiem Games. It is slated for release on February 20, 2025, on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch.
The game is set in the year 214 of the Planetary Calendar, four years after the Solar War, aboard the Jovian patrol ship Gun-Dog. Players take on the role of the ship's security officer, whose investigation of unusual signals from the edge of Jovian space quickly evolves from routine to a fight for survival against an unknown menace that threatens both crew and vessel.
Gameplay centers around point-and-click mechanics, enabling players to explore the ship, examine detailed environments, and engage in conversations with the crew. Careful attention to dialogue is essential, as it provides crucial clues and insights into characters' motivations. The game's visuals are inspired by classic PC-9800 titles, utilizing a retro green screen aesthetic reminiscent of 1980s science fiction.
Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog features:
⚫︎ Retro Anime and 80s Sci-Fi Aesthetic
⚫︎ An Entirely Explorable Ship
⚫︎ Compelling Cast of Characters
⚫︎ Multiple Endings
 Steam |
 Nintendo |
 PlayStation |
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| Price | $19.99 | |||||||
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Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 Engaging Story with Compelling Characters Nails the PC-98 Aesthetic Branching Dialogue Leads to Multiple Outcomes Action Sequences are Hype |
Audio Presentation Feels Lacking in Certain Aspects Introduction Could Have Been Better Too Short For a Visual Novel with Exploration |
Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog Overall Score - 86/100
It’s fascinating how Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog manages to feel complex with such simple gameplay. The writing is really the key here. Even seemingly simple conversations feel meaningful and contribute to the grander narrative at play. The game delivers some powerful emotional moments, but you’d have to wait for a while before seeing many of these. It's true that Gun-Dog suffers from a first act that can often feel like a slog. However, if you’re willing to stick with it, the game will reward you with a character-driven experience that will stay with you long after you finish playing.
Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog Story - 9/10
Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog explores the lingering trauma of war with an emphasis on the scars carried by its characters. I appreciated how the game establishes its emotional core from the start, focusing on the protagonist’s survivor’s guilt and the complex relationships aboard the JFS Gun-Dog. The crew’s interactions felt appropriately authentic, and this gave layers to their personalities that made even the initially abrasive ones likeable. My only complaint is that the game’s length left me craving for more, especially after reaching the cliffhanger ending. Still, Gun-Dog kept me thoroughly engaged, and I’m eagerly hoping for a sequel that continues their stories.
Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog Gameplay - 8/10
The game follows the classic point-and-click visual novel affair. It’s simple and doesn’t go beyond what it sets out to accomplish. I appreciate, though, how it invites players to explore the ship at their own pace and respects the player’s time by highlighting key objects, so they wouldn’t have to go pixel hunting. However, the game’s slow start might deter some players from seeing the entire thing through, especially given the dialogue-heavy nature of visual novels. But, really, that’s to be expected. These texts are the reward for exploring what the game has to offer, and dialogue choices often result in genuinely funny and surprising interactions.
Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog Visuals - 10/10
Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog absolutely nails the look and feel of classic PC-98 titles, making it one of the most visually striking indie games I’ve played in a long while. The sprite-based artwork is gorgeous, and when the action kicks in? It really kicks in. When the frames—the mechs—enter, you know you’re in for a treat. The cinematic flair of the cut-ins and effects makes these encounters feel explosive. While I wish there were more of these beautifully animated sequences, what’s here is already impressive given the small team behind it.
Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog Audio - 7/10
I like Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog’s soundtrack. It’s this awesome, almost overwhelming blast of chiptune music that just floods me with nostalgia for an era that I wasn’t even born in. However, I do think the sound design feels lacking in some aspects. Some sound effects are present, but at times, there’s silence where audio cues should be. I wish the game had more of them to help pull me in and make the world feel more immersive.
Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog Value for Money - 9/10
Even though it’s a shorter experience, Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog grabbed me and refused to let go. I was completely absorbed in the story and characters to the point where, I’m not ashamed to admit, I save-scummed my way to what I think were the best possible choices for them. For just $20, the emotional impact and sheer enjoyment I got from those 10 hours felt more than worth it. Plus, knowing there are different paths to explore makes me excited to jump back in for another ride and see how things could change.
Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog Review: This Gun-Dog’s Got Bite
I'll spoil the whole review for you right now: I love this game. What I didn’t expect—what completely blindsided me—was just how much Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog would sink its hooks into me. When I first saw it on Steam earlier this year, my thought process was simple: "Oh, neat. A game dripping in that PC-98, late-'80s sci-fi anime aesthetic. That’ll keep me busy while I wait for the heavy hitters of this year, like Monster Hunter Wilds and Xenoblade Chronicles X: Definitive Edition." But instead, what I got was something that made me crave a sequel before I'd even finished the first playthrough.
For those unfamiliar, PC-98 games were a breed of their own—Japanese PC titles from the late '80s and early '90s that boasted pixelated art and an atmosphere that games nowadays rarely capture. Some leaned into visual novel elements, like YU-NO: A Girl Who Chants Love at the Bound of this World, while others, like The Scheme, felt like the prototype for the Metroidvania games of today.
In Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog's case, it's one thing to wear the aesthetic of a beloved era, but it's another to nail it and then build a compelling game on top of that foundation.
The Ghosts of Gun-Dog
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Stories from Sol: The Gun-dog kicks off with the beginning of the end—the final days of the Solar War. The stage is set aboard the Jovian Carrier JFS Kalyke, where your character, a fresh conscript, finds themselves thrust into war with nothing but simulation training and a fragile sense of confidence. When the moment of truth arrives, it all goes horribly wrong. Your frame fails to disengage from the Kalyke, and you watch in horror as your entire squadron—save for one—is wiped out.
Fast forward four years later, and the war is over, but its ghost lingers. Your character, now a lieutenant after years of monotonous security detail, is transferred to the JFS Gun-Dog—a scrappy ship with an equally scrappy crew.
Trauma is the undercurrent of life aboard the Gun-Dog, and this shapes the cast. You, as the protagonist, wrestle with survivor’s guilt, thinking you could have changed the outcome of your squad if only your frame didn’t fail to deploy. Hansen Crwys, the only other survivor, holds a grudge at you and sees you as responsible for their demise.
Then there’s Cassandra, a high-ranking officer and your love interest, who deflects her pain with humor, a trait that keeps her from command despite her talents. Captain Merys Bartermews presents a laid-back exterior, but beneath that casual bravado is a drinking problem, her own scars from battles past.
Characters move and speak with an amazing degree of authenticity, and this makes it nearly impossible not to like them. Yes, even the ones who initially rub you the wrong way, like Lieutenant Vanessa Lord, for example, who seems to have made it her life’s mission to antagonize you at every turn, or Hansen Crwys, whose every interaction with you feels like he's one second away from throwing a punch. And yet, as the story unfolds, their layers start to peel back, revealing the complexities that make even the prickliest personalities feel entrancing.
Shaping the Narrative
Much of this is shaped by your choices. The relationships you build—or break—depend entirely on how you navigate conflicts, camaraderies, and crises. Throughout the game, you’ll face a range of decisions, from personal disagreements to pivotal moments that shape the fate of the crew.
Take your feud with Hansen, for example. At one point, it all boils over into a confrontation. The tension is thick, his anger palpable. How do you respond?
⚫︎ Do nothing—let him berate you and Cassie, take the high road.
⚫︎ Meet him head-on in a fistfight, settle things the old-fashioned way, one-on-one.
⚫︎ Shoot him with your shock gun, because sometimes, words just aren’t enough.
Each choice leads to different consequences, some immediate, some simmering under the surface until they explode later. Even seemingly minor decisions—like when and how you resolve a conflict—can trigger unique dialogue or shape the game’s ending in ways you won’t see coming.
This focus on player choice can even be seen at the start of the game, when you choose your pronouns. While this doesn’t appear to impact the story in any major way—aside from adjusted pronouns in dialogue and your appearance in certain scenes—it gives the players freedom to choose whatever feels right for them. It’s a small touch, but a really welcome one.
Paying Homage to PC-98 Titles of Yore
But if choosing how to handle tense standoffs wasn’t hard enough, the most agonizing decision will jump at you in the game’s settings: the visual style. Players can choose between three distinct modes: Doujin Mode, Studio Mode, and Vivid Mode.
As the name suggests, Doujin Mode mimics 1980s doujinshi or self-published manga. While Studio Mode is visually similar to Vivid Mode, both taking inspiration from classic PC-9800 games, only Vivid Mode embraces a full spectrum of color. Doujin Mode and Studio Mode, by contrast, are dedicated to their monochrome palettes—an homage to the phosphorescent monitors of the era. If you’ve ever seen Alien and admired the eerie, single-color glow of the ship’s computers, you’ll feel right at home here.
Personally, I stuck with Vivid Mode for most of my playthrough; its pixelated visuals popped beautifully on a big screen. But I couldn’t resist swapping to Doujin Mode every now and then just to see how certain scenes looked in it.
Walls Upon Walls Upon Walls of Text
As for its gameplay, Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog won’t be a stranger to anyone even remotely familiar with visual novels. Its UI is as classic as they come, with five self-explanatory buttons: Move, Look, Use, Talk, and Item. Each does precisely what it promises, and you’ll spend most of your time clicking around, interacting with objects, and wading through dialogue—mountains of it.
To those who love visual novels, this is hardly a deterrent; in fact, it’s a selling point. Clicking on anything remotely interactive rewards you with lines that may resurface in later conversations. A great example of this is an early scene where you and Cassie race everyday objects down a hallway. The loser owes the winner a meal. Later, when you both visit the mess hall, Cassie brings up that bet, her reaction shifting based on who won. It’s these little touches that make scouring for dialogue worth the time sink.
Starts Slow, Finishes Strong
That said, the game takes its sweet time getting started. The prologue does a solid job of establishing your character’s backstory, but once the actual game begins, the pacing grinds to a near halt. You spend a hefty chunk of Act 1 simply wandering the Gun-Dog, meeting the crew, and familiarizing yourself with the ship’s layout. While these introductions serve a purpose—some of the plot beats introduced here pay off later—I couldn’t shake the feeling that Acts 1 and 2 should have been merged.
Instead of a slow-burn onboarding process, I would’ve preferred if the game introduced characters more organically, integrating them into your daily security routine from the get-go. As it stands, Act 1 felt like a lengthy meet-and-greet, taking me over two hours to complete, while Act 2 finally delivered the pace I was hoping for. Unfortunately, Act 2 is surprisingly short—clocking in at around an hour—making the earlier sluggishness feel all the more unnecessary.
However, I can’t deny that there’s a certain charm to those early, quieter moments. Getting to know each crew member within the solitary confines of their designated ship area carries a cozy appeal. It’s almost like a slice-of-life interlude before the plot shifts into gear. And once the story picks up, oh, it really picks up. So enjoy those peaceful moments while they last—because they won’t last forever.
Text Boxes Can’t Replace Immersive Sound Design, Sadly
These scenes come to life through composer Daniel Goodman’s score, which echoes the sound of classic Japanese PC games with a touch of retro-futurist, space-age nostalgia. Goodman weaves distinct leitmotifs for key characters and locations. You’ll notice how a particular melody returns when characters face a challenge, or how a specific harmonic progression evokes the atmosphere of a scene. They’re often subtle, but they’re a powerful way the music enhances the game’s narrative.
But while the music soars, the sound effects feel oddly weightless at times. They exist, sure—but sparingly, punctuating only certain moments. On paper, this makes sense; the minimalist approach keeps the game from sounding cluttered. However, in practice, it often leaves scenes in silence, and these don't always work in the game’s favor. The soundtrack is lovely, and those few sound effects—like the Metal Gear Solid-esque alert noise when characters react with scandalized disbelief—are amusing. But beyond that, the game’s audio presentation sometimes feels like it’s emulating the vacuum of space a little too well.
Take, for instance, an early sequence where you have to manually open the ship’s airlock. These are massive, industrial-grade doors—hulking gates that should rumble, groan, and shriek against your efforts to open them. Instead, you get… nothing. Just an animation and a text box informing you that "you can hear the mechanism of the airlock groan and strain with each turn."
A Story Told in Silence
Now, it’s fair to say that not everything needs audio. This is a visual novel, after all. Reading is the core experience. Plus, given the game’s commitment to the PC-9800 aesthetic, the lack of voice acting isn’t surprising. But I do wish it had taken cues from modern visual novels that incorporate "beeping noises"—those that accentuate dialogue.
These subtle audio cues give dialogue a sense of presence. The best implementation of this can be found in Capcom’s Phoenix Wright series and Spike Chunsoft’s 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, where each character has a distinct beep or tone that reflects their personality, making it possible to identify them by sound alone. Even without full voice acting, you get the impression that they are speaking. As the game is now, if you strip away the character portraits and names, the dialogue blends together, indistinguishable from one speaker to the next.
For a game that otherwise does such a great job of crafting atmosphere, this feels like a missed opportunity. Audio is a powerful storytelling tool, and even small additions like these could have elevated the experience. It’s not a dealbreaker—I still loved my time in the Gun-Dog—but it’s a detail that could have made the game’s world feel that much more tangible, that much more alive.
Is Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog Worth It?
Yes, Even If It Leaves You Longing For More
I won’t sugarcoat it: Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog is rather short, even by visual novel standards. My first playthrough barely clocked in at 10 hours, and that’s with me soaking in as much of the game’s world as I could. But let me tell you—those 10 hours were some of the most captivating moments I’ve had with a game in a long time.
From the opening scenes, the game had me hooked, my eyes glued to the screen as I searched for every line of dialogue, and I haven’t even squeezed every last drop of the game’s story yet. But even then, I had more than a few moments where I found myself standing up, cursing at my screen at the audacity of some crew members, and cheering for characters like crazy.
All of this for just $20, mind you. And that’s without even touching on the game’s replay value. There’s one particular Act, in fact, that’s already got me itching to jump back in to see how my decisions could shift the story’s course.
It’s astounding to think that Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog is Space Colony Studios’ debut title. Even with all of its minor imperfections, this indie game has the potential to rival some of the bigger names in the visual novel scene. After completing the game, I reached out to some of the developers, and they mentioned how a sequel will be in pre-production soon. If The Gun-Dog is any indication, the next story from Sol is bound to take us to even greater heights, and I’ll be all in for the ride when it releases.
| Steam |
Nintendo |
PlayStation |
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| Price | $19.99 | |||||||
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Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog FAQ
Are there multiple romance options in Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog?
No. Your character in Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog already has a love interest in Cassandra/Cassie.
What pronouns can I use in Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog?
Players can choose from the pronouns he/him, she/her, and they/them.
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Stories from Sol: The Gun-Dog Product Information
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| Title | STORIES FROM SOL: THE GUN-DOG |
|---|---|
| Release Date | February 20, 2025 |
| Developer | Space Colony Studios |
| Publisher | Astrolabe Games Meridiem Games |
| Supported Platforms | PC (via Steam) PS5 PS4 Nintendo Switch |
| Genre | Visual Novel, Indie |
| Number of Players | Single-Player (1) |
| ESRB Rating | ESRB Teen |
| Official Website | Space Colony Studios Website |
I want to try it soon!