A friend last year recommended the VN Gnosia to me. I, being who I am, resisted for a while. VNs had hurt me. They had abused me. Pancaked my love for storytelling. But then, I saw the artwork for Gnosia and said "Screw it, letsago."
I grabbed it for the Switch and went to town playing it. It is the perfect type of VN to play in short bursts. For me, that meant before bed usually for 20-30 minutes a night. For those that don't know, Gnosia is a social deduction VN that plays out a bit more like Town of Salem than it does Among Us. For starters, the game's story is told in loops. You wake up at the start of a loop on a spaceship, assigned a role. The ship AI has detected a Gnosia may be on board. These parasitic aliens seek to infect each crew member and make it to a space port to continue spreading as far as they can. The goal of those not infected to to find the Gnosia and put them into cold sleep where they can spread no more.
Each character is assigned a role on each loop. Some may be engineers that can find out who the Gnosia is each night. There may be a doctor who can discover the identity of anyone put into cold sleep. Those with Guard Duty are those who never left the ship and therefore cannot be Gnosia. AC Followers worship Gnosia and do everything they can to help them. Then, anywhere from 1-4 characters can be Gnosia. They can lie, cheat, and steal their way to survival in order to either put every crew member into cold sleep, or kill each person. They can select one person each night to kill.
The main bulk of the gameplay is made up by debates, where characters discuss and vote on who they must put into cold sleep. Engineers and doctors share their reports, though Gnosia and AC Followers can like about their role to muddy and confuse the debate, or convince others that the true engineers or doctors are in fact Gnosia. Each character has stats that dictates how they will act during debates. One character, for example, who hates lying and is super perceptive, may be able to immediately tell when someone is lying, but has low charisma and as result, struggles to convince others of the truth. You yourself also have stats that go up against other characters stats to see how convincing you are, or how trustworthy.
The story is told in between the debates, as you can visit parts of the ship to talk to characters. Under certain conditions, you may get character events that shed more light on their character and their story. As you are only one of two people aware of the looping, you must discover as much information as you can to find a way out of the loop. For me, this took about 130 loops. Later in the game, you will be able to alter the starting conditions to better set up the conditions needed to trigger character events. And the game will auto-set them for you to nearly guarantee the character events as well if you so choose.
The game is addicting, pretty to look at, and the story quite engaging. It is the type of game better suited towards short bursts rather than hours long sessions as the loops can feel repetitive as you try to trigger events. As each loop normally only takes 5-10 minutes, playing for 30-40 minutes at a time can net a solid 3-6 loops which I think is a solid amount for a single sitting.
To sum up my thoughts, allow me to simply state, Setsu masterrace please play gnosia do it for setsu
thoughts?