We would like to thank the developer for providing us a review copy of this visual novel.
Eye of Saccharine is a new Indie Visual Novel made by SasDeRider, and happens to be one of the shortest VN’s I have ever played but it has given me a very memorable experience that is worth a review. It has unique premises and the art style is something that interests me as well.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Interesting story that is very odd
- Surprisingly good soundtrack
- Very nice art style that has a creepy feel to it
Cons
- The story is confusing to follow at times
Story/Characters
The story starts out with an unnamed female protagonist that is suffering from hallucinations and is trying to live a normal life to the best of her abilities. One day she sees an advertisement from a certain doctor who has made a revolutionary technology for diagnosing and treating these issues. It goes by the name of G.L.A.Z.A. The heroine does of course think it’s a little suspicious but decides to go anyway.
The ad does turn out to be truthful but she needs to go through an analysis. This requires her to dive into her own mind and try to understand the cause of all her problems. The doctor goes by the name of Dr. Akula, who has a mysterious charm to her which makes this whole thing more than meets the eyes.
The protagonist also sees a vision in her mind that is named the Wanderdere, where she will tell the protagonist things and what to do at certain points in the VN.
The story for this VN is interesting in its own right because it does not make sense, rather you will be confused on some of the plot points it shows. There isn’t really much character development and you can beat this VN in about 20 minutes if you are a fast reader like me. There are multiple choices that do impact the ending that you will get. There are a total of six endings in the VN although technically there are five unless there is a hidden ending that I did not account for.
The story for Eye of Saccharine is something of an oddity, I say this because it is rather confusing to follow at times. This may very well be one of the selling points of the game where they expect you to ponder the ending, I simply left confused and uninterested in piecing the story together at that point.
Soundtrack
One of the surprising points that this visual novel provided was the fact that its soundtrack is really good, like I really enjoyed hearing it. I found it very nice to listen to and it was one of the more interesting things that the game contained.
Graphics and Performance
The art style for Eye of Saccharine is actually really good. I loved how the backgrounds and the characters looked with deep dark blacks and almost like character sketches had come to life. The art style had a creepy feeling to it that gave you the impression that something odd was going on and I liked that. I tested the game on an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB, AMD Ryzen 5 1500X Quad-Core Processor 3.50, and 16 GB of RAM. I had a smooth experience with no issues while playing.
Final Verdict
While my time with Eye of Saccharine was short, I still had a good time reading through it. Even if the story was confusing at times, for the price of $2.59 CDN, it’s not too much to ask with the amount of content that was displayed.