I have always complained that Visual Novels are inherently inaccessible because they often lack accessibility for the visually impaired. However, what happens when a game surpasses those issues, telling a strong narrative with powerful music and fantastic acting? Well, you get Stray Gods.

Stray Gods is an Urban Fantasy Narrative “Roleplaying Musical” where you play Grace, a young musician who feels lost after leaving school to pursue musical dreams. She meets Calliope, who happens to be one of the Greek gods known as Idols. After Calliope winds up dead, her power passes to Grace, but Grace is suspected of her murder. She has six days to find the truth, or she will be killed in retaliation.

The game plays out similarly to a visual novel, but each scene gives you a variety of opportunities to make dialogue choices. Additionally, at the start of the game (and at one point further in) you can choose a stat that defines Grace’s personality. Each choice you make (and your temperament during songs) changes how things play out.

Because of all the various changes and choices, Stray Gods has a variety of (slightly different) endings. There are also a variety of love interests you can pursue amongst the Greek Gods. Pursuing these romances can change your ending a bit, though it doesn’t quite change the over-arching narrative. The storytelling is genuinely masterful, portraying themes like loss, mental health struggles, and the downside of immortality.

Each act of the story is accompanied by various musical numbers, each with beautiful vocals and strong acting behind them. I’m a fan of musicals, but even if you aren’t, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better soundtrack to a narrative game like this. Between the music and the art style, with colorful visuals and hand-drawn animation, Stray Gods is a feast for the senses.

If you have problems with text-based games, there are a variety of accessibility options to increase the text size for subtitles. There are also a variety of options for the hearing impaired, from audio descriptions to more descriptive subtitles. Stray Gods is also fully voiced, which goes a long way.

The only issue I had with Stray Gods, is that on the Nintendo Switch, it had a few performance issues. I had precisely 3 crashes during my playthrough, but the autosave was so frequent that I didn’t lose much progress. There were also a few laggy moments during scenes, but nothing that kept me from enjoying the game.

I really hope that more people check out Stray Gods. It might be one of my favorite story-based games I’ve played all year. There is a lot of replay value too, and the world the developers have created is ripe for exploration. If you’re looking for a narrative experience that has a lot of attention and love put into it, give Stray Gods a try.

A Nintendo Switch review copy of Stray Gods was provided by Humble Games for this review.

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Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical

$29.99 USD

9

Score

9.0/10

Pros

• Gorgeous Choice-Based Soundtrack
• Interesting Cast
• Beautiful Art Style
• Powerful Storyline with Replay Value
• Accessible Gameplay

Cons

• Minor Performance Issues and Crashes
• Endings Aren't Super Varied