Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical – Review

Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical is a Roleplaying Visual Novel game developed by Summerfall Studios and published by Humble Games. This unique genre game will let you make songs with different Greek Gods. You will be singing and making choices throughout your gameplay that shape things up in the story and allow characters to react in a certain way. Although many other visual novel games are out there, none of them let you make songs with the top-notch Grammy-nominated composers.

If you are new to the Visual Novel genre but played many other AAA titles of other genres, the first thing that you will get to notice is the voices of the infamous characters from the Last of Us game series. Your main protagonist, Grace is voice acted by Laura Bailey (Abby from Last of Us Part 2), and Calliope voice acted by Ashley Johnson (Ellie from the Last of Us game series). These will be the first two characters whose voices you will get to notice and you will see and hear them sing. Not only that, Apollo, the Greek God of Sun and Light is voice acted by Troy Baker (Joel from the Last of Us game series).

The premise of the game is to find the murderer of the last muse, Calliope, and clear your name from the false accusation of the murder. You play Grace, a college drop-out girl who has been given the power of a Muse upon her death. From the beginning, you will sing the songs according to the lyrics you select. You can change the lyrics the way you like and the rhythm of the song and expressions will change accordingly. However, not far into the story, you will get to visit a Pantheon of Greek Gods where you will get to meet all the different Greek Gods.

All the Gods will blame you for the murder of Calliope and with your new powers, it is in your hands to clear your name by your choice of method. The choices are unique in this musical novel. The basic choices are simple as you get to select them to select a certain tone for the moment but the major choices will let you select the path you want to approach the situation in. Whether the situation lies in between singing a song or in dialogues, you will get to select a path by Charming, Kickass, or Clever. Charming will keep your character in a calm state while Kickass will make your character more aggressive. The clever option will make your character think more loudly and make the logical facts.

Apart from the whole story and how it plays out, the one thing that will keep you engaged is the Art and Hand-Drawn characters. The places in the game are deeply enhanced with the design. From a simple room to a luxurious hall, you will get to see the depth of art design that will make you go WOW! The voice acting in Stray Gods is another plus point for the game as the voice actors nailed the voice acting for the characters and premise of the game.

Another thing that is worth mentioning is the key element of the game which is singing and songwriting. The fact that songwriting and singing are top-notch in this game is because of the Grammy-nominated composers, Austin Wintory, and the Australian Band Tripod.

The game itself is not that long as it hardly takes 3 hours to complete the whole story but throughout the game, every aspect of the game is created so well that in the end, it might feel you a bit quick episode.

Verdict – Score 9/10

Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical is a unique experience and this addition to Visual Novel games might change the scope for upcoming Visual Novel games. The effort, the art design, the voice acting, and the music composition, everything is put together so well that you might forget about the characters’ mouths not moving when they sing or speak. It is not a major flaw because the characters are hand drawn but some people might take it into consideration so, we mentioned it anyway.

Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical is available on PC. PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X|S, and Xbox One.