Ghostopia Season 1 Review: A Weird and Wayward Eternal Winter
I don’t know that I’ve ever had to think about a visual novel review as much as I’ve had to with this one. Usually, they’re fairly straightforward. It’s easy enough for me to figure out what’s good, what’s not so good, and how things all flow together. That wasn’t really the case with Ghostpia Season 1. For the first time in quite a while I found myself almost as lost at the end of the game as I was at the beginning, although probably not for the reasons you’d expect. Ghostpia Season 1 purposefully sets itself up to look and feel like a dream, and that’s exactly what it did to me. It was comfortable at first, but soon got a lot weirder than I expected, and by the time it was over, I wasn’t really sure how I felt about anything anymore.
Ghosting Gameplay
Just sit back and relax—you’re in the passenger’s seat for this one!
Visual novels have never really been known for their gameplay elements, what with them being digital books and all, but Ghostpia brings that to a whole new level. Taking the term “visual novel” to its most literal meaning, there is nothing in the way of player interaction outside of basic functions like saving, loading, and checking text logs. This means that what you see is what you get. Honestly, I don’t really have strong feelings about this one way or the other, and I completely respect Chosuido’s decision to tell the game’s story in the way they intended. It probably helped them when it came to visuals, too. Considering the amount of love and attention that went into creating the hauntingly beautiful visual landscape of Ghostpia (they really did perfect the “illustrated kids’ book” style that they were going for), I’m sure creating everything that’s already there was painstaking enough—doubling or tripling that amount sounds like it would be a nightmare.
A Bright, White Desert
Ghosts may be unkillable, but that doesn’t make them immune to pain.
As far as setups go, Ghostpia Season 1 is pretty on-point. The game begins by introducing you to Sayoko—a young (?) woman who, despite appearing to be alive, calls herself a ghost. But she’s not actually sure that she is a ghost… that’s just what everyone calls themselves. You see, she is one of 1024 people ghosts living within the confines of an isolated city, in the middle of a seemingly endless snowscape, in which every day is essentially the same. While there are a few laws that ghosts are beholden to—such as their inability to be out during daylight (they literally melt)—they can’t die. Well, they can, but they’ll literally respawn in the town garbage dump the next day, good as new. In fact, everything respawns in the garbage dump, including food that’s been eaten. And, yes, the food is good as new, too. It’s a weird place, but everyone’s been living there for so long that no one really questions it… that is until news of a 1025th ghost reaches our loner of a protagonist’s ears.
All-in-all, I really like the setting behind Ghostpia and I think it’s got some really neat sociological concepts going for it. On one hand, because ghosts can’t die for good, certain things like killing and mortality aren’t given quite as much thought as you and I might give them. On the other hand, however, despite these ghosts apparently having lived for thousands (possibly tens of thousands) of years, there still seems to be a yearning for proper human society that keeps them going—ghosts (with Sayako as the single exception) go do things like go to work, behave properly in public, and seemingly conduct themselves in a way that is less befitting of an immortal being and more befitting of an average human (albeit perhaps with a bit more reckless abandon). Maybe I’m looking into it too much, but the fact that Ghostpia Season 1 even went into enough detail to make me think as much as I did made me happy.
All Style…?
At the very least, you can’t say the game doesn’t look great.
Before going any further, I’d like to point out an obvious counterpoint that can be thrown at just about anything in this review—the fact that Season 1 only serves as the first half of Ghostpia. It could be that anything that I call out in this review gets addressed in Ghostpia Season 2. There’s a problem with that, though—Ghostpia Season 1 is being sold as its own game, meaning that it’s going to be judged based on its own merit alone. Season 1 is $20, and if people don’t like what they’ve experienced so far, then they’re not going to pay another $20 (assuming it’s the same price) just to see how it ends. And, while this game has one of the most gorgeous artistic styles that I’ve seen in a long time, and a very nice soundtrack to boot, I’m not sure that stellar sights and sounds can make up for everything else being a tad on the wonky side. So, while it’s 100% okay for you to call out the fact that I don’t technically know everything that’s going to happen, I still have to judge Ghostpia Season 1 on its ability to tell a story and captivate an audience the same way any other VN might.
Okay! So, with that out of the way, I’m just going to rip the bandage off straight away, here—I don’t really know if I “get” Ghostpia Season 1. I’m not saying that I literally don’t understand it—it was written in a fairly straightforward manner despite its complex subject matter—but, despite one of its taglines being “all story no fluff,” feel like there was a whole lot of fluff going on, here. Now, to be fair, I’m pretty sure that that tagline was mostly a snipe at VNs that include QTEs (haven’t seen too many of those, personally) and branching paths (not sure why they’d actively go after that, but whatever), but I’d also consider focusing too much on plot-irrelevant topics to be “fluff.” And Ghostpia goes a lot of that. In all honesty, I feel like you could skip chapters 3 and 4 (at the very least) and be just fine. While each of the game’s five chapters served some kind of purpose in their own right, the kernels of plot-relevant usefulness often needed to be picked out from an abundance of narrative fluff. And, while I’m normally fine with narrative fluff (side-stories and careless banter can be a lot of fun in their own right), I couldn’t help but feel that a lot of this extra dialogue ultimately did more harm than good for Ghostpia‘s four featured friends—especially when it comes to the game’s leading lady herself.
Creating a character for a story is difficult. You need to give them a name, an appearance, a story, and a personality—you literally need to give them everything. Most importantly, however, you need to make these things come together in such a way that they become relatable to the reader in some way. I can’t say that I felt that for Sayoko at all. While I was really rooting for her in the beginning, I quickly saw someone who I assumed to be a quiet loner turn into a violent, selfish, manipulative, and emotionally unstable person from whom I wanted to distance myself. Sayako is objectively a bad person. This isn’t some kind of revelation—it’s something that Sayako states many times over throughout Ghostpia. It’s also a trope that’s used plenty. But, generally speaking, there’s still something that ties you to a protagonist—bad person or not. I believe that Ghostpia‘s “scumbag with a heart of gold” hook for Sayako is supposed to be her connection with her friends, especially Yoru. It’s supposed to show that, once she gets to know someone, she begins to care for them. But this is all ultimately foiled by the existence of one other character—Clara.
A Little Clara-ty, Please?
The game treats this like a “good guy” moment, by the way.
Sayako’s close-knit circle of friends consists of three other girls—the haughty, rich, and powerful Pacifica, the intelligent, tomboyish mechanic Anya, and the 1025th ghost, Yoru. Outside of this circle exists a girl named Clara. Clara’s a curious, hyperactive nun-in-training for the town’s church who’s every bit as caring as she is naive (which is a lot). Everyone in Sayako’s group absolutely loathes Clara for what basically amounts to petty jealousy over the fact that Clara, being as friendly as she is, is beloved by the entire town. This is completely fine and could make a great setup for some pretty great comedic moments. But Ghostpia takes the group’s relationship with Clara, particularly the relationship between Sayako and Clara, to a really weird place.
I’m going to be as vague as possible here for the sake of avoiding spoilers here, but Clara is subjected to instances of abuse (both physical and psychological) and/or death in every chapter save the first. Taking into consideration that the characters are ghosts, this has the potential to be pretty comedic. In fact, Ghostpia does have some really comedic deaths strewn about… but those all involve different characters. With Clara, you get what feels like some kind of weird mash-up between the Kenny deaths in old-school South Park episodes and what feels like a personal grudge against someone who wronged the developer in some way. These deaths are particularly violent compared to others (skewering, dismemberment, etc.) and are usually instigated by Clara trying to do something kind for someone else. And, while Sayako does not ever directly kill Clara, she’s indirectly responsible for what happens to her more often than not.
I think that we, the audience, are supposed to inherently dislike Clara, but the story gives us little reason to aside from the aforementioned jealousy and the fact she works for the church—which is apparently bad, but they haven’t really done much, so I can’t say much one way or the other. Whatever the reason, having what appears to be a small child mutilated and crying in pain in one scene, immediately followed by Sayako and her friends working together to save the day, was complete tonal whiplash and kind of made my stomach churn each time it happened—and I say that as someone who likes the Corpse Party series.
I’m Okay Waking Up
Given that the bizarre, dreamlike world of Ghostpia Season 1 already took me to the halfway point, I’ll admit that I’m morbidly curious to see how things end. However, given how quickly things went from sweet to sour, I don’t think that I’d be too upset if that didn’t happen, either. Ghostpia Season 1 undeniably has some of the best visuals of any visual novel that I’ve seen in years, and its dreamy soundtrack compliments it wonderfully. Unfortunately, its strange choice of protagonists, tendency to focus on (seemingly) unimportant details, and habit of changing tone too quickly make it hard to digest all that easily.
Final Verdict: 3/5
Available on: Nintendo Switch (Reviewed); Publisher: PQube Games Ltd.; Developer: Chosuido; Players: 1; Released: May 23, 2023; ESRB: T for Teen; MSRP: $19.99
Full disclosure: A Ghostpia code was provided to Hey Poor Player by the publisher.
