Stories From Sol: The Gun-Dog

Genre: Visual Novel / Graphic Adventure

Players: 1

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Review:

Stories From Sol: The Gun-Dog, released in 2025 on PC, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch, is a Visual Novel with Graphic Adventure elements that is the first of what aims to be multiple stories set in a future where a domineering Earth has come into conflict with its space colonies, leading to the colonies fighting for independence and a fragile peace forming.

After a prologue during the final battle before independence, The Gun-Dog’s story takes place some years later, where the player’s character is recruited as a security officer on the titular Gun-Dog, a colonial scout ship being sent to investigate suspicious signals at the edge of colonial space. However, shortly into this mission, something goes awry and players must struggle to ensure that the ship and its crew survives.

One thing Stories From Sol: The Gun-Dog does well is providing a good sense of tension during dramatic scenes, with the game exploring themes of war, survival, and post-traumatic stress. At the same time, there are also moments of levity, with the game doing a good job injecting humanity into all… well, into most of its characters.

On that note, The Gun-Dog does a good job giving us an interesting group of characters in the Gun-Dog’s crew, which includes a detached captain, an overbearing engineer, your jerkwad rival who unfairly blames your character for the deaths that occurred in your prior battle during the war for independence, and your bubbly long-distance girlfriend, meeting you in person for the first time. These along with a small handful of other equally-striking characters will find each other both cooperating to deal with crises and also coming into conflict with each other as personalities clash and personal grievances cause schisms in the crew.

There are a few areas that I think The Gun-Dog doesn’t do quite so well. There definitely seems to be some padding in the story here, which can really slow down the pacing at times. Also, there are times when it isn’t entirely clear what you’re meant to be doing next, leaving players fumbling around looking for a way to drive the plot forward.

However, despite these issues, the story is overall well-written, and the visuals are excellent too, with the game using 2D pixel art visuals with a retro anime art style that calls back to classics in the medium like Macross, Space Battleship Yamato, or if we’re looking at the medium of videogames, Hideo Kojima’s Sega CD classic, Snatcher. Though the expressive characters also sometimes call to mind the original Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy.

These visuals are joined by a chiptune soundtrack that’s not especially memorable, but mostly does a good job highlighting the emotion of the current scene, though I will say I got really sick of the game’s “tense situation” music, which is not pleasant to listen to and can go on for quite a while.

However, overall I found Stories From Sol: The Gun-Dog to be a solid sci-fi story with a great retro feel and strong characters (and it also makes excellent use of its fairly small 338MB file size). Fans of any of the games or franchises I mention above would do well to give this game a look, and I feel like this is a strong start to what could prove to be an excellent franchise.

tl;dr – Stories From Sol: The Gun-Dog is a Visual Novel with Graphic Adventure elements that puts players into the role of a security officer newly-assigned to the titular Gun-Dog, a futuristic scout ship sent to investigate a suspicious signal in space. This game’s story, characters, and sense of tension are excellent, and the retro anime art style is delightful, though I do think the pacing and soundtrack could do with improvement. However, this is overall an excellent entry in the genre that’s well worth trying for both fans of Visual Novels and Graphic Adventures, as well as sci-fi aficionados – this is a game sure to please both.

Grade: B

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2025 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Best Graphic Adventure / Visual Novel, Best Story, Best New Character (Lieutenant Commander Cassandra Quinn)

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