Planetarian: Snow Globe

Genre: Visual Novel

Players: 1

.

Review:

(Note: This game is included in Planetarian: The Reverie of a Little Planet & Snow Globe, along with Planetarian.)

Planetarian: Snow Globe is a Visual Novel originally released on PC in Japan in 2021, then later ported to the West with a release on Nintendo Switch in 2024 and on PC in 2025. This game is a prequel to Planetarian, exploring the early days of one of that game’s main characters, the human-like robot Yumeni, purchased to act as a guide for a department store’s planetarium.

Because it takes place roughly 30 years or so before the original Planetarian, Snow Globe doesn’t contain any of the post-apocalyptic elements of that game, and is overall a much more lighthearted story, though there are moments later on where societal unrest starts to cast a shadow over that lighthearted story.

Mostly, this story focuses on Satomi, one of the people running the planetarium, as she tries to figure out why Yumeni keeps running off from her job. You get some of Satomi’s sadness at the waning interest in the planetarium and at the waning interest in space in general, and Satomi’s mixed feelings about Yumeni, but mostly this is a low-stakes plot that’s lighter in tone than the original game, and it’s a fairly self-contained story that doesn’t really answer any major questions that players of the original game may have.

As Visual Novel games go, Snow Glove is rigidly linear, with no player choice, and will take an about an hour to complete, depending on the player’s reading speed. The spoken dialogue is voiced in Japanese, apparently fairly well, and backed by a subdued instrumental soundtrack to focus the emotions on Yumemi’s innocence and Satomi’s melancholy musings. And the visuals have a decent style with static anime-style portrait images of Yumemi and Satomi, with detailed background shots.

There is one problem here though – Yumeni and Satomi are far from the only characters here, even if they’re the main characters, and it seems odd that other characters aren’t depicted with their own portraits. This is especially frustrating when at one point three or four characters are all talking at once, and it becomes more difficult to tell who’s speaking at any given time.

At the very least I suppose I did like the characters in this game better than the original Planetarian, though Yumeni can still be repetitive and annoying. On the other hand, this game is so short it doesn’t do quite as good of a job with character-building and world-building as the original game, making the story feel somewhat more disposable, and more like a bonus for those who enjoyed Planetarian than something players will want to play in its own right.

Given this, I don’t think I can give Planetarian: Snow Glove quite as high a recommendation as the original game. This is a short little extra, a nice bonus, rather than something that truly stands alone in its own right. Its short length can be mostly excused thanks to its smaller $5 price tag, but the lack of substance isn’t quite as easy to forgive. Still, if you enjoyed the original Planetarian, I think you’ll find this will make for a satisfying (and overall sweeter) companion piece.

tl;dr – Planetarian: Snow Glove is a linear Visual Novel with no player choice that is a prequel to the original Planetarian telling a largely self-contained story that focuses on the human-like robot Yumeni and her early days working in a planetarium. It’s a shorter story, but the smaller $5 price helps to justify this somewhat. However, it’s also largely disposable, and I think that ultimately this is mainly just going to serve as a companion piece for the original game rather than something worth seeking out in its own right. If you enjoyed the original Planetarium and want something a bit more lighthearted set in that same world, you may enjoy this look at that world during better times. Everyone else is probably better off skipping this.

Grade: C+

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