Ghostpia Season One

Genre: Visual Novel

Players: 1

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Review:

Ghostpia Season One is a Visual Novel released in 2023 on PC and Nintendo Switch, the first of two planned “seasons” in this game’s story, which is set in an odd town surrounded by a snowy desert and peopled entirely by 1024 ghosts who awaken at night and dissolve into nothingness at dawn. In this town, we follow the story of Sayoko, a socially awkward girl who both yearns for and dreads interactions with two girls who it turns out are her only friends, Pacifica and Anya. While these girls all try to live in this static place for what seems like an unchanging eternity, the three come to learn the shocking news that for the first time ever, a 1025th ghost has arrived in town, and the trio decide to seek out this newcomer.

Ghostpia is a game of interesting juxtapositions, with a 2D anime art style that often looks childishly-scrawled, but is interposed with moments of beauty, with well-animated intro scenes between “episodes”, with these visuals joined by a soundtrack that shifts between moody atmospheric pieces like Footprint and Garbage, and more upbeat and jovial themes like Friend and You.

Both the world and characters of Ghostpia are something of a mystery. Sayoko and her friends are seemingly adults with adult vocabularies, but often act immature and juvenile (the girls early on giggle at calling the dictatorial church running this place “poop”), and Sayoko herself early on wonders if Pacifica is a grown-up child or a grown woman somehow made childish. Sayoko has a constant feeling like everything is hazy and she can’t seem to be able to dream… but is that just her? Why does everyone have trouble remembering things in this place? Whenever anyone is killed (which can happen violently at times), they reappear not long after no worse for the wear, and forgotten or consumed items and food return to the dump outside of town, but why? What is this place? Why is an unexploded missile at the center of town? And are these people really ghosts, or is something else going on?

The unclear nature of this game’s events is exacerbated by a somewhat nonlinear method of storytelling and its severe shifts in tone, and Sayoko can sometimes be a frustrating protagonist due to how she can be outright antisocial at times. However, at the same time, given the purgatory-like nature of this place and Sayoko’s clear desire for the same human connections that give her extreme anxiety, it’s understandable why she’d be so… well, difficult. Also, players who prefer their Visual Novel games to have meaningful choices won’t find that here – this is strictly a linear story.

However, Ghostpia’s intriguing world and the mysteries its story introduces, as well as its surprisingly complex characters, make this a fairly unique Visual Novel, and one worth checking out, especially if you enjoy something that’s a bit different and out of the norm.

tl;dr – Ghostpia Season One is a Visual Novel about a strange town peopled only by ghosts, and specifically a socially awkward girl who discovers that for the first time ever a new ghost has arrived in town. This game presents the reader with some interesting mysteries, and while its protagonist may take some warming up to, the plot can have some wild mood swings, and there are no choices to make in its story, this is such a unique work that it’s well worth giving a try for fans of the genre looking for something different.

Grade: B

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