planetarian HD The Stars Wait for You

This is a kinetic novel: there are no choices, no routes and no branching endings. You read the story from start to finish the way you would read a short novel, with illustrations, music and full Japanese voice acting carrying it along. That makes it a two or three hour sitting rather than a long project, and it means the whole thing is built as one straight line toward its ending. If you want a story to sink into for an evening, with nothing to optimize and no wrong turns to worry about, this is the shape it comes in.

Thirty years after the Space Colonization Program failed, a deadly rain falls without pause and humanity is nearly gone. A Junker, one of the scavengers who pick through the ruins, sneaks alone into a Sarcophagus City, the most dangerous kind of ruin there is. In its center stands a pre-War planetarium, and inside waits Hoshino Yumemi, a companion robot who greets him as her first customer in thirty years and shows him not a shred of doubt about it. She wants to show him the stars at once. The projector is broken. Somehow, he ends up agreeing to fix it.

The contrast is the whole point of the game. Outside there is gray rain, empty streets and a man with a grenade launcher who trusts nothing. Inside, a chatty robot in a dead planetarium insists on hospitality and talks about stars that no longer shine over this world. Her relentless optimism wears on the Junker at first, then slowly gets under his skin, and the story builds its quiet, somber mood around that slow thaw. The soundtrack, by Magome Togoshi, does a lot of the lifting: it is one of the parts people single out most, and the fully voiced performances give both characters a distinct presence.