I love medieval history, whether it be the High Middle Ages that this game takes place in or the transition out of the Roman Empire to small kingdoms. The one slightly off-putting part of this game for me was that it broke my historical immersion sometimes. At a time when I’m playing other games that ostensibly go for historical realism in Pentiment, Kingdom Come, and Inkulanati, this game wasn’t necessarily going for that, though it stays true to medieval beliefs in many ways. Even when it comes to visual and audio stimuli, the anime style and drum & bass/acid jazz soundtrack of this game were slightly jarring. They were certainly not worth putting down what is otherwise a good game.

The game itself is a visual novel. While I’ve used that label for other games, in this one it truly fits. There is no choice you as the player can make. You simply advance the story frame by frame, line by line. Visually, the story takes place in and around a medieval convent. The art style seems to be a form of rotoscope with drawn characters interposed on to grainy photos of the convent as background.

The cast is (almost) entirely limited to the nuns of the convent, including the protagonist, an anchoress released from her cell so that she can investigate a murder. I won’t spoil the story other to say the mystery is deeper than a murder (shouldn’t surprise anyone) and this is volume 1 so don’t expect a resolution. The story is pretty good with the biggest strength being the characters. Not only was each individual well written but their interpersonal dynamics work well. Each woman is depicted with flaws and strengths in varying degrees. Those flaws play together to create good tension and sympathy for the characters. It’s to the game’s credit that I never really felt like there were moments that strained credulity beyond the aforementioned anachronisms. There are weird moments but they get explained later on. There may be a supernatural element to the story; that will hopefully be resolved in the next volume. The actual mystery is really secondary to the character study here, though it never abandons the mystery entirely.

I played it on Steam Deck and it was mostly okay except the game would regularly freeze. I found myself saving almost every minute or two to avoid losing a bunch of progress if it froze. I don’t know if this is a Deck issue or if it happens on other platforms.