This free to play visual novel by Zeiva Inc was funded by kickstarter and follows the experiences of a young boy named Cantus who is depicted to spend his time alone at the beach. This all change when he meets a girl name Maris, the mysterious girl by the sea and her encounters with cantus will change his life forever. The story follows Cantus and Maris adventures throughout the week and with each day following the first, is about Maris’s attempts to make cantus smile. While these events unravel we learn more about Cantus reasons for spending time by sea alone and the connections that Maris has to it. As time progress we see Cantus connection to Maris grow and his curiosity eventually getting the better of him. As for the ending that’s for you find out for yourself. It's only about 40 minutes, depends on how fast you read so if you ever have time to spare it is a fun read.
Plot and characters: The Plot is what most people would call a slice of life and supernatural, with ending already planned out and the choices you make only adding a few lines of dialog. The characters are great and Maris for me being the most likable out of the four, with her having the most personality out of the characters. Often being happy and energetic and this contrasts with Cantus personality with him showing little happiness and connections to others. As he spends more time with Maris he begins to become connected again, not only to Maris but others in his life. The other characters are what most would call side characters those being Cantus mother and a classmate. Cantus mother is used to show some of Cantus other feelings, this mainly being anger, and we also get to see the disconnect at home for Cantus as well. In the end, we do get see some progress in his relationship with his mother and Maris helps play a role in connecting those two again. Finally, we have his classmate and since the focus of the story is at the beach we don’t see much of him, but he does play an important role. He is the person that makes Cantus question who Maris is and why did she appear in front of him in the first place.
Artwork and Music: The artwork for this game is wonderful and most of the art you can find on google and the artist’s Deviantart
has other wonderful art as well. The sad part is that there isn’t that much animated CGs which is kind of a letdown, but I don’t believe that’s needed in this story. Mainly the background moves, and I think it was a nice touch. The music was nice and enjoyable as it was light, relaxing and made you feel like you were at the beach. A few of them made some of the scenes more powerful and made the art more enjoyable.
Voice acting: The voice acting is only accessible through DLC and I don’t know much about it, but along with the DLC you get some backgrounds, character info, Music gallery, 9 Wallpapers, 3 Theaters and 2 Side Stories. In my mind I don’t think you should buy it because the side story is what I would call a gag reel and a prologue. I would however, buy just to support the developer and to experience the side stories myself.
Overall this VN is recommended as free to play and if you have a half an hour to spare you should play it as it shouldn’t take too long to finish, and I think a lot of people would find it a heartwarming tale. I loved it and I’m glad that people started a kickstarter and made this game free or else I would have missed out on a nice story.
Links:
Download the game Here!
Deviant art Here!