"BURIED STARS" is a new mystery Communication x Survival x Adventure game developed by Team Largo and LINE Games Corporation. BURIED STARS is an adventure game that takes place at a collapse site of a live audition show. The trapped survivors communicate with each other, and through social media, while waiting for the rescue team’s arrival. But an unexpected turn of events splits them apart and drives them into a corner.
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Buried Stars is the first Korean VN I've played. If I didn't know any better, I would've thought it was another JP one since the mechanics and presentation aren't particularly different than many JP ones. Of course, the game deals with Korean characters in Korea so that's different.
The story deals with a few young B-Tier celebrities on some sort of music talent reality show. In the middle of the finals stage, the ceiling begins to collapse. The contestants soon find themselves alone and trapped within the venue building along with one staff member. From there, they try to get in contact with the outside world while finding a way to escape. A person later winds up dead setting up a murder mystery.
Despite the murder mystery, that element doesn't get much focus. A large portion of the game has the survivors stand around and chat about various topics relating to the current situation inside, the in-game twitter chats and their prior histories and backgrounds. A major theme of the game deals with Korean celebrities, the reality shows and the dark side of the entertainment industry there.
These segments do reveal a lot about the characters and gives them quite a bit of depth by the end of the game. They are written pretty well overall. Getting a look into what does on in the industry is also interesting.
The murder mystery elements are also solid despite not having a lot of time focusing on it. The circumstances of the death would be explored throughout the game instead of in one moment. The setup works well and is fairly grounded in the genre so that it's very reasonable to figure out how a character died.
Figuring out the culprit is another question however. The game throws a lot of red herrings at you and it took me pretty much right before the reveal to get the complete picture.
The character art looks great as well as the few CGs in the game. The backgrounds looks decent, but there isn't much variety. The whole game takes place in the building, but there are very few rooms that the characters visit.
The music has some rock elements, but otherwise has a lot of oppressive songs to reflect the tension filled atmosphere.
The gameplay is mostly split into two segments. The main story segments are pretty much linear with little player control. Other than a few dialogue options, you're just watching a lot of people talk here. In between those, there's the investigation segments which gives you a lot more control over what to do. You gather topics from the various "twitter" posts during a moment and discuss them with the other characters along with any other story relevant topic at the time. At the minimum, you need to gather all of the keywords for this part before you can advance. In some cases, you need to use every topic for every character to get all of the keywords.
Some of the topics can adjust the trust the characters has in the MC. Some of them gives you a dialogue choice which can also alter the trust. The MC himself has an insanity gauge which gets adjusted throughout the game and from the topics he has with the characters. You get a game over if the gauge hits 0.
Other than these investigation moments, there isn't much else for gameplay.
The story route structure is a bit strange at first. You're forced to go down a linear route and reached the first ending regardless of the choices you make. You then have access to the story split on a subsequent playthrough, but unless you have a save just right before the split that occurs pretty close to the first ending, you'll have to replay that segment again.
The game essentially has 3 story routes (A, B and C). A is pretty good overall. While B provides the additional information that A didn't have, it was generally a disappointing one. C is short and not really a full route, but an amusing one.
Overall, the mystery is decent and it did leave me guessing until pretty much the end. I enjoyed the exploration of the characters and focus on the characters as well. I did wished that there were more major story events since it just feels like there isn't that much that happens.
There isn't an in-game timer, but I figure it takes about 15-20 hours to complete all of the story routes.
The story deals with a few young B-Tier celebrities on some sort of music talent reality show. In the middle of the finals stage, the ceiling begins to collapse. The contestants soon find themselves alone and trapped within the venue building along with one staff member. From there, they try to get in contact with the outside world while finding a way to escape. A person later winds up dead setting up a murder mystery.
Despite the murder mystery, that element doesn't get much focus. A large portion of the game has the survivors stand around and chat about various topics relating to the current situation inside, the in-game twitter chats and their prior histories and backgrounds. A major theme of the game deals with Korean celebrities, the reality shows and the dark side of the entertainment industry there.
These segments do reveal a lot about the characters and gives them quite a bit of depth by the end of the game. They are written pretty well overall. Getting a look into what does on in the industry is also interesting.
The murder mystery elements are also solid despite not having a lot of time focusing on it. The circumstances of the death would be explored throughout the game instead of in one moment. The setup works well and is fairly grounded in the genre so that it's very reasonable to figure out how a character died.
Figuring out the culprit is another question however. The game throws a lot of red herrings at you and it took me pretty much right before the reveal to get the complete picture.
The character art looks great as well as the few CGs in the game. The backgrounds looks decent, but there isn't much variety. The whole game takes place in the building, but there are very few rooms that the characters visit.
The music has some rock elements, but otherwise has a lot of oppressive songs to reflect the tension filled atmosphere.
The gameplay is mostly split into two segments. The main story segments are pretty much linear with little player control. Other than a few dialogue options, you're just watching a lot of people talk here. In between those, there's the investigation segments which gives you a lot more control over what to do. You gather topics from the various "twitter" posts during a moment and discuss them with the other characters along with any other story relevant topic at the time. At the minimum, you need to gather all of the keywords for this part before you can advance. In some cases, you need to use every topic for every character to get all of the keywords.
Some of the topics can adjust the trust the characters has in the MC. Some of them gives you a dialogue choice which can also alter the trust. The MC himself has an insanity gauge which gets adjusted throughout the game and from the topics he has with the characters. You get a game over if the gauge hits 0.
Other than these investigation moments, there isn't much else for gameplay.
The story route structure is a bit strange at first. You're forced to go down a linear route and reached the first ending regardless of the choices you make. You then have access to the story split on a subsequent playthrough, but unless you have a save just right before the split that occurs pretty close to the first ending, you'll have to replay that segment again.
The game essentially has 3 story routes (A, B and C). A is pretty good overall. While B provides the additional information that A didn't have, it was generally a disappointing one. C is short and not really a full route, but an amusing one.
Overall, the mystery is decent and it did leave me guessing until pretty much the end. I enjoyed the exploration of the characters and focus on the characters as well. I did wished that there were more major story events since it just feels like there isn't that much that happens.
There isn't an in-game timer, but I figure it takes about 15-20 hours to complete all of the story routes.
The art is rlly good
bro this game was so tense?? they absolutely nailed this oppressive, claustrophobic atmosphere, to the point where I was reluctant to play it late at night for fear of being TOO wound up to sleep afterwards. plughole's appearances were always a breath of much needed levity for me. as a coward, maybe this is a biased experience. also, as a coward, you could not pay me to play the abyss route.
my consistent feeling of unease while playing was encouraged by my deep attachment to the cast. they were all multifaceted, carrying their own sympathetic motivations and deep-rooted flaws and personalised brands of Idol-Industry-And-Media-Representation Trauma. i didn't want any of them to be the attacker. even when i started noticing some signs of the culprit early on, i allowed myself to live in denial during the whole internet troll arc. "it can't be them", i would say, putting on my clown shoes, "because there's no way they'd avoid getting any blood on their clothes." the ultimate reveal was appropriately heartbreaking and i care them. i care them so much.
while i thoroughly enjoyed the plot and characters, the gameplay itself was a slog. i loved scrolling through phater and despairing at how tragically realistic it was, but aside from that, the communication sequences were rough, and that's coming from someone who followed a guide religiously. the pacing almost always slowed to a crawl at these points, which created this bemusing stop-and-start pace as we moved back and forth between communication sequence and traditional visual novel. given the trial and error nature of these sequences, i don't envy those determined to play the game blind.
that aside, i still believe this game is incredibly underappreciated. among the positives i've already mentioned, it's stylistically beautiful, and do-yoon is a fantastic protagonist. i might never recover from the emotional trauma <3
my consistent feeling of unease while playing was encouraged by my deep attachment to the cast. they were all multifaceted, carrying their own sympathetic motivations and deep-rooted flaws and personalised brands of Idol-Industry-And-Media-Representation Trauma. i didn't want any of them to be the attacker. even when i started noticing some signs of the culprit early on, i allowed myself to live in denial during the whole internet troll arc. "it can't be them", i would say, putting on my clown shoes, "because there's no way they'd avoid getting any blood on their clothes." the ultimate reveal was appropriately heartbreaking and i care them. i care them so much.
while i thoroughly enjoyed the plot and characters, the gameplay itself was a slog. i loved scrolling through phater and despairing at how tragically realistic it was, but aside from that, the communication sequences were rough, and that's coming from someone who followed a guide religiously. the pacing almost always slowed to a crawl at these points, which created this bemusing stop-and-start pace as we moved back and forth between communication sequence and traditional visual novel. given the trial and error nature of these sequences, i don't envy those determined to play the game blind.
that aside, i still believe this game is incredibly underappreciated. among the positives i've already mentioned, it's stylistically beautiful, and do-yoon is a fantastic protagonist. i might never recover from the emotional trauma <3
please for literally one second stop talking about your smart watches and other inane shit. there's a dead body in front of you!
i only played the A route. you could not pay me to sit through another 10 hours of the most braindead Big Brother dialogue or sit through the most uneven pacing in the B route. it'll be the most high octane edge-of-your-seat thriller for like half an hour and then its just people talking about their bands and how the other staff hated them or past contestants for like 3 hours!
such a frustrating read man honestly dont bother, go read Root Double it's literally just this
i only played the A route. you could not pay me to sit through another 10 hours of the most braindead Big Brother dialogue or sit through the most uneven pacing in the B route. it'll be the most high octane edge-of-your-seat thriller for like half an hour and then its just people talking about their bands and how the other staff hated them or past contestants for like 3 hours!
such a frustrating read man honestly dont bother, go read Root Double it's literally just this
kpop twitter drama: the visual novel. points off for some overly complex mechanics and lackluster resolutions to plot threads. anyway when's gyu-hyuk and do-yoon's wedding
I came into this game with practically no knowledge, it looked vaguely similar to Danganronpa which I enjoyed so I just kind hopped in on a sale. What Buried Stars turned out to be was a Korean visual novel with some semblance of Danganronpa's mechanics, but it's own interesting story.
Basically, you play the role of one of the top contestants in a show sharing the same name as the game where the goal is to essentially raise the most hype and votes from fans. However, in an accident the show's stage collapses trapping the top 5 inside, and you are forced to uncover what happened and why while keeping your sanity through the whole situation. At first, I felt the game moved quite slowly, and I still maintain that it does take a while to pick up. This is exacerbated by the fact that your first playthrough will always end in a predetermined way. Thus, you have to play through up until that point again where you can take a different route to a more fulfilling ending.
That last point gets at my major complaint with this game, its quality of life. The game is structured to be played multiple times for different endings, but lacks the ability to: see what dialogue you have already encountered or is unchanged (let alone skip it), know where the story diverges into different routes, jump freely to different points in the story, etc. This makes for a lot of guesswork if you like to play games blind like I do. I ended up using a guide to figure out how to get the different routes, and I would recommend you do to if you plan to try the game.
That all said, Buried Stars actually had surprisingly good writing and convincing characters. Once I got a good chunk through, I started to notice the intricacies of each character and explore them by conversing on some of the optional topics. During that time, you can also check the in-game social media app to see if people are talking shit, worried, etc. which really adds to the atmosphere. I enjoyed how the plot unfolded as well, my only complaint is that there was not a very big difference between the way the two main routes of the game play out.
Buried Stars is worth a shot on a considerable discount, but as I said I strongly recommend using a guide due to the sometimes annoying play experience.
Basically, you play the role of one of the top contestants in a show sharing the same name as the game where the goal is to essentially raise the most hype and votes from fans. However, in an accident the show's stage collapses trapping the top 5 inside, and you are forced to uncover what happened and why while keeping your sanity through the whole situation. At first, I felt the game moved quite slowly, and I still maintain that it does take a while to pick up. This is exacerbated by the fact that your first playthrough will always end in a predetermined way. Thus, you have to play through up until that point again where you can take a different route to a more fulfilling ending.
That last point gets at my major complaint with this game, its quality of life. The game is structured to be played multiple times for different endings, but lacks the ability to: see what dialogue you have already encountered or is unchanged (let alone skip it), know where the story diverges into different routes, jump freely to different points in the story, etc. This makes for a lot of guesswork if you like to play games blind like I do. I ended up using a guide to figure out how to get the different routes, and I would recommend you do to if you plan to try the game.
That all said, Buried Stars actually had surprisingly good writing and convincing characters. Once I got a good chunk through, I started to notice the intricacies of each character and explore them by conversing on some of the optional topics. During that time, you can also check the in-game social media app to see if people are talking shit, worried, etc. which really adds to the atmosphere. I enjoyed how the plot unfolded as well, my only complaint is that there was not a very big difference between the way the two main routes of the game play out.
Buried Stars is worth a shot on a considerable discount, but as I said I strongly recommend using a guide due to the sometimes annoying play experience.