Video Game Review: Seer’s Isle

Seer’s Isle

Nova-box

Visual Novel

Nintendo Switch

Seer’s Isle is an interactive graphic novel by developer Nova-box about a group of young people who travel to a remote island to undergo a series of trials set forth by “The Seers”, mystical beings somewhere between gods and nature spirits. As an interactive graphic novel – or, to put it in more conventional video game terms, a visual novel – there’s really not much to be said about the gameplay, so the merits of Seer’s Isle must be judged based largely on the quality of the writing.

From the onset, the prose of the game’s narration is flowery, but not overly so. The overall mood of the game is one of mystery and mysticism, and the writing style helps to set that up in a very effective and satisfying way. The dialogue is also strong, with the characters each coming across as distinct, believable, and consistent in their personalities and motivations. The timelines of the characters’ developmental arcs are perhaps a bit odd, given that some of them change rather drastically in the span of three days, but this comes down to a matter of taste given the extraordinary circumstances they face. There was an issue I had early on where the narration’s tense was inconsistent, and while this is typically one of the worst things a writer can do it actually works in this instance – though I can’t say why without revealing some significant spoilers. Just trust me on this one.

The mood of Seers’ Isle is also helped along by its visuals, which are absolutely gorgeous in terms of both art style and the actual scenes being depicted. Much of the game has a slightly muted (though not uninteresting) color palette, which makes it all the more striking when a scene departs from this and shifts into much more vibrant tones. Typically, these shifts are accompanied by phenomena linked with The Seers, which helps to build the aforementioned sense of mysticism. Occasionally there is music, and while the soundtrack is nothing particularly memorable it is effective and setting up scenes and I was at least able to recognize a few motifs.

It’s not uncommon for visual novels to have multiple paths/routes, but Seer’s Isle approaches this convention slightly differently than most. There are quite a few branching outcomes to explore as well as some differing combinations of them, but trying to get them all wouldn’t be too onerous as Seers’ Isle can be read start to finish in probably about three to four hours. And trust me: you’ll want to play through it more than once. The first time I reached an ending I immediately started over because I wanted to see what else I could learn about the characters and world, compelling as everything about the story is. “Replayability” is perhaps not the right word for a visual novel, but there’s definitely some lasting enjoyment to be had.

As a final note, I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of diversity the game displayed. There are a couple of characters of color and even some of the most tasteful lesbian content I’ve seen in a video game, which absolutely tickled me pink. It is exhausting as both a gamer and student of history to constantly see arguments about “oh you can’t have gay people/people of color in medieval Nordic settings, it’s just not realistic” made by people who don’t know the first thing about historical demographics and pre-Christian culture in Europe, and it’s nice to see even small games like this starting to push back against that trend.

In short, Seer’s Isle is a strong and evocative piece with plenty to make it stick out from the rest of the visual novel crowd. The port to switch seems to have been handled well, so I really can’t think of any reason not to recommend giving this one a read.