Wah, I have been so inactive here lately. Seems like Love Rec. took too much of my time, haha~~ (Damn Clephas you speed hacker I'm only just onto the 3rd route and you are already done with the whole June eroge ). Taking a break from Love Rec., I decided to try out a VN that has been sitting in my Steam library for quite some time - Voices from the Sea. Released on September 16th 2014, Voices of the Sea is a short OELVN flash game from Zeiva Inc, which you can play for free, or purchase the Plus DLC with the price of $6 to get the game fully voiced and unlock some features like galleries, side stories... Now, let's see what we have here...

SYNOPSIS

Follow the story of a young boy, Cantus as he meets Maris, the mysterious girl by the sea - an experience that will change his life forever. Collect seashells, unlock hidden Wallpapers, Theaters, and Side Stories as you sit back and enjoy this cute relaxing story.

CHARACTER

1. Cantus

Protagonist. A serious-type loner that doesn't have a single friend. He never smiles, and dislikes every kind of "noise" that he has to hear everyday - including other people talking to him. The only things he loves are sitting on the beach, listening to the ocean waves and collecting seashells.

2. Maris

A mysterious strange girl that Cantus met on the beach. She is cheerful, energetic and has a beautiful voice, but absolutely suck at singing. It seems like she loves food, or maybe she is just a glutton. Also, she has a terrible sense of humor.

STORY

The protagonist of the game - Cantus - hated the "noise" that he had to hear everyday. Because of that, he spent most of his time chilling on the beach - his favorite place - while listening to the ocean waves. To him, that's the only place where he could find solace. But then, one day, his heaven was disturbed by a voice calling out to him. It's from a strange girl (Maris) that he had never met before. After a short introduction, they talked a bit about each other (mostly about Cantus). Before leaving, Maris told him "I will come here again tomorrow, because I have not yet seen your smile. Give me seven days, and I will make you smile!". And that's how their strange relationship began - the boy kept coming to his favorite place as usual, and the girl was always there, trying to make him smile by numerous of silly methods. Gradually, the ice surrounding his heart began to melt, he talked a lot more to Maris, and even to other people at school. Finally, in the last day, he learnt about what he had lost, regained his smile, and it was also the last time he saw Maris, before he had the chance to learn about who she really was.

The story is really short, only about 30 mins length. Most of them are the inner thoughts of Cantus about his "miserable" life and the silly conversations between him and Maris. The story itself is nice, but I think it still needs more development. They purposely left a lot of questions in the game for players to find out blind guess and create the "mysterious" feeling for the VN, but it's kinda going against them: why could Maris attract his attention and make him talk, but not other people? Why "seven days"? (this is actually a question that Cantus asked himself in the game, but no answer was given). The unknown identity of Maris I can tolerate, but not these, they are just some too important factors of the story that cannot be left unexplained. The unsatisfied feeling after finishing the game is reaaally annoying, you see.

The choices in the game are pretty much all the same: there will be two choices, the first one is just there for you to unlock additional conversations and CGs, then return you back to the choice. The second one - "Look for seashells" - will progress the story. A little bit weird with their style of "seashells can solve every problem", but I guess I will just let it passes...

SYSTEM

The story-progression choice "Look for seashells" will give you a "minigame" (well...not really, but I will just call it that way) where you can find seashells on the beach and show them to Maris, then she will give you different reactions depend on which seashells you found. However, this does not affect the story in any way.

The game itself used Flash Player. I'm not sure this is the limit of a flash game or the programmer is just suck, but the game does not have a backlog, and you won't be able to scroll back dialog pass a CG (basically, if you just went through a scene with CG, then you can only scroll back up to the first line after the CG), same with choices. There is no confirmation when loading game or overwriting a save, so be careful with that.

GRAPHIC

On the OELVN's scale, the artwork and animation are pretty nice. There are some weird SDCGs, but I will just ignore them....

I mean, they are not bad, they are just...not my taste.

VOICE

The game is fully voiced in English - if you paid for the DLC, that's it. However, it's horrible. Yeah, there is the fact that I don't like English VAs in general too, but this is just...unbearable. The voices are badly recorded, and the voices acting themselves are just as suck. Are they seriously charging me for this s***? If you can't do the voicing properly, then don't do it! Save your hard-earned money for other stuff!

MUSIC

The savior for the horrible voice. They are not special, but can still give you a peaceful feeling, and at least, you will not need to play the game in silence.

CONCLUSION

A decent VN for a short break from work/study. However, you should just get the free version only. DO NOT buy the DLC, because it's a total waste of money.

Pros:

- Relaxing story.

- Nice art.

Cons:

- Unexplained questions.

- Horrible voice.

- No backlog, no confirmation on save/load.

- $6 for s***ty voice and CG/music gallery.

Score

Story: 6/10

Character: 7/10

System: 5/10

Graphic: 8/10

Voice: 2/10

Music: 7/10

Overall: 6/10