Stray Gods – Cozy and Musical

I remember seeing some posts over social media with some graphics and teasers of Stray Gods – it looked pretty nice. When I read the full title, Stray Gods: The Roleplay Musical, I was surprised and excited. I never PLAYED a musical! It's not like I am a genre fan, but I love to listen to a good voice and fine-tune. So, I added it to my wishlist. I bought it on some sale, and it was piled with other games "I'm gonna play someday" for quite a while. Recently, I felt a bit overstimulated and wanted something calm, so I stumbled upon this one. And it was just the right time! Spoiler: I enjoyed the game immensely.

The game was created by Summerfall Studios and released in August 2023. It's available on any mainstream platform and published by Humble Bundle. I played it on PlayStation, though it's also on Steam with more than 2k reviews and a "Very Positive" rating. The game is essentially about a girl, Grace, who sings in a band and gets involved with ancient Greek Gods, who are still around, hiding from the mortals. Not getting into the story too much – it's a detective visual novel and a musical. Never played those before, actually, it was my first!

Graphics

With the graphics of this game, I have some questions. While the style is appealing and beautiful overall, the character design is interesting and quite diverse, but the lack of animations today makes it look cheap. If I would be completely honest, I learned the information about the studio behind it when I had already finished the game, and I was surprised. The game look feels like it could be done with a single talented artist. And today, indies can make a game like this and even a bit better looking. So, it's not like I was to devalue the work of the Summerfall Studios, but I was not that impressed.

Gameplay

As this is a visual novel, the gameplay here is quite simplistic. Mostly, it's dialogs, where you can ask questions and choose the direction of it with up to 3 choices. The roleplay component here is that you can choose a trait – you are either clever, charming, or kickass, which is also blue, yellow, and red. And if you played David Gaider's games from Bioware, it would be pretty familiar. However, I liked how you can tweak the songs during the game by choosing different "trait" options.

The game has some replayability – you can choose between two major "patrons" amongst the Gods and have a few different outcomes in a bunch of situations that will have some effect at the end. Ah, and you can romance characters here. Of course, you can. I don't mind 😇.

Atmosphere

The atmosphere in this game is the strongest part of the thing, in my opinion. The vibes start strong from the beginning with the song Adrift, which already drew a few lone tears in my eyes because the vocals, lyrics, and visuals managed to get me. The overall vibe I would describe as "cozy" – you have a friend, Freddie (who is actually Farishta, but I guess nobody could pronounce it correctly, so she went with Freddie?), who is all-in to help you, the Gods are all kind of a bit tired and chilly. So you don't feel the doom over you. It's rather... chill. The enemies are not that intimidating, so there is not much stress; you feel like it will play out. You get a few laughs here and a few tears there. It's not that much of the situation, but the emotions. There is a lot of melancholy in the game, and maybe it's because I am over 30 myself that it's vibing with me 🥲.

Story

The story is supposed to be the strong part of the game with David Gaider, right? And it's a good story. The characters are written very well – everyone has their own stories that you feel to unravel during the game through the dialogs and songs. The Gods are all intertwined in different ways through the thousands of years as they are supposed to be according to Greek mythology. But they also have a good twist with modernity with the game's own interpretation of the Gods's nature.

Though I can't say the main story plot is very unpredictable, and some outcomes of the separate scenes you can push through in your way that it does not always feel like a smooth transition of the initial intention. And the story overall is child-friendly, apart from the fact that there is a murder or two.

Innovation

The game has a point for innovation for the sole fact it is an interactive musical! I never played and don't remember seeing anything like that. The way the story can diverge and how you control it with a dialog option is almost precisely what David Gaider did in Dragon Age and Mass Effect, so it's not exactly innovative as such. But it is done in a musical! So the way songs not only intertwined into the game, but also tweaked with the story is impressive. However, it does not always feel as smooth as I would want it to.

Conclusion

The game scores 23/35, which results in the H.E.A.R.T. rate of 6.5/10.

Th game would take you approximately 6 hours to complete, at least that's how long it took me for the first playthrough. And I will do it again, as they released a DLC Orpheus, and it seems like to unlock it, you had to make one decision in the game that I didn't. But I don't mind, I finished it with kickass trait and now I want to see how being clever will play out. I really enjoyed the game and I love for it to be not too long, as I am getting tired lately from games that expect you to be playing for a month.

So yes, I do recommend you to try this game! But you do need to at least tolerate musicals, of course. Otherwise, it can be challenging. They do sing there as your main ability and game story manipulation technique.

Also, I adore Freddie. She is such a sweetheart.

And as a bonus – my favorite song from the game! I loved Asterion. He is such a teddy bear.