Update Thirty-One: 4 August 2017

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

A quick, pretty melodramatic read, Sound of Drop - Fall into Poison - is… all right.

I don’t know how popular they are outside of America, but most American elementary and middle schools were packed to the gills with Goosebumps books. With cover art that balanced the line between scary and cool, Goosebumps were childrens’ horror books that were just as likely to be gross or weird as they were to be scary. (Unlike the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series, with accompanying art with every story that were honest to god nightmare inducing) When I was reading through Sound of Drop, the thought I couldn’t push away from was ‘oh, cool, it’s Goosebumps but Japanese this time.’

The very Goosebumps-y premise is that you play fourteen (or fifteen? she gives different ages depending on different routes, oddly enough) year old Mayumi on an outing with her friend Himeno. Himeno cajoles Mayumi into going to the Manten Aquarium to check out some spoooky rumors - and doesn’t know that Mayumi’s younger sister disappeared there five years ago. The two girls enter, and pass through the ‘normal’ Manten Aquarium into a malicious dimension - the ‘Red’ Manten Aquarium. Through two normal routes, two true-end routes, and twenty-seven(!) bad endings, Mayumi has to find a way to not just escape, but to break the curse on the aquarium.

There are just as many shining moments as there are kind of dumb moments in this VN. I enjoyed watching Mayumi, go from a nervous, weak scaredy-cat to someone who is full of determination and bravery to save her friends. I enjoyed less the kind of hackneyed explanation of what exactly is going on at the Aquarium and why. The writing is pretty juvenile, and a lot of the ‘scare’ factor is just kind of gross. It’s pretty short, which is a blessing in this kind of format - I wouldn’t have been able to sit through it if it was as long as some of the other VNs I’ve played.

It’s really pretty, though! It has nice production value, nice menus, good CGs and character portraits. It’s just not very smart. It’s got a good heart, though, and it also was very readable - there’s a setting (that could be turned off) that auto-saves at every choice. This makes getting the bad endings really easy - it puts you right back where you messed up so you can pick the other choice without fuss.

Ultimately, while I didn’t dislike the game, I don’t think it’s good enough to make it onto my VN Masterlist - it’s just okay. I wouldn’t turn you away from reading it, though, if you’re interested - I still remember Goosebumps fondly, after all c:

Next up: Time to relive my childhood.

See you soon!