Azure has grown bored of her life. School is boring, her father doesn’t care about her, and there’s nothing she likes doing. After finding a mysterious ring, her life changes forever.
Written in the Sky is a short, free, visual novel that follows the life of Azure. After sneaking out of her house one night, she finds a mysterious person. After following this person to a warehouse she finds a box with an alien language written on it. Within the box is a ring. Azure decides to try on this ring, and after a blinding light she finds out she can no longer take it off. This ring ends up binding her to a life she could have never expected – a life that sounds way more interesting than her life on Earth.
When you first start the story, you’re presented with an option as to if you want to turn on the 18+ content or not. While I’m sure most will turn it on “just because”, I decided to do so for another reason – I usually stick to the censored versions of VNs, so I decided to try out the uncensored version this time. This censoring is mainly for one scene in particular – the ritual that will make Azure become the King of Mars. The scene sort of just comes out of nowhere, and I doubt I would have really missed it had I opted to go with the censoring this time.
The artwork feels pretty good, especially considering this VN was done for a competition. Well, Azure does look a bit too young, but some people do just look young for their age. I would have liked a bit more variety in the music though, but what was there was fairly good too.
The writing is quite good, though the most “detailed” writing definitely seems to be in the section that would otherwise be censored. I did spot some odd typos here and there, such as “king” being misspelled to “kind”. Given the short nature of the story, the only character you really get to know is Azure. Even then it feels a little bit lacking, but again, given the fact it’s a short VN, it’s hard to give too much background without making the story a lot longer.
For your entry price of free, you’ll be looking at a 30 minute – 1 hour visual novel. While I did say the writing itself was quite good, the story did feel like it was lacking something overall. Pieces of the plot are just thrown at you, your dad is given the consciousness of a “fish of gold” for a few days, and the most detailed section is what would have been censored for those not reading it at 18+. It would have been nice to see a bit more detail in places, and to get a bigger feeling of a conclusion – or, perhaps, even a better feeling towards a bigger cliffhanger.
As it is, if you’re looking for a short, free VN that has no choices, then perhaps Written in the Sky is for you. The story does end up feeling a bit lacking though, and I would have really enjoyed a few more music tracks. There’s also the issue with the fact Azure looks so young, but as I said, some people just normally look a lot younger than they really are. Rest assured though – she is 18. Oh and hey, there are two extremely easy achievements to get too!
Written in the Sky Review
3/5
Written in the Sky is available now on Steam for free.
