One has yet to find a more ungrateful task than creating non-ero visual novels in the West, when your work not only misses the established and guaranteed successful niche, but is also being ignored by majority of VN readers who only pay attention to Asian products, while almost completely disregarding Western developers (which is justified in many cases as non-Asian creators tend to have a less serious attitude towards the genre). Even more of a pity when buried under the mass of such low-quality products remain unnoticed rough gems like Fallstreak. Some lucky searcher may stumble on this novel by chance and be taken off guard by the amount of effort being put into it starting from the sprites and artwork, and finishing with the beautiful melancholic soundtrack, and surprisingly high-level prose, standing way above the average quality of amateurs works (and, of course, feeling much more natural than amateurish localizations). Fallstreak quite accurately revives the feeling of the older games and anime shows such as Seraphic Blue, Irya no Sora, RahXephon which tend to mix ephemeral slowburn narratives and pastoral scenes with viscerally tragic, brutal, and apocalyptic twists. The main story is divided in two parts: the first one is leaded by little Adelise Cotard, who suffers from repeatedly occurring dream of being trapped in a seemingly inhabitable and inescapable world, and the second part tells a life story of Amenae, starting from her being an orphaned child to adult years.
Speaking a bit closely on these two arcs, Adelise arc is a pretty much countryside slice-of-life about a bunch of school kids strolling around, introducing us to the mysterious world of Socotrine. Of course, I wouldn't be writing all this if it was just an ordinary story: part of the cast have injuries such as burns, missing limbs, missing eyes etc, part look weary and PTSD-imbued as if they've been through some serious warfare business. Nobody of them seemingly makes a big deal out of it, but through the short characters arcs interspersed here and there the story unfolds their dark secrets. Honestly, apart from those arcs and the worldbuilding fragments, I wouldn't call the first half really exciting. There is not much of a straightforward story here, and the balloon competition part overstays its welcome for quite a bit. Luckily, the most hooking part of the game starts soon after that, when the focus shifts to Amenae and to the events of the past. Being an orphaned girl, Amenae suffers from color blindness and inability to associate herself with the world, but after nearly dying of starvation and being saved by another orphaned girl, Mallory, Amenae finally develops deep emotional attachment to another human. Further, the story reveals the heights and depths Amenae's willing to go for the sake of her loved one, how she deals with anyone who causes harm to Mallory (and damn me if she yields even a bit), how she starts her own family just like Mallory to always be nearby, and how she fights the unpredictable and cruel nature of Socotrine for their survival. I am not surprised that some of the reviewers disliked the game for Amenae's arc alone as it may easily take readers of both "family-friendly" and "edgy" side out of their comfort zones. Is it really un/justified taking a brutal revenge on those who betrayed and cruelly treated ones you hold dear? How much the survival of your loved ones weights against the survival of the society? Is the society that will eat you alive in order to save itself even worth saving? In this regard, Fallstreak almost reaches the height of aforementioned Seraphic Blue, the story of which I personally consider a masterpiece of "self vs. utilitarianism" concept (curiously, both of the games touch upon hardships of mentally challenged children with verbal awkwardness). Basically, the second part of the novel is all about family and its survival through the eyes of shrewd and caring, but mentally unstable mother, in the setting of local supernatural calamity, quite a fresh and uncommon idea to see in modern visual novel medium.
Now, as much as I liked it, Fallstreak is naturally not without disadvantages. The prose, albeit being rich and clearly written by someone familiar with classic literature, tend to twist into overly complicated constructions at times. Also, I felt like the author used "as" instead of its counterparts a bit too often at some points. The pacing suffers from few ill-considered decisions too, for example, the long and seemingly unrelated fairytale about a lone doll-making girl placed right at the beginning of the novel, which may easily confuse a reader and create an impression of pretentiousness (another similarity with Seraphic Blue and its infamously long intro). The end scene is probably the biggest flaw of the game, not only it breaks the conclusion of the story and harmonic transition to the next entry, Requiem, which also starts from a sky view, but also works as a poor cliffhanger.
Despite all the flaws, Fallstreak provides an emotional and unusual story that rarely follows overused tropes, and, while not playing with tragedy as skillful as The House in Fata Morgana, it serves suffering in more down-to-earth circumstances. I can absolutely recommend this novel to anyone who like any of the games mentioned in this review, as well as to those who like elegantly prepared tragic stories.
