RAKKA: WAKE 01 - SOOT

I still intend to finish the game when i am able but i wanted to drop my thoughts on the game so far! So far i think the game is wonderfully written, drawn and composed. The characters have flaws, vices, but also good points to them as well and that makes them feel human and also can give the player/reader more of a faceted opinion on them. As for my favorite, at the moment it's Sacha, i always like the more serious types and hes serious and snarky at the same time while being one who seems like he doesnt like to ask for help! Music: The music in this game is well done! I like how mulitple tracks use the main theme in different ways ((Cellphone tone, happy tone, somber tone)) it also fits the era and i can tell love was put into it. I def will get the soundtrack at a later date. Art: I love the artstyle, the sketchy stlye reminds me of another VN i played int he day called Hotel Dusk and when i heard the devs also liked that style i was pretty interested. The background art is detailed, and the posters and backdrops are fun to hunt around, ((EX: the cure poster at the aparment.)) The setting is also a setting i dont see too often in games and that is the london rave/punk culture of the 90s. Its very fun to see a game paying homage to that era. As for anything i dislike about the game? It's not a dislike but of how because they're young adults, they all decided to take drugs with out a sober person during a part of the game and my old man side came out like " NOOO ALWAYS HAVE A SOBER PERSON" But thats pretty much it, Im having fun playing it on stream and am thankful for the devs!

I was given a free Steam key for the game in exchange for a non-binding promise of nebulous "some form of coverage". I was not otherwise coached on what to do, say, or expect, and I have not been compensated in any way. Everything below this line is purely my own thoughts. The first thing you see every time you open RAKKA: WAKE 01 is the game's graffiti-style logo unfolding on paper in front of a boiling backdrop of crinkly black paper. The second thing you see is a fully animated opening movie set to an original indie rock song. This intro looks AMAZING - professional quality OP for an especially stylish anime. I know this probably applies to, like, every game on Steam, but seriously, the compressed trailers on the website do not at all do justice to the visuals in the game. GITGOT did not particularly tell me what to expect from RAKKA: WAKE 01 before I started playing, but one vibe I definitely got from our conversations is that this is something an art collective made for the love of art and then found themselves scrabbling to find a way to monetize after the fact. I play a lot of indie art and story-centric games, and RAKKA: WAKE 01 has some of the most focused and stylish art direction I have ever seen. The entire game, with the exception of a single-digit number of CGs, is done in four colors: teal, salmon, black, and white, and all character portraits are all set up as paper cutouts with thick white outlines. Shading is done with an incredibly distinct speckling effect that does not look a thing like PC-98 dithering but that's the first place my brain goes when I try to describe it. It is an absolutely gorgeous game start to finish, and you couldn't mistake a single frame of it for anything else. As you'd expect from a game developed by a studio with the word "Music Team" in the name, the soundtrack is also excellent. There are many musicians credited on the game's soundtrack (some of whom even appear performing within the game's narrative), with the soundtrack featuring techno, punk, alt-rock, hip hop, and all the sorts of songs you'd expect from a game about disaffected punks in the nineties. But what stood out to me more than just the goodness of the songs in isolation is how thoughtful the sound design is. When you go to a location where there's no plot happening, there is no music but an extremely evocative bit of crowd noise. When that location is indoors, the crowd noise is realistically muffled. Two of the songs off the OST I found the most memorable are a pair of sub-ten second loops used as incidental music for minor places. The marketplace has a jaunty little tune that is obviously meant to be quick and disposable but sounds exactly like what it needs to be, and there is a small, tranquil lake area where every time you visit, the game plays a slow, soothing solo acoustic guitar piece. It is the single most obvious creative decision in the entire game, and it got me every single time. And when the narrative actually does require you to go to the market and the lake, both pieces get expanded into fuller, complete songs, which legitimately made me excited both times. RAKKA's story is... strange, but I think I ultimately came down on the side of enjoying it. When she originally contacted me, GITGOT pitched it as "thriller mystery-drama" with comparisons made to Ace Attorney (I think she was just trying to sell me specifically, TBH...). That... is really not what I (GIT)got. If I had to pick a pre-existing game to compare RAKKA: WAKE 01 to, it would be Night in the Woods, another game that features a high stakes "main" plot but puts it to the side for 90% of its runtime to focus on character work and scenes of everyday life. While there are scenes that I'm fairly confident are foreshadowing for future developments, there isn't anything in the way of puzzle solving or deductions. The only real external conflict the cast ever faces is the code mentioned in the description, which the player never really gets to see and which gets solved off-camera. If it turns out there actually was a code with a solution there, I will be VERY surprised. Stories like this live and die by their casts, and thankfully, RAKKA has a solid one. Rakka, who I guess is our main protagonist because she's the one with her name in the title, is a woman (I was about to write "young woman" but according to her character profile she's 27? Doesn't look it, that's for sure. EDIT: I have been informed that was a 21, I just can't read.) with a job that requires her to put on a suit and go into the office every day, which, having any self-respect and not being insane, she hates. She's nice, she's opinionated, she's got self-confidence issues, she just wants everybody to get along. I could hear an argument that she's "a generic indie game protag", but I believed her while I was playing. Rakka is accompanied by her three friends and roommates: Bjorn, a happy-go-lucky friend to all that lives who is incapable of not being cheery and funny (even when it would maybe be better to turn it down a bit), Kev, a burnout dealing with the pressure of a family that expects quite a bit from him by being a Larry Butz-esque wannabee womanizer, and Sascha, a steely-eyed misanthrope who hangs out with the rest of the cast because society sadly isn't laid out in such a way to let a person survive on their own and dealing with these idiots is still VASTLY preferable to regularly exposing himself to, eugh... normal people. He's the one I immediately projected myself onto. And project I did. Pretty much any fictional character will sound like a generic archetype if you boil them down to a one sentence summary. Where they succeed as fleshed-out characters is in their believability and their dynamics with others, and this is where RAKKA's writing really starts firing on all cylinders. Our core four are all characters GITGOT has clearly been thinking about and living with for years and years (RAKKA originally began life as a planned multi-album cycle before being reimagined as a video game partway through. GITGOT didn't tell me that, I had to look it up on my own, which should tell you how little coaching I got here), and they have all the dynamics and Bits you'd expect from an established set of roommates. If you have any interest in anything less mainstream than Blue Bloods, CoD, and the NFL (and if you're looking at this game's page, I assume that's you), you will recognize all four of these people, either in your own social circle or in yourself. The thing about RAKKA that threw me the most is that it's a REALLY slow starter. Now, usually, when someone describes a narrative-focused game as "slow to start", they mean that it has a lot of frontloaded exposition or character introductions. This is not RAKKA. Rather, RAKKA's thing is that you can tell it's a game produced on a budget, and the devs have made the intelligent decision to focus their time and effort on the bits players will see often. But this does result in less effort for early one-off stuff, and it takes a good few hours (Chapter 3 out of 4, which to be fair only took about three hours of my thirteen hour total playthrough to reach) before the player gets to the game's main recurring setting. Chapters 1 and 2 aren't bad by any stretch of the imagination, but after arriving at the music festival, it's hard not to recognize how much less detailed and shaded Rakka's apartment is and how much more first draft-y the narrative text beforehand is. The thing about RAKKA: WAKE 01 I am most impressed by is how immediately I empathized with the cast. I am aroace and straight edge, but this game made me instantly understand the headspace of someone who gets high at raves even knowing the risks to deal with relationship trouble. My final verdict, for both the game and the cast: I'm rootin' for these kids. Also, as a connoisseur of fake band names in media, this game has some CHOICE cuts.

I'm actually like kind of obsessed with this game I played the demo first and was absolutely stunned. I feel so cool just being the player reading through it. Very stylish visual aesthetic and the music is fire too. As I've continued through the full game, I find the writing is super engaging and the humor is peak. Plus every single one of our main characters has been very expressive, and they each seem to have a lot of depth as well. Every aspect of this game comes together just right to create an incredibly fascinating, immersive, and unique experience. I can't stop telling people about this VN or hype it up enough. No complaints or issues so far. If you're on the fence about playing this, I urge you to give it a chance. Content creator recommendation: makes a great game if you enjoy voice acting characters. The pacing is really good and my chat has really loved the visuals especially.

RAKKA: WAKE 01 – SOOT delivers a striking blend of atmosphere, visual storytelling, and narrative intrigue. Its distinctive art direction creates a world that feels both surreal and grounded, drawing players into a carefully crafted mystery that unfolds with confidence and restraint. Rather than relying on spectacle, the game succeeds through its strong sense of place, thoughtful pacing, and attention to detail. While its measured approach may not suit those seeking constant action, it rewards patience with a memorable and immersive experience. An impressive opening chapter that establishes a compelling foundation for what follows.

I was expecting an average visual novel, but oh boy does this game have personality There's not much gameplay to speak of, but the storytelling, especially the pacing is exquisite A strong 8.5/10 imo, highly recommended for the price point

This is an easygoing VN that immerses you in a world of '90s music festivals and friendship, with incredible art and music and hints of something darker beneath that will surely surface in future installments.