The game is perfectly alright, I'm sure, but it doesn't satisfy me. The friend who introduced me to this game attests the combat mechanics are generally fun, so if that sounds intriguing, do not let me stop you. However, the writing is weak.
If you would like to stop reading now, simply know this about my opinion: the game's gameplay is probably fine, but the writing is weak, ultimately suffering from a lack of emotionality that seems to stem from inexperience in writing.
It's evident this game takes heavy inspiration from OMORI: both games explore the intensity of mental illness, suicide, child abuse (it's understated in OMORI but it's present), and loss, in their narratives, while wandering through a Yume Nikki inspired dreamscape. This is exciting! OMORI is tied for my favorite video game, and honestly even if Sundy Stairway turned out to just be too derivative for general audiences, I could still enjoy it like junk food. My problems with the game's writing do not include it being too derivative, however I bring up OMORI so I can justify the comparison, because... OMORI is able to handle its subject matter far more maturely and tactfully than Sundy Stairway, and this takes me out of the experience for the latter.
I don't have the most satisfying answers as to where exactly this discrepancy lies. Here is, however, my most educated guess. There's no emotion. Throughout the time I spent with this game's writing, it presented a lot of fairly intense topics. From anxiety to violent abuse to suicide, the game is attempting to handle some heavy subject matter. And yet, throughout the time I spent with this game's writing, I didn't feel much of anything. The game never really stops to rest on any of its plot beats, skipping through them like skipping stones. Because of this, not even the most dramatic scenes are given room to breathe. "Show, don't tell" is a commonly told writing adage, and I'm under no position to debate its validity, however this game illustrates the motivation behind the phrase: as a reader I don't so much learn about the complexities of the characters and their world through observation of their dynamic interactions but instead I am told about them, plainly, in amateur narration. There's a complaint to be made here with how much this respects the audience's intelligence, but for my central thesis all that's relevant is the way this facet of the game's writing sucks away the emotional impact of anything. I'm left to assume I'm just supposed to find these scenes emotional because "look, it's the emotional thing", without so great understanding of why the thing is emotional. I established the comparison to OMORI earlier, so I may as well follow through by saying OMORI falls into none of these pitfalls. OMORI spends a long time on its most serious moments, and lets the drama breathe through its pacing and naturalistic writing (because people don't just tell you everything that's going on: they show it to you). Even in the prologue, Space Ex-Boyfriend is given a lot of time to be disturbed and angry about his love life in a scene that is, for the prologue, climactic, and has room to breathe drama, even though ultimately this character isn't very important in the grand scheme of things. OMOCAT is able to write emotional scenes without relying on stock emotional moments, which makes it so much richer when she does use them. If you'll allow me to just gush about a moment in Three Days Left, the church scene with Aubrey. If you've played it, you know the one; it's a very big moment. This scene introduces one very important and tragic detail of the story, while showing the way that it's affected the three characters in the scene (most obviously AUBREY, but this is also very telling of KEL and SUNNY). The scene is heart-wrenching and an early indicator of how wonderfully emotionally colorful the game becomes, but relevant to my thesis is how it pulls it off. It doesn't have to tell you how the characters have been affected, it just shows you them in their most dramatic state. Another important thing, I think, is that it's the only seriously intense and tragic thing to happen in all of Three Days Left. OMOCAT knows this is a big deal, and so she give it the appropriate amount of space. Meanwhile, Sundy Stairway throws a lot at you even in just its first forty minutes, and as a result it's hard to care about any of it.
Oh, yeah, this was all in forty minutes. Sundy Stairway's inability to express emotion is also symptomatic of its pacing problems, I feel. I feel I've said all I need to about this, but I'll reiterate: Sundy Stairway doesn't give any of its most intense and serious moments space to breathe, not just within themselves, but also their context. In forty minutes, the game throws anxiety, child abuse, domestic abuse, suicide, and a second case of child abuse for good measure at the reader. A more responsible writer might have tried to space out these events so that each of them can be individually powerful, but as an aggregate blob like this, I struggle to care. It's just one tragedy after another, and I can't care about any of them. OMORI, in contrast, really just wants to focus on one event and its ramifications, and explores that one event over its 24 hour runtime so extensively that its weight is felt so much heavier than any compound of small stock tragedies.
This comparison is definitely a little unfair. OMOCAT and Yun Seven are very different people with different levels of experience. Asking Sundy Stairway to live up to my tied-for-favorite game is obviously unreasonable. But, even divorced from that, it's just difficult to feel anything with this game's writing.
Really, all these problems just remind me of when I was a fledgling writer. Given time, I'm sure Yun Seven will be a wonderful writer. Also, if you're reading this, Yun Seven, I commend you for it--I've been perhaps brutal in this review, and I'm sorry for it. I don't want to say you have to become OMOCAT. I simply think this game's writing needed more time in the oven (it does read as a first draft). It's awful of me to punish trying, though, so I'll just say, this is an inspiring stepping stone to greater endeavors. Writing and publishing anything is an achievement to be acknowledged, and I'll say it's still more than anything I've yet done. It's a shame this writing just didn't click with me.
