The Zodiac Trial

A solid mystery visual novel with about a dozen routes. The premise is that 12 people find themselves locked up together being forced to compete in a death game, "The Zodiac Race", with each participant representing an animal from the myth of the same name. It quickly becomes apparent that the participants were all connected to an old court case involving a murder several years ago. It also becomes clear that those competing in the race are not afraid to kill if they deem it necessary to win and escape. As you complete the routes, you uncover bits of the bigger picture. It's about 20ish hours if you're looking to 100% it and see all the endings. It's a little rough around the edges in some spots, but it was written by only a single person, and it was still a fun read.

Great fun.

One of the best visual novels I have ever read

well done

it's peam

peak death game

For its evidently low budget, The Zodiac Trial is able to tell an entertaining story in the death game genre. There were no moments that absolutely blew me away, but the story maintained a consistent pace and was exciting enough to keep me engaged for the whole of its runtime. 6/10

Very good VN, could use a flowchart and more puzzles, but great story.

After playing through the entire game, I can say that this game is really awesome. The meat of this game is not in the art (backgrounds or sprites), music or sound effects but in the writing, which is most of the time very cleverly done. There are many routes and most of them are very interesting and there is great variation. I especially enjoyed how the [spoiler] major trinkets' mechanics [/spoiler] create unique situations which characters have to face. Seeing all the characters being put into extreme situations by [spoiler] being made a traitor [/spoiler] is very exciting because you get to see how each person responds to that. There are definitely some strong characters with cool backstories such as Dragon and Dog, my favourite characters. However, I also have some gripes with this game. The true ending drags on for way too long and to me it was not very satisfying because finally uncovering the truths behind multiple mysteries just involves the protagonist and [spoiler] the true mastermind [/spoiler] monologuing for way too long, including [spoiler] the mastermind [/spoiler] literally saying, 'I'm going to start talking about my childhood now, it doesn't seem relevant but trust me it will become relevant later on in my monologue.' Also to me there were not enough clues to solve the game's mysteries, many things are too ambiguous, so for the climax of the true ending you are just along for the ride and can just react like 'oh, okay, that's the direction the game decided to go in.' Lastly, the [spoiler] true mastermind [/spoiler] is obviously a super important character, but their character design is just so bad. Like, it does not convey anything about this person at all, not even something important like personality. Their outfit is just so bad, like it's so bad. Just imagine [spoiler] you woke up one Sunday morning and were like 'what a good sleep in, I need to eat now though' and went to the place where you keep the food you normally have for breakfast, but then realised you ran out of that food, and so were like 'I'll just go and buy that food real quick and come back and eat it,' then you quickly threw on some random clothes that you found lying around. [/spoiler] This person's outfit is literally like that. It's the kind of outfit you can find [spoiler] random people in public wearing on their Sunday morning walks. [/spoiler] And for [spoiler] the real mastermind of two death games and a devious murderer [/spoiler] that design choice is simply baffling and not good enough. Despite my gripes, though, the game is actually good, so I still recommend it. Though I recommend skimming over [spoiler] Sheep and Tiger's [/spoiler] routes, they are not very good.

EDIT AFTER FINISHING: can now confidently recommend this game even more. It got only better near the end and I truly enjoyed how everything ended up going down. I was stumped, it was great. After having played The Divine Deception first (as was recommended to me) I'm very pleased to see that i enjoy this game just as much as TDD. They're wildly different genres but both extremely enjoyable in their own right. I would also add that if you want to buy this game, get the duo pack with TDD and play that one first. It's not a death game but still a great story full of intrigue. Worth supporting the creator for sure. Now for this game. I'm almost through it now and I'm happy to see how much has been pulled off within the story. The characters are engaging and all link together extremely satisfyingly. A lack of a flowchart hurts a little bit but aside from the fast forward button, you also unlock another button later in the story that lets you input what choices you want to make so you dont have to sit through so much scrolled dialogue. I've seen most endings and I genuinely cannot say where the game will lead and that's always a very welcome surprise. The premise is very unique and each ending so far has felt great to read. Mandatory "if you like ZE play this". Absolutely recommended.