Almost exactly an year ago I finished Planetarian, a classic visual novel that was also the first game from the “Kinectic Novel” series - a Visual Arts brand for VNs without any choices or branches in the storyline, more akin to a visual book than a game.
So I thought it was appropriate to celebrate this anniversary by playing Lunaria, another Kinetic Novel from the same studio (Key, of Clannad fame) that I had just received in the mail.
One of the things that drew me to both these games is that I’m a huge sci-fi fan, and both deal with interactions between AIs and humans. However, they take very different approaches to this theme - Planetarian is bittersweet story focused on the contrast between the post-apocalyptic present and the small glimpse of a better past the MC encounters, while Lunaria is a much brigher slice-of-life story with focus on VR and e-sports.
The plot so far is the typical “boy meets cute (AI) girl, romance starts to develop between them”, but this being a Key game I’m already expecting something tragic to happen in the latter parts of the story - there’s already some hints of a bigger plot around the AI girl’s origins and circumstances.