Let me start by saying that I have mixed feelings about Missing Time. At first glance, this visual novel seemed exactly what I have always been looking for: A horror dating sim. After playing through the game I, unfortunately, noticed that there are small issues that eventually hold the game back but I will come back to that topic later again. Anyway, I have to admit that I had high expectations for Missing Time as well, although I even managed to enjoy one or another aspect of this game.


Missing Time opens with the main character moving back to his childhood town. He happens to meet his childhood friend Chiharu again and is delighted that he decides to join the same club as her in school. Anyway, they both end up in a strange club that is in danger of closing down. The strange thing here is that it investigates bizarre cases that happened in this town. However, it gets even weirder when there are people getting murdered, yet the cases were getting buried. Determined to find out more about the incidents, the protagonist wants to find out the mysteries, although danger always lurks around every corner.


That's a tough question. In short, I would say that Missing Time mixes slice-of-life elements with supernatural horror. In the beginning, the player spends a lot of their time investigating the cases and, along with that, the protagonist's everyday life gets presented here while he gets closer to a specific girl. At times, there are incidents getting thrown in the plot once in a while that show the danger of this case while the cast is trying to find out the truth. Sometimes, it might be better at times to be left in the dark, although that obviously won't solve the main problem.

Anyway, I always appreciate it when a visual novel properly takes its time to introduce the cast and its world so the reader has a better understanding of the events. Something important to keep in mind is that the romance falls rather short in this game and the cases are the main topic of this game.


This is one of my complaints with the game when it comes to the plot: The reveal. As most of the game just revolves around finding clues about the cases, without any real reveals, the last arc of Missing Time was way too sudden and ended abruptly. I felt like the game just didn't give me enough time to come to terms with the events but threw everything at me at once and then the credits rolled. I was confused after reaching an end, but that's only one out of four so the other routes might be more satisfying, right?


Well, unfortunately, no, the other routes weren't satisfying to me either. While some routes reveal more about the story than others, the good ends ended more or less the same. I found that going through the other routes didn't give me new insight. Luckily, each route is fairly short so I could still go through each of them, however, I would have preferred if there was more variation for them. I mean, each route takes place in different locations but as the true colors of this game get revealed in the last minutes of the game, the investigation scenes became dull quite soon after I played through them for the fourth time.

As a piece of side information, there are several bad ends available with four romance paths the player can enter, although there is only one good end available for each girl. To unlock the secret route, the player has to reach all good ends.


The graphics are pretty in general, however, very inconsistent. For example, the designs in the CGs didn't match the sprites at all so the characters look entirely different. While the CGs are gorgeous, I still got greatly confused each time I reached a CG. Anyway, there are a few voice-acting sounds available, such as surprised or shocking ones, but those are not high-quality which rather bothered me, especially when the same sound gets played three times in a row.


This point is what bothered me the most about Missing Time: The technical issues. This visual novel is plagued with bugs and issues that prevented me from enjoying it and I ended up getting frustrated because of it as well. The few good things Missing Time has to offer, sadly, get overshadowed by these issues, constantly interrupting my immersion.

• Let's start with my biggest complaint here: The font. In my opinion, the font is one of the most important traits of a visual novel as all the player does here is reading. Thus, I was greatly disappointed when I noticed that the font is very uncomfortable to read and even way too small. This isn't a big issue when only one sentence gets displayed but when multiple ones are showing up and it looks similar to a wall of text within a small textbox — Well that greatly demotivated me to even read through the text.
  
  
• Furthermore, the backlog takes the reader back to the beginning of the scene. This means that I had to scroll all the way down to read the text I just missed. This became such a hassle that I skipped looking the text up entirely. It doesn't help that the backlog sometimes bugged for me and didn't disappear for me when going back to the game, however, this issue was luckily solvable when restarting the game.
  
  
• So, let's move to the next point. This happened multiple times when I skipped through the text that the textbox suddenly stayed blank at some point and didn't display any text anymore. In that case, saving the game and restarting doesn't solve the issue so I had to start all over from my latest save file. This was especially annoying when hunting for the other ends as I constantly had to redo all my progress.
  
  
• Unfortunately, in the middle of a dialogue, the name of a character who was talking often disappeared, making it very confusing to follow the conversation. Thus, I had no clue whose turn it was and was left frustrated.
  
  
• There are only a few in-game options available in this game, however, they don't work properly. I wanted to turn off the voice-acting sounds but didn't have any luck, the bar for the sound settings just won't move no matter what I did. Anyway, I guess the game is still playable, yet the fullscreen and windowed setting didn't save either which means I had to go to the options to set the game to fullscreen every time I started the game. Alt + enter, unfortunately, didn't work either.
  
  
• This point is a minor nitpick from my side, but Missing Time implements puzzles that avoid bad ends, although the puzzles only contain skipping through specific scenes. So, the problem here is that there were no hints available and as it's a unique feature there was no way for the player to know that they have to skip the text.

First of all, despite all my complaints I did indeed manage to enjoy my time with the plot of Missing Time. However, all the issues I mentioned made it extremely hard for me to read this visual novel and I constantly found myself getting annoyed. Especially because of the small font I could only play this game the longest for one and a half hours in a sitting, so it took me a while to complete it. Anyway, if you don't mind the issues I mentioned above, it's highly possible that you might have a good time with Missing Time nonetheless, as long as you keep in mind that this visual novel greatly focuses on its mysterious cases instead of the romance itself.

𝐅𝐞𝐞𝐥 𝐟𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐟𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰 𝐦𝐲 𝐂𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫 𝐏𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐕𝐢𝐬𝐮𝐚𝐥 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐑𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰𝐬!

After main character’s grandfather passes away his parents decide to move back to their hometown…

Enrolling to a new school for your senior year, you meet again with Chiharu, your bubbly childhood friend who happened to have returned to the town recently as well.

At your current school you have to participate in a school club obligatorily, and if you do not chose any, they’ll assign you a random club they chose for you, so you end up not really having a choice.

The first choice you came upon in this game, is whether to enroll to a random club with Chiharu. Afterwards you end up being assigned to the Occult Club, which does not really pick your interest but you tag along with Chiharu to the club room to check it out. Once arrived you meet a tall girl with dyed hair who presents herself as Ember Honoyasei, the occult research club’s only member and president. She explains that the club activities will be starting from the moment it gathers enough participants, therefore the president asks of you and Chiharu to help her search for new members, or, actually as you noticed, to do that job in her stead. While looking for new people around the school you stumble upon two white haired girls – Shizuyo and Emiri, two twin sisters with opposite personalities whom you end up inviting to your club. After a moment of hesitation, they accept your offer.

The next day, when the club members meet up together after classes, Ember recounts about some mysteries surrounding school dealing with horrific accidents.

Chiharu
A cheerful, composed and gentle girl. Childhood friend of the MC who used to hang out often with him and his currently deceased granddad. Lives in a huge mansion by herself and gets scared easily.

Ember
Occult Club’s president. An enthusiastic character who often gets in trouble, therefore has not many friends at school. She is looking forward to starting her club’s activities.

Emiri
The eldest of the white-haired twins. The girl happens to be the head shrine maiden of the town. Presented as the silent and unapproachable type, often disagreeing with others.

Shizuyo
The second twin. Unlike Emiri, she is popular and talkative. Many scholars had a crush on her and female classmates enjoy her presence. As angelic as she may appear, the girl holds a sneaky and stingy personality which gets shown occasionally.

The game offers the option of inputting your name into the story in a way “you” become the main character of the story. The dialogues present some voiced parts on heroines’ sides. The girls’ aspects are interesting as they present a variety of personalities, even the twins result in being very differentiated from each other.

Introducing pleasant to the eyes graphics, what is particularly well done in this game are certainly the backgrounds often presenting a huge amount of greenery – which is really refreshing -, as well as, well illustrated buildings. Particularly appreciated the heroines’ outfits changing once hanging around outside of the school.

The gameplay provides plenty of choices, which will cause you to have different endings based on the story branching you end up going through. While you have the opportunity to date the heroine of your choice, it is possible to come upon many bad endings therefore it is advised to save the progress regularly. In order to achieve all the endings and put the pieces of the story together you have to play through the game multiple times as you will get clues to the mystery surrounding the characters bit by bit while completing the routes.

The story is well written, not letting the reader to find to be bored or forcing themselves to continue this game. Much appreciated the narration starting as a slow-burn recounting, bursting further on into a vigorous outcome.

Some endings are resulting abrupt and too rushed; it’d be preferred to obtain more details during Ember’s route, as well as the fact of being unable to feel empathy towards the culprit’s reasons conceives during the ending a feeling of emptiness given the lack of touching moments.

Nonetheless, I personally recommend this game for mystery and horror enthusiasts, as this game presents unexpected outcomes and a distinct plot. Not recommended to public disliking the sudden change of events and supernatural elements.

This is an EARLY review, I'll probably add more to this, but since this novel indeed seems like it's gonna be a long read, I wanna write one early :P

I am in love with the story so far, there are so many choices to choose from, the story doesn't come to a standstill as it constantly is on the move. If it keeps this way, it may be at a tie with my favorite novel yet the DDLC.

This game offers the same feelings I felt while playing said game DDLC and while I haven't even finished chapter one yet, it has been a loooooooong time since I have had the desire to keep reading, ugh the story is just superb and I hope it will stay that way. The soundtrack is awesome (would like a soundtrack DLC if you can devs ;).... The graphics are pretty okay.

But a few things catched my eye...No controls page, (maybe there was one, but didn't find it)....And the Steam overlay doesn't work, mind you I've started to notice a few more visual novels disabling the in-game overlay, wanted to make a few screenshots of them cute backgrounds :), but couldn't (maybe due to copyright etc.?)...

So yeah, a solid 9/10, BUT again just saying that I'm only 64 minutes in, things can change, I'm still looking forward to the horror part, the creepy atmosphere is there, but a few clues/jumpscares/creepy noises wouldn't hurt >:)

P.S. For now the price seems fair, as I was fairly skeptical about paying so much for a book basically, but something told me to not wait for a discount and buy it right away :P

Spoilers below:

My first ending was with Chiharu dying, honestly I was taken a back that the game pretty much ended right then and there, but I tried to forget. Knowing that a character is 'already dead' makes for quite a different experience, messed up in a few more places then got the ending where I was stabbed by Chiharu and finally where I was supposedly living with Chiharu in a different town..But yeah one thing I do hate about games like these is pretty much being punished for the choices you make which result in sending you back to the main menu. Still Shizuyo was my favorite, but as always don't let the cuteness fool you :P
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So yeah a few afterthoughts....I'm not so sure about the 15-20 hours of story time, nor about the price of this game...somewhere between 7-10 euro max...16 almost 17 feels a bit extra. This one definitely has a lot of concurring themes with DDLC -> The experiments, the girls being from a different game maybe? But overall still very impressed with the story and there's plenty of extra plot for each of the routes..

But yeah my final score would be around 7/10 and wait for sale....Because I don't know if it's okay, but I'll keep comparing every vn I come across to DDLC which was FREE and had way more in it as for the paid ones.....

A pretty middling visual novel and surprisingly short considering it's stated to be over 15-25 hours long. Each route clocks in just over an hour and you could finish all of them at a reasonable pace in under 10 hours. The route triggers are really stupid, requiring you to somehow 'solve' a 'puzzle' to get through them without having any way of knowing what said puzzle even is. The whole horror and mystery plot just sort of unravels after clearing a route and you're left basically going through the same content with minor additions. The art is solid especially the cg's. Really disappointing all in all.

I want my time back! You play the game and do what seems logical and you get killed. You then play the game and make a few different choices and you get killed in a different way. There are no clues in the first play through that you can pick up on to have a good ending. You need to play it a whole bunch of times or use a walk through to get to the good endings. My time is too valuable to play "guess what I am thinking" with the author. So keep my money but i want MY TIME BACK!!!!!!

I am writing this brief review, not as a full on recommendation, but a bit of a mixed bag.

Art
In my opinion, the art is top tier, for the most part. A good chunk of CGs and variations of sprites. A surprising amount of backgrounds as well deserves a noticeable mention. There are a few CGs that are different style enough that it becomes somewhat distracting when you notice it, but that is a minor detail.

Music
The music is pretty good. Nothing groundbreaking, but nothing terrible either.

User Interface
The User Interface (UI), is bland and does not work very well. It does the job for the most part, but barely that. For example, the settings menu doesn't really work and is unresponsive, I could not even change the volume, but had to do it through the volume mixer on Windows. The saving/loading mechanic was unresponsive and a bit of a pain to use because of it. The reading log doesn't activate like most reading logs would in a VN, and the only other button that has it is unresponsive, and is hard to use, opens weirdly, and starts the reading at the wrong place.

Characters
I generally like the characters for what they are, though I do find Ember a bit annoying, but I would say that is kind of the point.

Story
This is my main gripe with the game, honestly. And for a VN that can be pretty terrible. And if I am honest from the start, what I got is not what I expected after the original demo on Kickstarter that I pledged for. - That is not necessarily a bad thing either, though.

There is a certain order you are 'expected' to play, as can be seen even with their guide. That may be unintentional from their part, but most people do not play VNs without a guide anymore, I'd say. Because of this the general play is Chiharu > Ember > Emiri > Shizuyo > Secret Route . While you can play the former in any order, I believe, after reading them all, I do feel like this is the intention. I generally want to avoid spoilers (impossible here) , and while all the routes are pretty decent, for what it is, it even becomes somewhat rewarding if you are paying attention and see what happens in the other routes as you go through them. The main issue with the general routes is that they are 'samey' in the sense that they are similar enough to fit in the flow, but different enough that it becomes very difficult to understand what is happening at the end, or the motivation of the characters, which is a shame.

I will put the rest in spoilers.
I am especially annoyed with Shizuyo's route. She is my favourite girl for sure, with the options available. But her motivations in each route is lackluster and confusing, in a sort of... Why? (Ember is similar, but it annoys me less) So what happens to Shizuyo in the end of her route, which is the final common route most people will play, is.. like. She questions her own motivations, the curse, gets the big sad, and die 2 years early because of it, like she was Padme from Star Wars. And I'm like... what? While the MC (you) may not forgive her for her crimes (despite forgiving Ember.. in other routes..) why did she have to die so abruptly and for no real reason? Like, they had done a lot of experiments, etc. You could have basically made her call MC, talk to the sister if she now had done the things and regret it, and try, with Emiri's help, to permanently remove the curse etc, and perhaps even give her back lifespan, at the cost of something else... for example her ability to move, beauty etc. Which, in my opinion, would all have been better options, more worthy of being the 'good end'.

So okay, I assume it is done in 'secret route', the final options. But no, it's basically ending 1 with Chiharu on steroids and more CGs (that again were very nice). And here all characters motivations make even less sense than before. Generally a secret route, or the final route, the 'true' route, has a happy ending. I applaud you for not going that route, but if you do, it has to be more bittersweet (like my suggestion for Shizuyo above), not nonsensical randomness that the final route provided.

This made me go from pretty good, to Why? And the secret route gave everything else a bad after taste, and were cause for great disappointment.

Because of this, I can't really say this visual novel is ground breaking or anything. I would still recommend it, as the art is simply that good for the most part, and the story is good for the most part, but god forbid, do not play secret route . Play it in order for the four other routes, and then stop. Don't go further. Look up secret route CGs if you are really curious. But because of skipping that chunk of the game, I can't really justify the price. I'd recommend grabbing it on 20-25% sale as well.

I am looking forward to what you are creating next, and the DLC :)

It's times like these where I miss star rating systems. A binary choice of recommendation just doesn't cut it sometimes. If you ask me if I recommend this VN, it's a clear "Eh, maybe." So, let's go into some detail.

+ The mystery is pretty well done, I enjoyed it quite a bit. It's nothing too original, but I enjoy stories like these.
+ I also like how the VN shows different sides to the same story in the different routes.
- While the first half of the routes do a great job at building tension, the second half usually fails to do so. The story is over mere minutes after the plot twist has been revealed.
- After reading one or two routes, the rest of them barely contain any more surprises. It's just the same thing happening in different settings.
- Even having read all routes, the real nature of the mystery is only revealed on a superficial level, leaving open quite a few questions. This may be intentional, but it leaves a bad aftertaste.

+ The characters have unique personalities and are quite likable. Of course, you got your typical stereotypes, but they're well executed.
- Unfortunately, the VN doesn't take the time to build an actual connection to those characters. The horror part of the story starts very early, leaving the character development behind. Due to this, the impact of the things happening just falls flat. When a character dies, I want to be in despair instead of being like "Oh too bad, they were nice" and moving on. For a self proclaimed Utsuge, the VN does a pretty poor job at making me cry. (For the uninitiated: "Utsuge" means "depressing game", one designed to make you cry).

It pains me to say that this is the point that tipped the scale towards me not recommending this VN. There are so many technical issues! It really puts a damper on the enjoyment of the story. Here's a few examples:

• The settings menu only works partially. Aside from the fact that the sliders are hard to handle in general, some of them simply stop being functional after saving once. I had to go into the settings file to achieve my desired settings.
  
• The log starts at the beginning of the scene, making it an ordeal to reread later passages
  
• QOL: I can't hide the textbox to view a Scene or CG in it's entirety
  
• There is one instance where you are unable to skip text, which is being shown with a short message in the middle of the screen. If you happen to save before the message disappeared and reload the save at a later time, the text is still there and will never disappear! It will stay there until the end of the game, unless you reload an earlier save.
  
• Apparently there were some erotic scenes that have been removed for Steam. That in itself is not the problem, I don't care much for those anyway. But please, don't just disable the choice to enter those scenes, remove the choice entirely! And way more important, remove those scenes from the Gallery! It's impossible to have a complete gallery now! It just makes the VN feel incomplete, as if it was still in Early Access.

Come on, you're not an AAA publisher, so don't ship buggy games! 🙃

It is a decent VN, but it has quite a few flaws and the technical issues certainly don't make it any better. I wouldn't buy it in it's current state for this price (except I already have lmao), but it's up to your decision if you're interested enough in the story to pay it.

For the record, I've played this game before it was available on Steam, given a good 2-3 days worth of time playing this visual novel to learn about each of the characters in the game, uploaded a 12 part series on my YT channel about my overall experience of the game while commentating. And through playing a variety of different visual novels, this particular tale has really stuck to me like no other visual novel has.

Missing Time is a visual novel, horror game, dating sim, intertwined with a deep mystery of Komachi's past (the fictional premise of the game), an adventure with whomever you choose pursue out of the 4 girls, a choose your own adventure with the many multiple choices laid out to you. A nice balance of romance, horror, suspense, mystery & comedy mixed in to make it a multi-tier story rich experience that's really worth exploring through. Each of the characters in their own right provides their own individuality to Missing Time that I really love, no two characters are exactly the same, similarities are always found amongst characters, but when it comes to a particular action or thought process, only one character can think in one unique pattern and another character thinks in another unique pattern and so on.

The horror aspects in this game are quite powerful, whether if they are to do with a character's current emotions, or a CG in the game that displays a gruesome amount of horror, there are multiple ways in which Missing Time has set the stages to be a horror game. Even in the stillest of moments in the game, where there's no music, no one but yourself as the MC, there's something around the corner that will catch you off-guard.

The mysteries of Missing Time I find most fascinating with the entire story of Missing Time, to keep the story short A thousand years ago, a demon from another world entered this world, a god sealed the demon, the demon's curse seeped through the local population wrecking havoc, a priest nearby sparred those under the curse of anymore pain through death and built a shrine where the demon was imprisoned to ensure it cannot curse anymore people. This story that pre-dated the in-game events allows a deep story to be established as soon as you learn about it in the game, there isn't just a present and a future, but a past as well, something we all in one way or another can reflect upon.

The romance and dating in Missing Time is predictable like with many other visual novels, but predictable does not mean bad or boring. I believe in Missing Time the choices available for the player & the dialogue with each of those choices are utilised very well, there's benefits & consequences with each choice made. You select choices that you believe will benefit a particular character in the game if that's the person you are choosing to pursue, but not all of the choices in Missing Time are choices that will lead to the Good End for example. A lot of the choices in Missing Time are very meaningful for both learning about the main characters & how the game sways, one choice in the past for example may lead to a different line appearing much later on in the game. If you are with one character in a place, you get to discuss with that character on a personal level, or with multiple characters a variety of different conversations & topics discussed.

Dialogue & story presented throughout the game is both enriching & captivating, with a few of the endings in particular shedding tears through the sheer emotional rollercoasters that they present to the player. Through actions or with words, Missing Time delivers an experience that tugs at your heart strings which slowly builds up, not something that blows up all at once like a full screen jumpscare, but something that strikes a powerful blow overtime, feeling the weight on the words spoken by both the main character and the girls in the game.

There are multiple aspects about each of the four characters that really defines them as people, not just script & images on the screen, but people you can understand, relate too, sympathise with, empathise with. Following the game's development from it's demo all the way to the full game, along with playing the entirety of the full game, the experience that Missing Time gives to the player is not something that you will be Wasting Time on at all.

If you love visual novels with a rich story, this is a game for you. If you love visual novels with romance and dating that presents wonderful, meaningful choices with consequences, this is a game for you. If you love visual novels with a wide variety of horrors from visual, vocal to suspenseful story, this is a game for you. If you love visual novels with adventure, comedy, charisma and mystery, this is a game for you. If you love visual novels with a wide array of personalities, backstory & surprise, this is a visual novel for you. If you love a game that puts you into tears through the actions & dialogue given, this is definitely a game for you.

I urge all visual novel fans to purchase this game and give it a whirl, I promise you you won't be disappointed, thank you and have a lovely day! <3

What can I say other than wow. This game is truly amazing; it is both beautiful and horrific all at the same time. The story is absolutely perfect in all ways for all of the routes in the game. With most of the Visual Novels I have played, even other games within the Psychological Horror genre, I could usual pass a good guess on the correct choice to get the best outcome. In this VN that could be further from the truth. The simplest choice most innocent choice could produce a butterfly effect that could decide weather or not you find your childhood best friend brutally murdered in the storage room, or said childhood best friend decides that you belong to her and if she can't have no one can. I strongly recommend this to anyone who considers themselves a fan of Visual Novels.

I don't mind the visual novel being low budget and I was genuinely enjoying the visual novel, only dropped it because one of the heroines I was fond of keeps getting bad endings which made me lose motivation to carry on, well you can tell which heroine I mean by my profile pic.