Steins;Gate

Steins;Gate is one of the best-known visual novels of all, and its release on PlayStation Vita was for a long time the most convenient way for western players to experience the story. We follow a group of young enthusiasts from Tokyo's Akihabara district who, in a rented workshop above a shop, accidentally build a device capable of sending messages into the past. What starts as playful experimentation quickly turns into a nightmare, since every change to the past rewrites the present, and the hero is the only one who remembers the previous versions of the world.

Gameplay rests almost entirely on reading, but the key element is the mobile phone system. The game doesn't offer classic dialogue choices; instead the player decides whether to answer an incoming call, who to text back and how, and it's precisely these seemingly minor details that determine which of several paths the story ultimately takes. This creates an unusually natural feeling of making decisions in everyday life rather than through a menu. Alongside the main storyline there are several standalone endings devoted to individual characters, and one path the game considers the true one. Backtracking through already-read passages and fast-skipping text are handled conveniently, which helps, since without repeated playthroughs you won't reach the true ending. The game also keeps building a glossary of terms from internet culture and physics, which can be opened directly from the text.

Technically it's a classic novel with drawn portraits and richly illustrated scenes, but it's on the Vita's display that the warm color palette and hand-drawn style really shine. The Japanese voice acting is complete, and the music stays in the background with minimalist, mildly oppressive motifs that come in full force during the twists. The title contributed massively to visual novels being taken seriously in the West, and its influence can be seen across an entire wave of later sci-fi stories. Today it remains one of the best-constructed time-travel plots in the medium, though the first hours require patience before the comedy tips over into drama.