There are, in the games, few places happier to spend time than in a visual novel writer’s head. It is a head where the wild things grow, twisting and spreading like vines, like fingers, and taking us in their captive embrace. Over the last three decades these wild things have laid siege to us even as they have mutated. An acclaimed example is 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, where nearly every action and dialogue choice can lead to entirely new branching paths and endings. Each path only reveals certain aspects of the overall storyline and it is only after uncovering all the possible different paths and outcomes through multiple playthroughs that everything comes together to form a coherent well-written story. There have even been role-playing video games that feature visual novel style elements. A well-known example in the West is Lost Odyssey, a role-playing video game that features a series of visual novel style flashback sequences called "A Thousand Years of Dreams", which were well received in the West. From the meta-cinematic masterpiece that is Deadly premenition to the anguished distortions and surrealism of Persona visual novels have dominated gaming.

OVERDRIVE invites us fans to visit the bewitched boulevards, stunning shrines and sleepless cities of their home Japan in their first triple A title to publish on steam and one of the first games to truly be deserved to be called art! I have so much to tell you about this game but as he Good Witch of the North says, it’s always best to start at the beginning and, so, once upon a time, Makoto, a English Literature major and her younger sister Akira recieve a stranger(that's you buddy) they met in a chatroom from another country into their home for a week while their parents are out. There are opportunities for *sightseeing* if you know what I mean but what makes this game so great is it's a return to the great visual novel tradition. This juxtaposed with the edutainment of learning glorious nippons traditions, culture truly make you feel connected with both the modern and historical nippon through it's characters.

Owning 1300 video games in my life this is the one I am most proud of owning so I highly encourage you to take that first trip to Japan.