Preview: Student Union by Visual Novel Village

My character is getting startled. There is a severed arm in his locker. Everything is smeared with blood. Disgusting! His stomach turns. This is too rancid for words. He almost has to throw up. A little later he notices that it is a joke. The arm is fake. Funny though… This joke during the Student Union preview immediately prepares lead role Lane for another bloody event in this dark romance story.

Much attention for detail

Student Union tells Lane’s story. He needs money and that is why he is looking for a job at his current school. All nice and all, but when he finds a job there are still some problems. He establishes a union, but first, he has to find fellow students who also want to cooperate. All this is expressed in a very narrative game that lets you read a sinister story without giving the feeling you are actually reading a digital book. This may be due to the fact that you are quite busy looking at gorgeous pictures too in this visual novel.

While playing the demo, I noticed how much of the developers’ attention must have been put in adding small graphical details. That might be one of the main reasons why I love the visuals of this game. A lot of the characters and backgrounds are stuffed with graphic details. The characters are somewhat reminiscent of cute anime characters. They are nicely animated and show emotions. Conversations are kept lively because we see more than some static figures. Depending on the dialogues, the visuals change constantly. I also enjoyed the music, which definitely sets the atmosphere of the Student Union scenes.

The final game promises over 30 backgrounds and over 50 illustrations (up to an additional 20 depending on Kickstarter stretch goals!) and over 40 original tracks. I’m curious how this game will eventually offer 40 hours of promised gameplay. That means that a good amount of story elements has to be developed before the game really comes out in 2022! I’m pretty confident the story will visually be worn cool too in the final build. Especially if the whole story continues to be visually told like this.

Will the story become more unique?

Actually, I am not very concerned with how they pour and present the story in a package. Graphically there are times when storywise some extra illustrations could be added, but by and large, it really brought the game to life! Until now, the videogame Student Union was told in an exciting way, so you were curious how everything would go through. Still, it took a long time before the game really showed some memorable story elements. At first, much felt like a filler that had also fitted in any other school drama story.

I have not seen a lot of storylines where I really had a wow effect yet. I just miss the emotional chord some visual novels like A New Life and the sinister Zero Escape games offered. Ultimately, this is a visual novel, which makes the story very decisive whether this is a good, average, or bad game. Some small twists have already been shown during the demo. All those twists grabbed my attention and showed potential for the rest of the game. Still, I wonder if this will not be the typical school drama-like story in the end.

Can Student Union suprise me?

The game offered a lot of typical story elements that could have been presented in any other random high school story. Until the end of the demo, I thought ‘interesting, but not unique‘. That thought has been turned around a bit and is still present. Although I am still curious how this will work out, I expect a bit more plot twists from the full game and also real mindfucks within the story. A careful start has been made, but I think much more is possible than the story has shown so far. This may come.

I still have some doubts about the story after playing the demo. Although I think it is not fair to judge the story too much now, because you can only really judge a story when it is finished.

Currently, you can try the Student Union demo yourself on Steam. If you like the game, you can help the developers. Recently they launched a Kickstarter page to raise money for the further development of the game. In my view, the game shows a lot of potentials. You can see that the makers are already well advanced for a game that will be on the market in 2022. They still have two years left to deliver an unforgettable story. In the end, the story will decide if I remember or forget about Student Union.