A Visual Novella That Isn’t Mature Enough to Cover its Own Themes
Alice, the main character of Saccharine Echo, has a unique problem. A spirit has appeared in a vintage mirror above her bed. That spirit isn’t haunting her exactly: it’s watching more than spooking. Plus it’s attractive in a slightly gothic, maudlin way. Having gone through a recent and devastating break-up, it’s all a bit much for Alice.
Alice is a better person than me, as ‘talk to the spirit’ is far down the list of things that I would do in the same situation. The mirror would have been sold, exorcised or tossed out of a window far before I started chatting it up. But Neverliss and Xitilon have taken the far more visual novel-friendly route of giving it a chance. Perhaps it’ll turn into one of those good room mates I hear about; one who does the dishes and pays rent on time.
Alice Through the Looking Glass
The spirit happens to have a name – Dinah – and, over the course of days, reveals that they are not necessarily confined to the mirror. And so begins a complicated relationship that swerves between amorous and cold, threatening and friendly. We’ll hold back from saying too much more on that front as Saccharine Echo benefits from a limited amount of knowledge.
If you were to adapt Saccharine Echo, it would be a short theatrical production, probably in a dark and seedy backstreet theatre. It only takes place in two, arguably three rooms: a bedroom, bathroom and an emotional support group, and that last one is only rendered in 2D pixel art at the start of chapters. This is a claustrophobic story that is focused on the relationship that forms the story’s core.
That relationship, I would assume, will split audiences. Dinah doesn’t so much wave red flags as make a dress-suit out of them. Dinah will trigger people who have suffered through relationships with power-imbalances, stalking and domestic abuse. It goes to dark places.
Not Exactly Light Reading
I… wasn’t a fan of where Saccharine Echo went. That’s not because I am squeamish about those topics or have much in the way of experience with them. It wasn’t the subject matter that bothered me; instead, it was how the characters dealt with them, and the control given to the player when navigating its choppy waters. It’s a very subjective reaction, but I wonder if others will share it.
Saccharine Echo was always going to have a tough time dealing with topics like this. It’s a visual novel with some core choices, and those choices are generally ‘embrace the relationship’ or don’t. But the relationship is clearly problematic and imbalanced. So, that choice could be reduced to ‘do something bad for the main character, or do something good’. From this perspective, the choice isn’t much of a choice. Whenever I was given a dialogue option, there was only one path I could take.
To try to balance the equation, Neverliss attempts to make Dinah alluring and compelling. Dinah might be overstepping boundaries, but they have a rather fetching torso and taste in eyeliner. They are pitched as mysterious first, and then dominant second. Alice wonders whether Dinah could be ‘fixed’, even though – and we were screaming at her through the telly – she should probably concentrate on fixing herself first.
Dinah the Unfriendly Ghost
I can see what Neverliss was doing, but I wasn’t a fan of how a clearly toxic partner and relationship was being diluted for the sake of visual novel choices. It may be that Dinah forms a particular fetish for some watchers, but I was mostly repulsed. No, Dinah is not mysterious, alluring or a dominance fetish: they are deeply problematic.
Saccharine Echo doesn’t do enough to make me feel confident that the writers feel the same way, or understand the complexities of the relationship. Alice’s support group are terrible: they misunderstand her, give her bad advice or don’t listen, so no one can echo the player’s views. The story doesn’t deviate enough based on the choices: it keeps railroading towards unsettling outcomes, which feels uncomfortably helpless. There is a good ending and a bad ending, based on the choices you made, but that branching only really happens in the final few minutes of Saccharine Echo.
Which is all to say that I didn’t enjoy Saccharine Echo. I thought there was an intriguing premise at the start, and I absolutely loved the mixed media of 2D pixel art and some well-drawn illustrations. But it felt like the story had thrown a hurting, damaged woman into a scenario with no real way out, and that wasn’t enjoyable to me.
Drama in a Broom Cupboard
There are other issues, but they feel small in comparison. Saccharine Echo is extremely short: completable in roughly an hour, maybe 90 minutes if you want to see both endings. That’s fine for the small price, but it does mean that only two characters get stage time. The decision to stick to two rooms also means that art gets repeated a lot, which has a strange fatiguing effect. You’re pressing the A button repeatedly, but virtually nothing is happening in character poses or backdrops.
We also experienced a fair number of bugs and typos. One sequence repeated itself, the flow of the logic not quite functioning correctly. When there is only an hour’s worth of content here, it’s surprising that there was still plenty of room for issues.
I appreciated Saccharine Echo for its high concept and its determination to go to serious, morose places. But it doesn’t have the deftness to pull it off, delivering a clumsy will-they, won’t-they romance when its themes demanded something more complex and interrogative.
I ended up feeling dirty rather than satisfied, like I had listened into someone else’s confession for an hour. Even at £4.19, that wasn’t something that felt appealing.
Important Links
Saccharine Echo – Romance, Horror And A Very Unsettling Mirror – https://www.thexboxhub.com/saccharine-echo-romance-horror-and-a-very-unsettling-mirror/
Buy from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/saccharine-echo/9PGJ3SMVQSRF/0010
