The devs behind 2021's most interesting visual novel are back with a new game teaser
OPUS: Prism Peak is the "spiritual sibling" to OPUS: Echo Of Starsong
You know when someone says a magical combination of words to you and your instant reaction is, "Say no more. I'm in."? That's how I felt hearing about OPUS: Prism Peak this morning, the latest game from Taiwanese developer Sigono in their loosely-connected series of jaw-droppingly pretty visual novels. Described as a spiritual sibling to their most recent OPUS game, the brilliant Echo Of Starsong, the exact magic combo of words that made my eyes go all wide and saucer-like was "a cross between What Remains Of Edith Finch and Makoto Shinkai films", which just - you know what, I'm going to shut up now so you can watch the teaser trailer.
In Prism Peak, Sigono say players will go on a "journey of wistful nostalgia to explore past regrets", and from the looks of things you'll be doing a lot of that exploring staring down the lens of a camera. You're a photographer who's somehow stumbled into a strange ethereal realm, and you'll need to unravel its mysteries through the pictures you take to find your way home.
This being a teaser, there's not a huge amount more to go on right now, but the Steam page also mentions choices that will lead to different endings. It's not clear yet whether that means different endings in the traditional visual novel sense, where you can fast forward through text to go down different dialogue branches, or whether it will be a bit more like Starsong with its optional extra storylines. Admittedly, Starsong still had a fixed conclusion at the end of the day, but hey, I'm intrigued to learn more about Prism Peak as soon as possible.
Prism Peak will be the fourth OPUS game Sigono have made so far, but I should also point out that none of them are directly related to each other, so you can play them in any order without any prior knowledge of what came before. I went back and played the first two games, The Day We Found Earth and Rocket Of Whispers, shortly after finishing Echo Of Starsong a couple of years ago, and thoroughly enjoyed them both, so I'd recommend checking them out if you're at all intrigued (Starsong's still my favourite, though).
Indeed, I was so excited by the existence of Prism Peak that I immediately squeezed it onto our already enormous most anticipated games for 2023 list earlier, so do also hop over to that if you fancy checking out what other excellent games are due out this year. No release date for Prism Peak just yet, I might add, but here's hoping it's sooner rather than later.