If Always the Same Blue Sky has a major issue it is that I wanted more of it. It did a good job setting up characters and story but then ended abruptly without answering a great many questions. Things were just getting interesting and then it’s curtains closed. Furthermore the ending was so strange and out of left field that it just didn’t seem to fit with the rest of the novel barring some extra depth being added. For a short game it still had a good number of choices to make. It did have a weird issue where it only allows you to have a name that is a maximum of six characters which feels odd given I have never seen a visual novel do that. The art is fairly good although I found objects and background to be more detailed than people. I will also say that the descriptions of events and people were far better than the average visual novel. The music was also well done.
I played Always the Same Blue Sky on Linux. It never crashed on me and I didn’t notice any spelling errors. It allows you to save whenever you want and it has 100 save lots. Alt-tab didn’t work.
Game Engine: Ren’Py 6.99.5.602
Save System: Manual (any time)
Disk Space Used: 679 MB
GPU Usage: 0-88 %
VRAM Usage: 394-477 MB
CPU Usage: 1-3 %
RAM Usage: 2.0-2.3 GB
Overall I enjoyed the game and thought it was very well done but it does lack depth. I paid $4.10 CAD for it and felt that was a fair price. I finished my first play through in 25 minutes.
My Score: 7.5/10
My System:
AMD Ryzen 5 2600X | 16GB DDR4-3000 CL15 | MSI RX 580 8GB Gaming X | Mesa 21.1.5 | Manjaro 21.1.0 | Mate 1.24.3 | Kernel 5.13.4-1-MANJARO