Usually visual novels fall into one of two categories: choice filled and kinetic. Choice filled is obviously with branching stories while kinetic have no choices and are totally linear. Bios Ex is kind of in the middle. It has fewer choices than many visual novels but the ones it does have are ones with a big impact and implications. I thought I was going to dislike this setup as I am used to having more freedom with the story but I ended up liking it. The story was very interesting and I liked how dark it ended up becoming in my play through. The art was well done and had a good style. The music was great at setting the pace and mood of the story. I enjoyed the characters and enjoyed learning more about them and seeing where they would go to next.
I played Bios Ex on Linux. It did have an issue where the game would crash on launch through Steam but would launch if I manually ran the executable in the game folder outside of Steam. The developer responded quickly to this and was able to get it fixed in about a week while keeping me in the loop and having me test out new possible fixes. Overall the game launches fine through Steam now and it showed me the developer cares about fixing their game. The game uses the Ren’Py engine and the OpenGL API. You can save whenever you want and there are 54 save slots to use. The game does open on the wrong monitor but that is a bug with the Ren’Py engine not the game. Alt-Tab didn’t work.
Disk Space Used: 801 MB
GPU Usage: 0-17 %
VRAM Usage: 525-616 MB
CPU Usage: 1-5 %
RAM Usage: 2.2-2.6 GB
Overall this is a solid visual novel. There is a good story to explore; great art on display and a good soundtrack. I finished my first play through in 2 hours and 27 minutes. I paid €20 for the game through Kickstarter and I felt that was a fair price. Considering the retail version costs less I would say you should at least check out the demo if you enjoy the genre.
My Score: 7.5/10
My System:
AMD Ryzen 5 2600X | 16GB DDR4-3000 CL15 | MSI RX 5700 XT Gaming X 8GB | Mesa 20.0.6 | Samsung 970 Evo Plus 500GB | Manjaro 20.0.1 | Mate 1.24 | Kernel 5.6.11-1-MANJARO