Genre: Adventure, Casual, Indie, RPG
Developer: Dischan Media
Publisher: Dischan Media
Release Date: Apr 4, 2013
Edited by KnightAvenger
Dysfunctional Systems Episode 1: Learning to Manage Chaos is a beautiful and short visual novel from 2013, meant to serve as an opener for an episodic series of visual novels, developed and self-published by Dischan Media. It is about Winter Harrison, a new mediator, learning her job of managing chaos. Unfortunately, at the time of writing this, episode 2 has not come out yet.
The first episode and so far, the only one out starts with a news reporter telling us on a big screen that there has been a nation-wide increase of the minimum wage by a full 50 cents. This establishes the mood and the atmosphere for most of the first half of the episode. After a bit of back and forth between the protagonist and her mentor, they go to a pub and soon, Winter is talking to one of the locals about the problems, and we learn a pretty neat and somewhat intricate story of where they are.
It is explained that Winter is studying to be a full mediator, and for that, she needs to shadow a number of mentors as part of her school duties. This is an okay introduction to a pretty interesting premise of a certain planet having grown enough in regards to its civilization that it can afford to act like world police, going to other planets in disguise, solving some pressing issues from the shadows before moving on to another assignment.
Both the world from which Winter comes as well as the one she has found herself on for her mission of shadowing Cyrus, the mentor, are pretty intriguing. When it comes to the world they have found themselves on, it’s a story of imperialism, a strong country used to own the one in which the two of them are, as a colony, but slightly more than a century ago, they gained independence. As with most colonies, though, the independence was just in writing, as the larger country still completely dominates in terms of economy to such a degree that half a dollar of an increase of a wage is enough to cause everyone to celebrate. On the other hand, Winter is someone from a supposedly advanced civilization and is unable to understand why money or economy matters to these people, these workers who have to do multiple jobs at once just to be able to live from one paycheck to the next. Her world is ruled by an oligarchy, a couple of “very smart” people who “know” what’s best for everyone. I will not go into details on how the story ends for the world they have found themselves in, but even with the short amount of time we had to get to know the place, it was intriguing and well written.
We don’t get more than basic info about Winter’s own world. The oligarchy is only mentioned once or twice in passing, they don’t seem to have any real conflicts, and they have, supposedly, solved the majority of the problems of society.
Characters are also very fun and written well. They are written pretty realistically as far as who each character is supposed to be, so a 14 year old student, such as Winter, is written in a way you would expect a 14 year old girl to behave and think. She is also the character through whose perspective we interact with the story.
It’s a very short story, though, only taking me a couple of hours to completely finish all the possible routes and experience all the choices. Still, despite all that, plenty of fun and drama are packed in. The characters have a lot of really funny interactions, especially in the beginning, but the tragedy is also very well done. It’s both a shame that it’s not somewhat longer as well as the fact that a new episode hasn’t come out after 5 or 6 years already.
There is no voice acting for any of the characters. Sound design is done well, despite that. The sound effects are all very cool and fit nicely into the story. Since it’s a short story, they managed to pack it full of those sound effects, which makes it even a better experience. Music is also great, not many tracks, but both the timing and the sound of the tracks that are there is great and fitting with the story, the atmosphere and once again, due to the short length, none of the tracks feel like they overstay their welcome.
Visual art is beautiful, the pastel anime-like style is gorgeous, character designs are great, the backgrounds detailed and effective, and some of them are outright stunning. Just, the visuals are well done in general and I don’t really have much more to say about it. I hope the art stays consistent like this in future episodes if they ever get released, which I do certainly hope they will.
I feel like the matter of the future episodes should be mentioned. After this was released and was pretty successful, episode 2 was in works but it got scrapped by the developer because they felt it wasn’t up to the level of quality they wanted, so instead of releasing a low quality episode 2, they decided to just not continue the series. I feel like that decision was admirable, one made by someone not interested in money as much as making a good story. Recently, however, a prequel to this was released out of nowhere, called Orientation and it seems episode 2 is once again being worked on. The prequel was something nobody had expected and I do sincerely look forward to the second episode getting a release if the developer decides that it is good enough in terms of quality.
In short, it’s a very short and sweet experience of a sci-fi story with a lot of political themes that I would recommend to everyone who doesn’t mind that it really is very short and, so far, hasn’t had a proper continuation. I think that, even without the future episodes, this can definitely work as a standalone short story visual novel, but if you are bothered by a technically incomplete story, I suggest you stay away. Even though the story is pretty short, I don’t actually mind the price and I do recommend it at full price but even more when it is on a sale.
Pros:
- Excellent political story
- Great writing
- Characters are nicely written
- Art is very aesthetic
- Sound is excellent, both in terms of sound effects and music
Mileage May Vary:
- It’s pretty short
Cons:
- No voice acting
Faris gives Dysfunctional Systems Episode 1 a score of 8.6 out of 10 (86) Moé Blobs.
Dysfunctional Systems: Learning to Manage Chaos is available on Steam for $4.99 (USD).
