Genre: RPG
Developer: Laplacian
Publisher: Sol Press
Release Date: Aug 16, 2018
Edited by KnightAvenger

Newton and the Apple Tree is a serious story about time travel. At the same time, it’s also a game where the main character suffers surprise anal penetration and his childhood friend wears a fake mustache. The main focus is not on the sexual content, but it does appear throughout along with some comedic moments. This helps to keep the story light, despite the serious topic. It is developed by Laplacian and published by SolPress. This review is based on the Steam version with the 18+ patch applied. The Steam version cuts out some of the mature content, as well as the outright adult content. This can be restored either in full with the 18+ patch or without the completely adult content by applying the 17+ patch. These can be found at https://pantypress.com/

The main concept of the game is that you and your childhood friend Yotsuko are trying to track down your grandfather – a famous scientist. You travel from Japan to England, then accidentally end up travelling back in time. In the process of this, you stop Isaac Newton (who is, incidentally, actually a flat-chested girl named Alice) from discovering the concept of universal gravitation. Throughout the story, you will find yourself accidentally altering the timeline for the worse and struggling to get it back to normal.

You manage to move into a dorm with Alice (Newton), Yotsuko (your childhood friend), Haru (another Japanese native in England) and Emmy (a maid). You also often encounter Lavi (an off-balance scientist). Each girl has her own route, but to access any route other than Yotsuko or Lavi, you need to complete Lavi’s route first.

The girls in this game do tend to follow some of the standard tropes, but they are all well fleshed out with individual personalities and backstories. This is not a long game, but it certainly isn’t short. Finishing one route took me approximately five hours, with the majority of the time spent on the common route. Additional routes went much quicker due to the function to skip between decision points speeding things up.

The artwork is all of high quality and the game features almost 100 CGs, not including variants, such as versions with different expressions or positioning. Despite being a story-heavy game, it’s certainly not skimped on the artwork side at all. I personally liked the style although I did find the eyes slightly unusual at first.

The music is all well done and there is a good variety of it with 14 tracks. It is all matched well to enhance the mood of the scenes and is a strong point of the game, if not one which stands out.

Technical:

Newton and the Apple Tree is fully voiced except for the main character, as is standard. It comes with a variety of features, including (as mentioned) the option to skip to decision points, as well as the standard auto and skip modes.

I’m quite impressed by the variety of options included, even going so far as to let you decide the volume of individual character voices, whether honorifics are used, and whether the voices are cut off with a click, among others. There are 13 options to do this with accompanying text, to give you an idea of this.

I have not come across any technical issues while playing Newton and the Apple Tree. I did come across the occasional spelling error, but these were minor and generally the writing is held to a high standard.

I would recommend Newton and the Apple Tree to any visual novel fan who is interested in story-focused games. While comedy and adult moments are featured often, the main draw to this is the story and the interesting cast of characters. I do feel like there are points which could be improved, but, overall, I’m very happy to recommend the game.

Pros:

• Great story.
• Interesting cast of characters.
• Nice artwork.
• Fitting background music.

Cons:

• Felt like some of the adult moments outside of the “H-scenes” did not fit in well.
• Individual girl’s routes could have been longer.

Eden gives Newton and the Apple Tree a Drastik Measure of 8.5 out of 10.0 (85).

Many thanks to SolPress for the review copy.

Newton and the Apple Tree is available on Steam for $39.99 (USD).