"Dys- is a mystery of mind and memory, whose investigation leads one person on a strange voyage of self-discovery."

Describes it fittingly well. Although the self-discovery is to be taken literally, not into the debths of your character's traits.
In the 1-2 hours long short visual novel "Dys-" you assume the role of a severly depressed wannabee writer, named "The Writer". You interact with your neighbours, wake up into strange clinics, have weird dreams and become fuzzy in your mind.

It succeeds at completely distorting your sense of reality shortly before you piece it back together, but it falls short at depicting a severly depressed man and at carrying the message it's supposed to have. It does bind the character name and title well together, though.



There is a lot to say about the composition of Dys, and especially in regards to the story.

Music is okay, backgrounds are okay, character portraits are fairly nice.

The writing style overall is quite solid, too. No typos found, either, but I weren't looking for any. There is one instance where while talking with a barkeeper you still have the name of the barkeeper in the window rather than your own.
Other than that, all fine.

The characterization is quite platonit for the most part. An important side-character is fleshed out a little, but that's that. The few characters you meet along the way are clearly not the focus here, brutal psychic revelation involved or not (which, by the way, carried no significance whatsoever).


You know this girl is going to be important! (but hey, the music playing is pretty cool)

While the writing style in itself is quite fine, the transition from one part to another is often times brutal.
You don't just give a summary of your previous life without any transition. Marking it as a "rote" when you don't know a thing about the character and his routines doesn't help, either. You aren't given why you want or wanted to write, too. You are called "The Writer" nevertheless.



Something like "running down this area always makes me remember my past. It's even become a routine by now" to introduce the thought would help.
The same happens while introducing the ability to read lips, or while visiting what I only later discovered as school (although not as harsh there) - just doing it feels incredibly odd. Saying "good I've learned it" afterwards doesn't clear it up earlier. It's important - especially in a setting where some events simply do not make sense - to have visible logic where possible. We don't know the character yet, but we're supposed to play the character who knows at least that much.

The "don't tell, show"-formula may very well apply to RPGs, but it doesn't work that well in visual novels. It was certainly attempted to do so, and while that is a bold move in a visual novel, it didn't work out in the end.
What it does achieve, however, is that amidst the confusion you are about to face, you yourself have to piece it together throughout the game.

You start doing things without remembering them, you lose sense of direction while you end up losing your flat (broke and stuff) and fear to be manipulated by anyone involved. People around you are made out to be more complex than they are and you fear yourself going simply mad.

This, in itself, is quite nice and effective. Dreams were also a great way to deal with these trains of thought, and it shows that the creator tried to enable different approaches to the main character. It allowed to guess what might be going on right now, although it stayed rather vague. Not that these thoughts mattered in the end.

"The Writer" is, aside from being depressed, absolutely blank. While it adds to the immersion of uncovering the mystery for yourself, it does not add to the character at all. Nor the issue of depression which is a big deal. A depressed character without real substance or effort at dealing or coping with it, or without any depths at all is simply a boring, whining guy.


Sorry, my boy.. that's not how it works.

And even this consistency is broken by the "fate-guided" actions and intuition of the guy. You were given some escape-choices (without any meaning) earlier, why not have them later on? Even if that would drive you in a dead end.
It is unusual for a severly depressed man to go about the city exploring, although it is very true that we are able to stand up for ourselves when we direly have to despite depression (which is what "Welcome to the NHK" among other things cleverly showed).
But given the outcome and the frame of our character, even this possibility is lost.


The fact that the underlying story builds in feeling empathy towards a specific side-character makes the focus go completely diffuse. There are too many themes here - you've got mystery, you've got dealing with depression, you've got a focus on another character and got dystopian elements and abuse of drugs/science as well. As well as the idea of real "truth" in a person (another dead-end).
Remember, you don't even play 2 hours here.

The mystery at its core works best, but even that is completely refuted by the ending. The thought process up until then gives you a picture already, but it is nothing like the reality that unfolds and that takes a whole different turn.



It obviously tried to give a message, but that one was neither clear, nor realistic.
I've dealt with depression myself and there is not one thing to take from it other than that depression exists and sucks. Instead, depression was used as a means to give memories more meaning, as memories build a core element in the mystery. If any message it's the often quoted "as you once were so ever shall you be" which is a very negative and frankly wrong message to send.
I've actually imagined worse by the way it started out, but it's still not a smart choice unless it is the creator's intention.

The side-character, as much as it builds around that one, is lastly meaningless. The side-characters all are.



There are some nice touches to it like a percentage countdown (oh sanity..), but the result is too clustered and ends up without any impact or message to give. There could've been many paths to make it worthwhile, but it busted into as huge a thing as it possibly could and then returned to minimalistic character-near choices. That doesn't fit together well, a more humble approach would've helped.
It at least makes sense in the end, however overblown it might be.



It's an interesting take and manages to confuse you, but that's it. That makes it kinda fun, but without any impact or depths to it.
If you can't decide on one, you're gonna lose both, as they say.