Greek Gods Exist and they are Living Among Us!

I really wanted to play this game pretty much the moment I heard about it. I love musicals. I love Broadway. Kinda like the whole “gods living among us” thing. So… I think I put this on a wishlist and waited for it to go on sale? Eventually I think I picked it up for free as a Twitch drop, and even then, I didn’t play it.

This weekend, I finally got to it.

In “Stray Gods”, you play through the story of Grace, lead singer for her best friend Freddie’s band “Edge of Elysium”. Staying behind after a band practice, Grace bursts into song and attracts the attention of Calliope, the last of the Greek Muses from antiquity. Later, Calliope collapses, dying, into Grace’s apartment, passing along her “eidolon” — a glowing sphere that contains all her powers and immortality — into Grace. Pulled by the god Hermes into a divine tribunal, she is sentenced to death — if she cannot find the real killer in a week.

The gods are against you — but you are certain Calliope chose you to take on her duties for a reason, and you have her Muse’s powers. You, in particular, can inspire people to song, and during the song, you can steer the lyrics as you like. You can play the peacemaker, rile up emotions, stand back and let the gods sort out their own problems, as you like. Each choice you make changes the plot in minor or major ways.

Almost none of the gods you meet are willing to help you, and none at all of them have any interest in forming any sort of connection to someone who is going to be killed in a week, anyway.

But, through song, you can change your fate — and theirs, too.

At two points in the game, you’ll have a chance to set Grace’s default approach to issues — charming (green), angry (red), or smart (blue) — and you’ll be notified when a certain song branch will play toward this approach, while perhaps making another choice impossible.

There are also choices that will bring you romantically closer to a god, which can change how other gods (and your best friend, Freddie) react to you. Some gods will be your enemies, some, your allies, but almost all of them have problems that you can use your powers to help solve.

The achievements page for the game lists a good decent number of different paths through and different endings. It’s a fairly short game — five or six hours — with a lot of incentive to play it again and make different choices. Could I have been a better friend to Freddie? Should I have dug deeper into the source of Apollo’s sadness? Was Persephone robbed of her rightful destiny?

The songs are at the center of the game. Most of the songs are the gods speaking in music; not typically bangers you might hear on the radio. (The exception: Anthony Rapp’s Orpheus spitting out those tasty guitar riffs. No mystery why the DLC centers around him.) The music moves smoothly through different emotional tones as you choose the direction of the song, but, with some exceptions, is mostly forgettable. That said, I’d have liked a little more singing.

I was expecting something more like Joss Whedon’s “Once More, With Feeling” or “Doctor Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog”, but got more “Les Miserables”, with the dialog mostly being sung but without the big showpiece songs. There’s only so much you can do when the song can pass through three different moods and that many decision points.

The plot, though — the visual novel-ness of the game — really does stand out. The concept of gods living among us in the real world is a staple of all sorts of fiction, from comics to TV. I just watched the first and apparently only season of KAOS that had this exact setting (with Jeff Goldblum as Zeus. Watch it if you can.) Wonder Woman has been doing it for years.

The plot avoids the whole hero’s journey thing. Grace starts out already as a singer and the muse’s powers come naturally to her. Although she can get some of the gods to accept her, all are very aware that Grace’s days are very much numbered, and none of them feel very compelled to tell her a straight answer to anything. But the writers are very aware of the kind of questions the player might be asking — I’d thought I found a massive plot hole, but they eventually explained it and the explanation made sense.

So the verdict: “Stray Gods” is a refreshing take on the visual novel. The characters, from Grace and Freddie to the pantheon of gods and demigods they encounter, are all distinct and voiced by many famous names (the aforementioned Anthony Rapp, Laura Bailey, Troy Baker, Felicia Day, et al). The game is short enough to make it fun to try out daring song branches, knowing you can try going a different way the next time. There were definitely some bad choices in my play through, though I did solve the mystery, finger the true killer, and survived the game. I’m not sure if you can get a game over by making a bad choice, or if by following a different path you would uncover a different killer, but maybe, and it would be exciting to try.

I’m glad I played it. I got it for nothing, but it would definitely be worth paying for and I’m sorry I didn’t play it closer to when it actually came out. It was a fun way to pass a few hours.

Given the mix and match nature of the soundtrack, it’s hard, while playing, to get an idea of what the song should sound like. You can purchase, as DLC, four versions of the soundtrack; one with a normal mix of decision points, and three always choosing the green, red or blue decision tracks. Here’s one song from my playthrough: