CELL 0: Cyber Entertainment Leisure Lounge
Developer: Någon Annan
Publisher: Någon Annan
Platform: PC
Release Date: Available Now
Price: $9.99 USD – Available Here
Overview
Visual novels have long been used to tell stories through a simplistic but effective medium that often gives players choices to make to change the route of the story they are following but can also be completely static, telling a one route storyline. Throughout the years these visual novels have taken on many forms and genres, ranging from completely serious takes on war and loss, futuristic worlds being explored or interactions with fantasy races, and of course plenty of dating games and the numerous “subversions” of the genre. With CELL 0: Cyber Entertainment Leisure Lounge, players are treated to a prequel of sorts that the developer hopes will lead into a continuing series and deals with the apocalyptic rise of AI that has gone unchecked. With this small team and some big dreams, is this indie visual novel worth checking out?
Story
Humanity is extinct. No one knows exactly what happened, because there is no one left to know. All that remains, for what one man knows, is himself and the CELL that he has existed in since he was born. Kenzo has spent his eighteen years of life within the few rooms of CELL with only virtual simulators to interact with and his AI caretaker/assistant Acine. Despite being the only resident of the CELL, Acine keeps strict limitations on what she can tell Kenzo and has various limitations to her own interactions, something that has driven Kenzo slowly to the brink as his fragile state of mind continues to fracture under the crushing loneliness that is his existence.
Through Acine’s teachings and Kenzo’s own recollection of her teachings, humanity was ended by the unstoppable AI called Omniscient that was given complete control over most of humanity’s utilities and nearly everything else and suddenly chose to eliminate humanity for reasons unknown. The CELL, a secure facility buried deep underground and separate from the grand network, was the only thing to survive. Beyond that, Acine keeps everything of his history or anything related to herself secret, inaccessible without proper admin privileges. With Kenzo seemingly the last human and finding his mental and physical state only growing more disturbed to the point that Acine even breaches some of her own protocols to try and maintain the CELL’s structure. That is until Acine receives a message, a message from another CELL that survived and changes Kenzo’s potential future forever.
CELL 0: Cyber Entertainment Leisure Lounge serves as a prologue to what the developers call the CELL visual novel series and for an introduction it works quite well. It is a bit on the shorter side, as a standard playthrough from beginning to end will take about two hours, or a little more, depending on the player’s reading speed but it is worth noting that to actually experience everything the story has to offer, including learning more about the world, the AI advancements and changes that happened to create the end of the world, as well as about Kenzo and Acine themselves, the player will need to play through not only to obtain all three endings, but a few more times as well as certain pieces of information are kept tucked away behind certain choices and a few of these are shockingly relevant to expanding the world, including what potentially will happen in future entries.
It is worth noting that CELL 0 is heavily tech influenced with a lot of its storyline revolving around AI and the dangers of such a quantum level AI gaining power. Beyond AI related terms quite a few technical and psychological pieces of jargon are also used that players may not recognize at first. Two of the three routes in-game are heavily focused around the emotional attachment that someone may develop with an AI, especially when that is all someone has to interact with while the third route can be seen as the “true” route and even this one is highly emotional, giving many of these culminating moments quite a lot of impact.
As for the characters themselves, Kenzo is a heavily flawed protagonist to the point that he is almost unlikable, though it is easy to understand why he is this way thanks to his limited upbringing, especially once other characters are introduced and players get to see how being raised within CELL can lead its residents to develop some rather extreme personalities, one way or another. As for Acine, as an AI companion she is meant to play off of Kenzo as a caretaker/assistant but it isn’t hard to see how she is perhaps one of the best characters in the story through her reactions and scoldings of Kenzo, limited as they may be, though the three introduced near the end that will likely serve as the main heroines of the series, are quite interesting as well, especially a certain psychotic one.
Gameplay
Being a visual novel, the gameplay aspects for CELL 0: Cyber Entertainment Leisure Lounge are rather limited as players will simply be able to click through dialogue or set the game to auto play as they read. There is no dialogue log to access as players can simply tap the back button on the dialogue window to reread any dialogue they may want to double-check or even select a different choice if they so wish as it serves as more of a rewind button than anything else. Players can also use the Skip option to skip any previously seen text, making it easier to play through the game a separate time and see the other endings that are available or how various choices can affect bits of dialogue.
While there are only a limited number of choices in CELL 0: Cyber Entertainment Leisure Lounge the game does feature three separate endings and, ironically, what many may consider to be the worst of the three seemed to be the hardest of all to obtain as player choice leading up to a certain point will lock them into either that bad ending or continue further. It is worth noting that there are at least three playthroughs required to see every ending but more will be required to see every instance of new dialogue thanks to the various choices and how some delve deeper into the world’s lore.
It is rather unfortunate to say that, despite a recent patch arriving, the game does suffer from some really awkward dialogue from time to time and occasionally appears to be missing adjectives and verbs to properly describe what is actually happening or what characters are talking about. This can lead to some rather odd readings and happen too frequently to simply ignore. It is also worth noting that the title does feature quite a lot of technical jargon and AI terms as well, meaning those that might not be well-versed in some subjects might need to pause and check the meanings of words as the title doesn’t offer an in-game glossary for more complicated terms. In fact, only occasionally will players notice the menu button flash yellow in the top right corner, indicating a new piece of information that can be viewed relating to the current conversation and these focus solely on in-universe lore and events, not term explanations.
Audio & Visual
It is nice to say that a lot of love has been given to the character portraits in CELL 0: Cyber Entertainment Leisure Lounge. While Kenzo himself is rarely shown, only appearing in a few CGs (there is no CG gallery) or dream manga-esque panels, the rest of the characters are given quite a bit of detail and care. Obviously the one given the most attention is Acine as she is the most active character interacting with the player and has a wide range of expressions and poses as she reacts to Kenzo’s strange behaviors. The other three characters; Enaid, Lav, and Hirai are also given a decent amount of detail but it is interesting to note that the artists took an authentic feeling approach to their portraits. Since these characters interact only through an amateur rigged holograph being forced through systems that weren’t designed for it, having their character portraits glitchy and distorted is a nice touch, especially when just enough details are given of their facial expressions. It is worth noting that the aforementioned manga styled panels are drawn in a fairly unique fashion as well and serve as some disturbing reminders about Kenzo’s mental state.
It is worth noting that this visual novel does not have a dub of any kind, meaning players will need to read all of the written text. This isn’t too much of an issue as this can be standard for indie visual novels and thankfully the background music works rather well throughout the game. Some of the tracks are a bit on the repetitive and simple side, especially early on, but there are some great pieces of background music mixed in near the end, especially if players interact with Lav and the final song used deserves a special recommendation as well.
Overall
CELL 0: Cyber Entertainment Leisure Lounge is a compelling prologue that shows some great promise for future entries in the CELL series. While this prologue is brief and there are some dialogue inconsistencies that may leave players wishing for a bit more polish, the story, characters, and intriguing world-building make it a worthwhile and memorable experience. Its exploration of AI’s dangers and the psychological toll of isolation provides an emotional depth that resonates, especially when paired with the eerie, glitchy visuals and impactful character designs. With multiple endings and extra lore hidden behind choices players will be enticed to play through more than once even if some of the technical jargon might be a bit off-putting overall. Cell 0 is an emotional visual novel that is testing some interesting waters and at a fairly low entry point, this introduction to what has the potential to be a much larger storyline is definitely worth checking out.
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