My Playtime: 6.6h (100% achievement, finished the game 7x)
My First Playthrough: 2.9h
Grindy Achievement(s): No.
Optional Achievement(s): Yes (~22 achievements).
Difficult Achievement(s): No.

Along the Edge is a visual novel telling the story of Daphné, a woman who has received an inheritance from her deceased grandmother to live in a rural village. It's a story about choices that will shape your ending.

Pros:
- Choices that determine your endings, with 4 endings and several variations
- A lot of unique images for cutscenes

Cons:
- Dialogues between each ending don't differ much
- No auto skip previously read dialogues
- No manual save slot

Specs
AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D, 16GB RAM, AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT

If you enjoy a visual novel where your choices matter, this game is for you.

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Gameplay
Along the Edge is a visual novel that shapes the ending based on your choice. You play as Daphné, a woman who has gone through the darkest time of her life, where she suddenly got a chance to start anew in another place, thanks to the inheritance from her recently deceased grandmother. The story focuses on her time in this new place and the unusual events that she encounters.

Being a visual novel, you'll be presented with choices all the time. These choices might or might not affect your state, which is marked at the top of the screen. There are four states in total, represented by symbols: the globe-shaped one represents science, the moon one represents selfishness, the star one represents selflessness, and the star one represents magic. The game will choose the combination of two symbols, which can be science or magic, and selfishness or selflessness, to determine which ending you get. That being said, the game won't tell you which path you are currently in unless you reach the middle of the game.

https://v1.steam.hlxgame.cc/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3658931887

The ending won't be determined just by those states, though. Your choice, whether it was done at an earlier or later point in time, will also give the ending a little variation. However, due to how the game is designed, these differences usually only happen in a few dialogues, making your consecutive playthroughs boring. Moreover, the game doesn't have a feature to automatically skip read dialogues, and this can make you easily miss the dialogues that you really need to read if you fast-forward them too much. There is a feature to read from the backlog, but even that won't really do much if you don't realize which dialogue you missed.

Story
The story is told from Daphné's perspective. There is a lot to take in, especially at the beginning, where the game doesn't tell what happened to her before moving to the village, and the game assumes you already know. Sure, it might be explained later, but I wish it could be explained earlier, before the confusion starts to kick in.

For those who are seeking romance, there are two men you can choose to romance. Rejecting both of them and being alone is also an option, by the way. Both men come from different backgrounds, but I found them to be similar. In games with romance options like this, the male options usually have different personalities that make them unique, but I don't feel that difference between the two characters.

https://v1.steam.hlxgame.cc/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3660885040

The romance itself isn't a slow-burn—it's fast-paced with a turbo instead. You sleep with them day one and then decide to marry one of them. It might take months before it actually happens in the game, but there isn't any build-up leading to that connection, especially with how busy our protagonist is.

Daphné's changes are based on your choices. Whether she'll be a jerk or not is up to you, but the option is there. I like the routes where she's more civil, especially with how she makes enemies of everyone that she meets in her selfish state. This makes it easy to note which option leads to which state, though.

Length and Difficulty
I finished the game in 2.9h. I then finished it six more times to get all achievements. Honestly, I liked the ending variation, but I also think I shouldn't play that much to get all achievements. It's just too boring seeing all the same dialogues with so little difference in each route, especially since there is no manual save to fasten the process.

Along the Edge is a mediocre visual novel, one where your choice matters. Its visuals look great—they have so many unique cutscenes that differ almost at every dialogue and every state, making it easy to visualize what actually happens in the game. The writing can be improved to make it more interesting to read, but it's still an okay read nonetheless. If you enjoy a branching visual novel where your choice matters, buy it on sale.

Good

Emotionally engaging
like other great visual novels I found myself deeply invested. I understand why some feel there is not enough in the way of choices and paths. Personally I felt the immense weight of them to such an extent that I thought it was sufficient. I genuinely felt like it let me characterize the player character the way I wanted. To me the graphics really work, the blurry nature of them kind of making it feel like a distant memory being recalled. There's not that much in the way of music or sound design which makes what there is more impactful. Strongly recommended