Developer InvertMouse has been quietly crafting quality visual novel and visual novel hybrid games for the past 5-6 years, but last year’s harrowing drama entitled The Last Birdling was my first exposure to their work. In contrast, this year’s Without Within 3 is a wholly different beast characterized more by wacky anime hijinks yet still having heart. I was definitely intrigued by how InvertMouse would present such a different style of narration from The Last Birdling, so I seized the opportunity to check out Without Within 3.
The Without Within series is about an aspiring calligrapher named Vinty whose attempts to be famous like her graceful idol Excelia either fall flat or backfire. While Excelia gets to live the charmed life of a globe-trotting celebrity, little Vinty is stuck cleaning toilets at a restaurant for a meager wage that leaves her a day late and a dollar short on the rent. Vinty clearly falls into the moe anime traits of “adorkable” or “awkwardorable.” As expected, her wince-eliciting attempts to be cool and popular come across as endearing in media like anime, manga, or video games.
In prior Without Within games, Vinty and Excelia encountered each other and established the familiar yet tenuous friend/rival relationship present in this installment. It seems the ghost of a deceased calligrapher is haunting Singapore, and because Excelia can’t have someone else stealing her spotlight, she ropes Vinty into a mission to track down this ghost. The ghost calligrapher also happens to be a top fashion model from the 1990s, so methinks she’ll be a formidable foe for our intrepid little toilet scrubber and her privileged cohort.
Yes, the story is often comically absurd, but it takes a few surprisingly dark twists in the latter portions of the game. Vinty herself even realizes the wackiness of her circumstances, but she just shrugs it off with a YOLO attitude. Wait, do people even say YOLO anymore or has it gone completely out of style? My little internal dialogue just now parallels but a glimpse of Vinty’s tragically hip personality, and her colorful narration makes Without Within 3 a most delightful adventure.
As delightful as Without Within 3 is, however, I felt a bit left behind because I never played the first two games in the series. The storyline here is easy enough to follow, but exposure to the first two games would have provided foundational insight into Vinty’s world as well as the backstory of how she became a surprisingly close frenemy with Excelia. That being said, Vinty’s charm has captivated me into wanting to check out what I’ve missed.
I posit that storytelling is often as important as the story itself, and Without Within 3 is one of those games where a familiar story is elevated by engaging storytelling and fluid pacing. I’m glad the storytelling hooked me, because the game is a “kinetic novel.” That means it’s a 100% linear experience with no Choose Your Own Adventure-style interactivity. I just read the words, looked at the pictures, listened to the music, and occasionally interfaced with the well-designed menu and icon layout. Normally, I dislike kinetic novels, but Without Within 3 has an infectious nature about it, as well as a couple of neat surprises, that kept me glued until the end. I binge played this game over the course of an entire Sunday.
Without Within 3’s music is composed by Jeff Lawhead, whose body of work I’m unfamiliar with, and Efe Tozan, who composed for several InvertMouse games including The Last Birdling and the prior Without Within games. The long and short of this paragraph is that the music is fantastic. I appreciated the melodic yet complex music with multilayered arrangements that make judicious use of space. By that, I mean that none of the instrumental parts clash with each other and everything sounds harmonious. I love the soundtrack because it, along with Vinty’s narration, elevates Without Within 3 beyond its archetypically anime trappings.
Occasional rudimentary animations punctuate a vibrant visual design. The most vivid colors and detailing occur when Vinty finds herself in particularly striking locations. In those key places where the visual design flourishes, subtle icons pop up linking to video footage (taken personally by the developer) of the actual places Vinty visits or talks about. The first of these instances of art imitating life is a tropical garden Vinty sees at Singapore’s Changi airport. The colors of the in-game depiction absolutely leap off the screen, and when I clicked the link to see video footage of it, my gut reaction was one of amazement: Whoa, that’s real?! It’s like something out of a fantasy! Without Within 3 is both a rollicking adventure and a little bit of a travelogue that made me realize how little I know of the vast and wondrous world out there; I should do more exploring.
I rather enjoyed Without Within 3 in spite of myself. I say that because I’m not a fan of kinetic novels and often bemoan their lack of interactivity. Although I’ve played multiple kinetic novels (including the acclaimed Planetarian: The Reverie of a Little Planet), Without Within 3 is the genre example I truly enjoyed the most. It’s not very often that I can call a game with no gameplay fun, but Without Within 3 was loads of fun, and I want to experience Vinty’s other adventures.
