For sixty-nine cents, you can buy a gumball. Or you can buy a visual novel about post-Soviet survival that will apparently make you feel something real.

Visual novel: Dashing 90s, released today on Steam by developer Reanim Games and publisher STuNT, costs less than a dollar during its launch sale. It tells the story of Andrey, a young man who arrives in the city to enroll in college and moves into a communal apartment — where alcoholics, cult members, and gangsters become his neighbors. Every choice is a balance between morality and survival. One wrong answer, and a college applicant becomes a criminal.

The game currently has exactly two player reviews. Both are positive. One player logged 7.6 hours and described it as “so dark and serious” and showing “how hard it was to survive in the nineties,” noting that “one mistake in answering the questions can ruin everything.” The other, at 4.2 hours, praised its “90s anime art” and “retro soundtrack” as “sweet and nostalgic” — “perfect for mood.”

Two concurrent players. Two reviews. A rounding error in Steam’s daily traffic. And yet something about those reviews feels more genuine than most game criticism — raw, unpunctuated, written by people who stumbled onto a small thing and were genuinely moved by it.

Reanim Games has a history of budget-priced indie titles on Steam, including Camp “Burevestnik” and Visual Novel: Requiem for Noodles. The studio seems to operate in that quiet space where ultra-low pricing meets earnest craft — games priced so cheap they’re almost free, yet clearly made with care about something specific: a time, a place, a feeling.

Whether $0.69 can buy a meaningful artistic experience is probably the wrong question. The right question is why we’re surprised when it does.

Sources