izigame.me

Seven Days is a visual novel that mixes in suspense and the paranormal with friendship and romance.
The protagonist is a male schoolboy who finds himself in the possession of a haunted disc, which eventually summons the spirits of a number of different schoolgirls - though only one of them, one named Chiyako, which can be described as the main spirit and the character central to this paranormal storyline, is human-like, the rest summoned in normally inanimate objects such as a teddy bear. The different spirits take turns spending 7 days in Chiako's body, before disappearing away, hence the name of the novel.
The paranormal elements of the story mixes in all sorts of elements and plot lines of different Japanese horror stories, particularly from Ringu/The Ring, with a couple of scare jumps along the way, and a very dark back story, which, albeit the rather cute artwork of the novel, is not surprising once the background of the spirits is known.
The bulk of the story is spent with the protagonist spending his days with the spirits, in a more upbeat, lighthearted, and comedic day to day narrative, with the different characters trying to make the most of their time together before the spirits one by one disappear. Though no single element of the story is exactly unique on its own, the whole story put together is.
The main story is streamlined, though there are multiple choices along the way, that may lead to either a normal friendship, or a romantic outcome to - most of - each one of the individual spirits, or to one of the many quick available bad endings available throughout. There are also a number of quick action events along the way. It has great character development, though that is not even in that some characters do not get the romantic endings, and a few of the character storylines are rushed in comparison with others - including Chiyako's arcs too.
One negative point of note is that the final chapter of the story can be confusing and hard to obtain without knowing the trigger. Compounding this confusion is the mention of another chapter ingame, supposedly to be added at a later moment, though nothing has been yet released yet.
The artwork, as mentioned, is very cute-like, and is drawn very well. There are a good number of CGs, including a number of more suggestive ones for fan service purposes. It suits the light hearted day to day moments well, though drawings of darker overtones for the scarier, sadder, and/or serious part, would have been appreciated as well.
I feel there the variety of individual character expressions is on the lower side, and sprites are not animated. The different spirits occupying Chiako's bodies during the seven days each have different colors, attire and personalities, though physically, they are the same, which does compound the lack of sprite variety of movement mentioned above.
Music is of decent quality, with just enough tracks to fit in all different story parts. It is not something to come back though, and in any event there is no BGM selection to allow one to listen to the different tracks available, unfortunately. The voice acting is of ok quality, though like the music, is not 100% either.
Overall, Seven Days is a solid and refreshing story well put together. It is not perfect in its execution, and the price may be a tad high for what it offers, but nevertheless I enjoyed it quite a bit. 8/10