Across the Grooves

Across the Grooves is a narrative-focused interactive graphic novel that builds its identity around music, altered timelines, relationships, and the consequences of choices. Developed and published by Nova-box, it follows Alice, a young woman whose relatively settled existence is disrupted when she receives a vinyl record from Ulysse, a former lover. Playing the record produces an impossible result: her past changes, and the life she remembers is replaced by a different version of reality. What begins as curiosity quickly develops into a personal mystery about memory, destiny, and whether changing previous decisions can actually create a better future. The story sends Alice on a journey across Europe as she searches for Ulysse and attempts to discover the origin and purpose of the mysterious record. The supernatural premise could easily have become a straightforward time-travel mystery, but the game places greater emphasis on emotional consequences. Every alteration potentially changes Alice's relationships, circumstances, and personality. This makes the central mystery feel personal because the player is not merely investigating an unusual object but gradually reshaping the perso…

Across the Grooves may have taken the spot of the best Nova-Box game that I have played (Ik this is the second I played from them but only two picked my interest as for now). The game slightly improved compared to Along the Edge in some areas, mainly and most importantly its theme: the music. As I probably said in AtE review I mentioned the mystical/magical part was not used very much, if not only used at the very end of the witch path(s), but with AtG having the constant mentions of different songs and artists and the usage of the record/Choros fixed what I thought it was the lacking part from the last game; Secondly and even more important: THE SOUNDTRACK. Jeez, the music in the last game was already pretty good but now Nova-Box outdone itself with the song, especially with the addition of lyric song (In Your Absence, A New Emanation, Time Collapses -not the rock version though-) with the big one being Permutations. One of the best pieces of music I listened for a while and I must give huge thanks to Camille Marcos and Julien Ponsoda, as well as Christelle Cannot for portraying Alice's voice, beautiful voice btw. (and also shoutout for the instrumentals; -And lastly: the trans…

Gorgeous art, great writing, and a lot of different ways to shape the character as you play her through the game. I really enjoyed this game and played through to get all possible endings.

It's well-written, interesting and beautifully illustrated. I love the subtle changes between routes. The main downside is there's no way to skip what you've already read. Other than that it's a thoroughly enchanting experience.

The art work is nice. The music fits fine. The idea of the plot is quite interesting and twisted. The experience of the playthrough though is somewhat girly. Dissapointing part is absence of any real choices, imposed love story without proper development of characters relationship, very naive ending and the biggest dissapointment is zero use for the type of your character build - 4 types, acquired from options one makes in dialogue. Not even statistics on the characteristics you have acquired, I'm not even mentioning how good it would make the game, if some of the choices were added, based on the acquired characteristics. What was point in that system at all? It was just fooling you and giving false hope that it matters.

One of the best visual novels, perfect!!!