Planetarian: Chiisana Hoshi No Yume - Gameplay

Gameplay

Planetarian is a post-apocalyptic visual novel in which the player assumes the role of the junker. Unlike traditional visual novels, no choices are given to the player in Planetarian to advance the story, and there is only one possible ending; this is what Key referred to as a kinetic novel. The player can choose when to advance to the next dialogue screen or put the game on auto play. In this respect, the player does not play the game as if it were a video game, but plays it rather more like one would play a music track on a CD or play a DVD movie. During gameplay, the player can choose to hide the text from view and go back to any previous lines. The game can be saved at any point in any of the five save slots available, and a load option is available where the player can load any of the automatically saved chapter markers, or choose to load any of the manually saved games.

By length of story, Planetarian is the shortest of Key's games. Excluding the opening and ending sequences, there are 16 parts to the story; the first half is set within the planetarium while the latter half is set outside in the ruined city where the planetarium resides. The novel takes four hours and forty minutes to complete on auto play. After the game has been completed at least once, two new options appear on the title screen. The first is a feature that allows the player to view twenty images of CG artwork observed in the game. The second option allows the player to listen to eight of the nine music tracks featured in the game.