BURN pulls me in with its announcement trailer. The game’s logo splays across the screen in a neon-green black metal font with sickening tendrils crawling out of it. In all caps text: “A POP STAR TRAGEDY TOLD IN SIXTEEN ENDINGS.” The moody electronic score pulses under an establishing shot of Nina Burn, the titular pop star. You decide, the trailer promises, the text flicking through possibilities. It feels like a statement of intent. Of confidence.
But when I reach my sixteenth ending, I somehow feel more lost. The trailer made sense. What I played through seems to fall apart in my hands.
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BURN is a stylish visual novel best suited for short play sessions. Each route shows brief vignettes throughout Nina’s debut (Act One), established career (Act Two) and climax (an ending).
These segments are all in conversation, albeit in the most literal sense. Nina Burn either talks to the media, her family, or herself. The game offers you two branching paths much like this one. These clearly labeled choices will, in theory, determine your ending:
Choose the bright side. ❤️ Or look into the shadows. 👿
You decide.
Or simply decide not to play.
Maybe you’re genre-savvy enough to expect this kind of ruse. It’s been years since Danganronpa V3 and Doki Doki Literature Club dangled that possibility in front of you: just stop. Nobody’s making you play. Close this tab. Go read a book. Touch grass. And maybe you did in-between those sentences. You’re expecting another layer to this, but there isn’t one. BURN is exactly what it claims to be: A POP STAR TRAGEDY TOLD IN SIXTEEN ENDINGS. Nothing more, nothing less.
What, you want to know how I felt about BURN? I can’t do that neutrally. You have to choose. Read this from top to bottom like a traditional article. Or scroll back up and pick a side.
Choose the bright side.❤️
BURN chooses brevity, even in a market stacked largely against it. This short-form approach is the game’s mission statement. You can reach all sixteen endings in an hour and a half. Every game that releases in relative completeness is a miracle.
Developer Convict Games should be proud that BURN made it to that finish line. Even if I wished for a bit more to chew on, hopefully this game can be a foundation for them to build upon in future titles. Ultimately BURN’s art and audio heighten the overall experience. ❤️
I felt completely dissociated.
It was my first year of college. Despite having more freedom on paper, there was a widening gap between who I presented and who I really was. Close enough to drive to my parents’ place, far enough away to experiment. And staying on an all-boys agriculture major floor. Close enough to them to start identifying that ache in my chest, but keeping a careful distance.
My mind and my body were independent of each other. I started to neglect one to feed the other. Retreating inward in the hopes that I could find that feeling and name it, too scared to fully commit.
Now over a decade has passed. Those personal conflicts and revelations seem excruciatingly simple to untangle. But back then I was in uncharted waters, swimming furiously just to keep air in my lungs. That internal disconnect can hurt anyone. And it almost broke me.
Look into the shadows. 👿
BURN’s short runtime comes at a cost. It simply doesn’t give anyone enough time to really dig into the premise. Sometimes the stylized loading screen and title cards last just as long as the narrative segments.
A good story needs friction, and BURN never lets its moving parts make contact. Any choice I make bounces right off. Any question I have goes unanswered. Maybe this narrative diagnostic tool will be enough for other players, but it feels too insubstantial for me. Even BURN’s visuals and sounds have hiccups. 👿
BURN’s art and audio heighten the experience. ❤️
BURN’s unsettling mood rests on Francois Bourdin’s sharp-edged vector art and Joonas Turner’s ominous adaptive audio. I hear three soundtrack variants throughout my playtime: eerie ambience, metal guitar screeches, and lo-fi beats to spiral to.
Even when momentary technical issues divert my focus, the sights and sounds give me the momentum to see this through. The next crisp backdrop, the way Nina’s outfits morph with her mood. BURN’s atmosphere is the deliberate scaffolding the rest of the game hangs on, for better and worse. Right up to the end, I never know where BURN’s next choice will take me. ❤️
Music helped me slowly climb back out.
It felt difficult to outwardly experiment with my identity, so music helped bridge the gap. With access to university-grade internet, I was free to dive into genres I hadn’t quite touched. Earlier brushes with Robyn led me to french group YELLE. And then Perfume’s intricately choreographed J-Pop. I read more music blogging and criticism.
I found solace in the most unlikely places—The Birthday Massacre’s fusion of metal and electronics, Thievery Corporation’s world-spanning downtempo. All of these different facets were part of me.
And like all good music, it worked its way back into my body. First a playlist soundtracked nighttime walks. Then full-fledged runs with an unrequited crush. And ever so slightly, the rupture between my mind and my body closed. Progress wasn’t a straight line. It was easy to skip days, to regress. But the synapses connecting music and movement, movement and my very self, stayed.
Even BURN’s visuals and sounds have hiccups. 👿
BURN’s accelerated runtime leaves little margin for error. And unfortunately, even the aspects I like have their flaws. A glaring “Sherriff’s Ofice” typo in recurring key art makes me sigh, especially when the camera pointedly spins and zooms in on it. Other than some chromatic aberration, warping, and overlays, BURN’s visuals remain static. Expressions don’t change unless character art is fully replaced, which is rare.
And the game’s audio quality suffers from the constraints of remote recording across four distant locations. Every voiced character’s audio is just different enough to throw me off. Nina (Susanna Tikkanen) has the clearest delivery. But Ethan (Ethan Watson) speaks like he’s on a strict timer, racing through every line at a frantic pace. Sheila (Sheila Njoki Ndungu) fares better, but the aural quality is slightly different from the rest of the cast.
Some sort of normalization for voice lines would have gone a long way. Even worse, accidentally clicking through multiple lines means the audio clips fully overlap. There’s no way to cut them off. These jarring production choices mean BURN’s brief story segments never truly connect. 👿
I never know where BURN’s next choice will take me. ❤️
Almost every BURN playthrough unearths new scenes, new art, new endings. I chalk it up to my decisions the first time, but by the third playthrough I’m not so sure. Nina flies through settings and outfits according to my choices, but I’m still unsettled by one ending’s particularly sharp turn.
Despite aiming for darker choices, lighter endings surface first. Nina becomes a politician, an artist, an independent musician instead of a megastar. She says she’s glad she got out. Instead of traveling through her recovery, I slingshot from her lowest moment to her highest. Only a title card and a loading screen separate them.
Does the game weight new scenes and endings over what you’ve already seen? Although it respects my time, I have mixed feelings about BURN’s mechanics. Onscreen text gestures at choice mechanics instead of going into detail. I must be missing something. BURN hints at provocative ideas ❤️, so maybe the game trusts us to piece things together offscreen.
BURN’s brief story segments never truly connect. 👿
BURN’s writing never gives me a solid foothold. If it’s supposed to be a slippery, deliberate misdirection, this tactic doesn’t work as intended. Media interviews form the bulk of BURN’s dialogue, yet they feel stilted and slow.
Journalists ask vague questions, so Nina gives vague answers. There’s a wealth of Dakota Johnson reference material for truly combative press tours. But Nina’s inflammatory antics seem tame in comparison.
Nina never truly has any interiority, just the image you’re projecting onto her at the current moment. She wants out of the deal. She’s ready for the deal. She doesn’t care what her fanbase takes from her music. It’s just art. Nina’s really close with her fans. It’s all a metaphor. Despite Tikkanen’s best efforts, there’s no real cohesion between your small choices.
Just as the introduction promises, Nina’s styles morph with her mood. If she’s in swoopy fabrics and bright colors, you’re probably on track for a lighter ending. If Nina sports piercings or upside down crosses, you’re most likely in for a dark ending. Or worse, as the game puts it, an ugly one.
I can never tell what makes Nina swing from one extreme to the other. Is it truly a product of my in-game actions, or weighted choices tabulating behind the scenes? Greg Louden’s writing doesn’t sway me one way or the other. BURN’s attempt at darker themes feels regressive. 👿
BURN hints at provocative ideas. ❤️
BURN’s intro sequence establishes sky-high stakes that are only hinted at throughout the rest of the game. Nina Burn’s a young musician that the media calls an old soul. Her lyrics contain a worrying darkness, but she alternately deflects and plays into the Satanic imagery.
To its credit, BURN resists the urge to label and assign blame. Nina doesn’t need a reason for her anguish. It just is. Mental health can’t be narrowed down to a series of characteristics. But the underpinning story suffers from this lack of detail, rendering sharp narrative turns into blurry outlines. The text doesn’t dive any deeper. Burn leaves too much unsaid.
Recovery wasn’t a straight line.
Years passed, with their heady highs and subterranean lows. I kept struggling against the dissociative current with therapy and eventually prescription antidepressants. My postgraduate career took a few false starts, then sputtered out completely. I moved cross-country, applied to new jobs, weathered the pandemic, moved places with my husband. Work ebbed and flowed. Mostly ebbed, if we’re being honest.
And then just as suddenly, despair cut through everything I had built. I was back at the bottom, staring into the same dissociative abyss. My support system helped me through that low point.
After a few weeks, my new medication took. But it became very clear that mental health was not a binary state. There was no “better” and “not better,” just the steady work of survival. Another synapse linking my mind and body and all their contradictory impulses. The work is what keeps me alive.
BURN’s attempt at darker themes feels regressive. 👿
BURN leaves out any deeper conversations about the music industry’s exploitative nature, black metal’s range from reactionary screeds to antifascist protest anthems, and the decentralizing force of modern fandom. Whether it’s due to the team’s direction or dwindling resources, the writing’s regressive streak undercuts BURN’s atmosphere.
The concrete answers behind this deal with the devil aren’t important, but most routes end on surface-level resolutions. Nina Burn leaves black metal behind. Nina commits a crime. Nina is a permanent resident at an unnamed rehab facility. Nina may or may not be hiding a child. There are no glimpses at her evolution, only cryptic interviews at her starting point and destination.
In most endings, Nina ultimately stands alone. In front of a press conference. For a mugshot. By the rehab facility’s pool. Only one good ending features Nina with another character, talking to Ethan about musical independence.
But the ugly endings get closest to a makeshift community. Nina communes with witchcraft, a familiar on her shoulder. Nina is at the center of a cult, surrounded by hooded figures. But only Nina knows why community thrives under her worst impulses. The game itself can’t answer. BURN leaves too much unsaid.
The Verdict: BURN leaves too much unsaid.
BURN’s accelerated runtime forces the game to skim over its most potent themes—the price of fame, the parasocial pull of modern music fandom, a young musician’s struggle out of a mental health spiral. BURN never really digs into the dark heart of the matter.
It’s clearly the work of a small, passionate team, but in the end BURN’s narrative approach is too reductive. Convict Games smartly reduces the game’s scope, but truncated writing makes the whole experience feel unfocused.
The art and audio dazzle on a technical level, but even those aspects suffer from technical mishaps. Typos, audio overlap, and unsettlingly static assets slow down the momentum at crucial moments. And the frequent loading screens and opening credits soon overstay their welcome.
Despite the kaleidoscopic endings, BURN feels more confining than solo offerings constructed in visual novel engine Ren’Py or text parsers. It holds the player at a distance, leaving the audience to shoulder the burden of linking fragmented decisions and events. I feel little connection between the choices Nina makes and their outcomes.
As the final credits roll, I’m at a loss. My first instinct is toward understanding, toward connection. But Nina Burn leaves me adrift, despite our shared struggles. I can’t really picture her voice, only pointed silences between questions. Anything beneath the surface stays with her.
Okay
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Striking background and character art. | Visible typos and voice line overlaps. |
| Emotive soundtrack that morphs between genres. | Voice recording quality disparities. |
| A short experience that respects the player’s time. | In-game choices feel disconnected from most outcomes. |
| Room for the small core development team to grow. | Terse writing and unexplored themes. |
| Despite my best efforts, I simply couldn’t resonate with Nina. |
Read the Press SPACE to Jump Review Scale for more information on what our scores mean. For more indie coverage, stay tuned to the site!
