Welcome to Neo City, a collection of cultures and technology, all co-existing in a fragile peace. One wrong move could threaten everything. One disaster threatens to come all too quickly and it’s up to you to ensure the city doesn’t meet it’s end. In Mato Fragments, play as “My Lady” get the inside scoop to save Neo City, or at the very least, not let it get worse.

Mato Fragments is the next installment of the Mato series by Hong Kong development studio Arrowiz and will be published by Soft Source Publishing. If the name Mato Fragments sounds somewhat familiar to you, then you may be familiar with Mato Anomalies. Arrowiz has also previously released Hermitage: Strange Case Files, another investigative visual novel.

However, when it comes to Mato Fragments, we aren’t just contending with investigations. In this latest release, we’re also dealing with time travel.

The Story

In this preview we were able to explore chapter one. While the storefront seems to be a place to get your photos developed it is so much more than that. Night Smoke, the shop, is where our protagonist, My Lady, will conduct her real job, trading information. As My Lady you’ll meet various faction representatives looking to either get information from you or trade for favors. However, My Lady isn’t looking to do this forever. In fact, she speaks to Uncle Fu quite often about how ready she is to leave. Too bad she’ll be stuck in this time loop unable to make that exit she’s planned so well.

My Lady and the rest of the city are in this five day time loop and each ending is slightly different than the last. The interesting piece here is that she will often remember something from the previous five days, although she isn’t quite sure how. At least due to this looping, one bad decision doesn’t totally spell out the end. At least not in chapter one.

While My Lady tends to seem quite cold, it feels that she is very much just trying to protect herself and perhaps her only family in Uncle Fu. Her cold demeanor does fade a little bit when a mysterious young stranger ends up in her care. She won’t get to spend too much time with him as he arrives on day five, just before the loop begins again. Perhaps one of these times she’ll remember him? Of course, she’ll have to survive the five day time loop to try and save the world.

Game Play

The game play is very much your traditional visual novel style. You’ll see the characters appear on the screen and the text appears in the text box below. The game does not have voice acting so get your reading glasses on.

Occasionally throughout the conversation, you’ll have choices on what to ask the informants. The information will be important to you in future choices, so be sure to take note of what you learn from the other characters as you may need to use this with others.

When characters come looking to you for information, you can’t always just speak it out loud. What kind of secret informant would you be if that was your style? No, instead, in keeping with the photography business, you provide your customers with microfilm that they will use their kaleidoscope to read. Of course, that’s only if you can be sure to provide the correct conclusion to their answer. This is why it’s quite important to really listen to what all of the characters are telling you. Or in this case, read every word closely.

When your shift is over at Night Smoke, you’ll speak to Uncle Fu and head to bed. That is on most nights. On the first of your time loops, on the fifth night, you’ll meet with someone late in the evening banging on your door. In the next loop, someone not so friendly makes their way to the shop. Navigate your choices carefully to continue to progress the story. Of course, in some cases, the story means going back to the start.

During play there will be times where you can skip the dialogue that you’ve already seen. Depending on how many times you repeat the five day cycle, you may not want to re-read all the previous text again. It’s great the game gives you this choice using the “pass” button. You’ll also know when My Lady is remembering something new because she’ll think about this, you’ll see a new option pop up in the dialogue choices, or the game will take you out from passing the scene. You’ll also notice that you no longer see the “pass” button in the lower right of the text box when repeating an interaction. This means it’s time to pay attention to the conversation or be ready to make some narrative choices.

Art & Music

The jazz music of this game is quite good. It fits the vibe and adds to the environment of Neo City. While I wouldn’t say the art is pretty, it also fits the aesthetic that Mato Fragments is going for. The art style is very good, the coloring feels just muted enough to remind you the experience of these characters. The dull coloring of characters contrasted with some of the neon of the options boxes and choices reminds you of the contradiction of the world you are in.

The small details on characters are also well done even while being obvious. Tiger appears to have claw marks on his face and a tiger tattoo. Uncle Fu comes with kind eyes that show his care and concern. Somehow, the dead eyes on characters are also so telling of the story being told. These characters, outside of Uncle Fu, are not inviting and friendly, and the artists made good work of this.

Just a Few Changes Needed

Overall, the game is quite interesting. However, I noticed that throughout the game, there were a few small moments where the localization/translation could be improved. It’s not enough to make the story unreadable thankfully. It’s a few small grammar tweaks and ensuring the right tense of a word is being used.

One issue that I did run across, although it did not impact my gameplay, was when I tried to investigate some of the Connections. While some of these worked fine, when clicking on Investigators, the game was suddenly in a language other than English. As this is a preview demo, the hope is that this will be work correctly in the final release.

Final Thoughts

As a visual novel and mystery fan, this is quite an enticing game. The universe is easy to dive into and even with the supernatural elements, it doesn’t feel too out there. While we don’t yet know what triggers the end or how to fully prevent it, chapter one truly does just set the stage. Can My Lady prevent the end of the world? Perhaps save the boy and still get her happy ending ticket out of town?

Mato Fragments will be available later this year on Steam. Thank you to Soft Source Publishing for the code. Wishlist Mato Fragments on Steam today!

Gamer Social Club was provided an early access code for the purpose of this review and was played on PC.