STEINS;GATE RE:BOOT Screenshot
Image: Mages. Inc & Spike Chunsoft Co., Ltd.

Look at any list of the best or most influential visual novels, and you'll likely see Steins;Gate near the top. First released in 2009, it's the second in the loosely connected Science Adventure series by 5pb. and Nitroplus, telling the story of Rintaro Okabe, a self-described teenage 'mad scientist', who mostly spends his time hanging out with his circle of weird nerd friends in their 'laboratory', where they read comics and occasionally invent useless gadgets. Right up until they accidentally create a real, functioning time machine and everything goes WAY off the rails.

Steins;Gate has seen adaptations as a manga, an anime series, a remake based on the anime, a remaster, and now a re-remake based more closely on the original visual novel. That last one's out today, and if you have any interest in twisty time travel stories, you'll probably want to check it out.

The Re:Boot version is probably the most comprehensive remake of the game yet. A slightly extended, broadly rewritten, and fully re-illustrated new edition. This version adds some more story-referencing semi-sequel Steins;Gate 0 (insofar as a time travel story can have canonicity), plus a new story arc/route focused on Moeka, one of the most interesting, mysterious, and under-explored characters of the original. It also includes many of the tweaks made by Steins;Gate Elite, the anime adaptation release that cut down on some of the padding. Does that make this the definitive version or a compromised one? Who knows.

While best described as a visual novel, there is a decent bit of interaction going on in Steins;Gate. Unsurprisingly, being a time travel story, there's a whole bunch of branching timelines to explore based on your decisions, with knowledge of the more whimsical, playful realities giving hints on how to navigate the much more serious endgame. While this is a pretty upbeat, silly adventure about a bunch of kids who find a way to send text messages through time (their time machine only does data), it unsurprisingly takes a darker turn as all this meddling with the timeline has repercussions. I'd say more, but even if this story is nearly twenty years old, it's just not cool to spoil a new reader.

The Science Adventure universe is well worth reading in general, although several of the titles are sadly unavailable on Steam. The Chaos;Head series follow a band of 'gigalomaniacs' - youths able to bend reality through the power of delusion. The Robotics;Code series is about an after-school robotics club aiming to enter a Robot Wars/Battlebots style exhibition, only to get dragged into a much larger story. Anonymous;Code is a metatextual cyberpunk story about what it would mean to be able to save and load game in reality.

Lastly, Steins;Gate itself has multiple spinoffs, including the silly and romantic My Darling's Embrace, the chaotic Linear Bounded Phenogram (a series of side-stories exploring the rest of the cast's lives), and the dark semi-sequel Steins;Gate 0, following on from one of the worst possible endings of the original. Most of these also go on steep discount several times a year, sometimes even beyond 80% off their quite-steep sticker price. If you're on the fence, stick them on your wishlist for a rainy day. They're all good stuff. Plus, if the remake's too much for your wallet, the previous releases are still available and frequently cheap.

Speaking of discounts, STEINS;GATE RE:BOOT (to give it is full, official capitalization) is out now on Steam, albeit with a steep £45/$60 price tag and no discounts to speak of. Those who buy it before November 30th will receive an interesting pre-order bonus DLC - Octet of Shifting Space - an 8-bit demake in the style of '80s Japanese computer adventures. There's no release date yet for the bonus game, but remake developer MAGES tends to go above and beyond on their bonuses.