Hoshi no Suna Monogatari 3

The third entry in the Hoshi no Suna Monogatari series is also the first one not to have Gengorou Imai as the protagonist (although he does have a cameo appearance in the game). The playable character this time is the 23-year-old Mine Takaishi. He dropped out of college because of opinion difference with a teacher; now he is poor and can only have jobs as a tutor. Luckily, one of the girls he teaches has a rich family, which sends her on a vacation at the fashionable boarding house on the sea shore, owned by a relative named Uminoya; the private teacher accompanies her. Several relatives also stay at the boarding house, and all goes well until one of them, the owner’s younger brother, suddenly feels very sick after having dinner… He is taken to the hospital, and Mine begins to investigate the boarding house and its surrounding, suspecting foul play…

Like the previous entries in the series, Hoshi no Suna Monogatari 3 is a detective/mystery adventure. There are no significant changes to the interface, beside the addition of several context-related verbs (such as “Take”) to the list of available commands. The navigation is also done through a menu, basically “jumping” from screen to screen. There is some investigating work (questioning, gathering items, etc.) to be done, but like in many Japanese adventures, advancing the story is often a matter of visiting all the locations and hoping to trigger events by “bumping” into characters.