Retro Replay Review

Gameplay

The first stretch of My eyes! puts you in a good investigative mindset. You are not just turning pages through Ryouko’s work with Gigi; you are repeatedly choosing context-sensitive actions and replies, trying to understand what a moment will let you do. That makes the game feel more involved than a conventional visual novel, even though its basic pleasure is still rooted in reading and making decisions.

Its lack of permanent menus is a deliberate narrowing of focus. Rather than wandering through a big interface or regularly hopping between locations, you deal with the immediate situation in front of you. When the choices are clicking, that concentration suits the premise: you are a researcher following leads, probing conversations, and looking for the response that moves the case forward.

The catch is that progress can require cycling through commands more than once, and bad decisions can end the game. That is the sort of old-school adventure-game stubbornness that will either make you lean in or reach for patience. Treat early failures as information, not as proof you have ruined a run. If you want smooth, consequence-free branching fiction, this can frustrate; if you enjoy testing a scene until its hidden trigger gives way, the interaction has real bite.

Graphics

My eyes! is framed as an anime/manga visual-novel adventure, with Ryouko’s laboratory work and Gigi at the center of its scenes. The format keeps attention on the characters and the decisions surrounding them rather than on free exploration.

Story

The story starts from a genuinely strong science-fiction idea: Ryouko has achieved full communication with Gigi, a whale used as a research subject, and has taught him information. That setup is immediately more interesting than a generic lab-gone-wrong scenario because Gigi is not merely an experiment. He is an intelligent being whose new ability to communicate changes the moral stakes of everyone around him.

From there, the conflict points in a darker, more human direction. Other people attached to the project see practical uses for the whale’s intelligence and are willing to pursue shady agendas. The threat is not abstract technology; it is the familiar impulse to turn a living breakthrough into an asset. That gives Ryouko a personal reason to keep pushing forward and gives your choices more tension than they would have in a purely academic mystery.

The visual-novel structure is a good fit for this material because the drama depends on judgment: whom to trust, what to pursue, and how carefully to respond when the stakes rise. The premise does much of the heavy lifting, but it is a premise with enough ethical tension to carry the repeated conversational investigation.

Overall Experience

My eyes! is an appealingly unusual adventure for its era: part interactive novel, part compact investigation, built around a whale-communication premise that is stranger and more affecting than it first appears. Its best quality is that the choices are not decorative. You need to engage with scenes, sometimes revisit options, and accept that a wrong turn has consequences.

That also makes it a selective recommendation. The game asks for a tolerance of repetition and Game Overs, two things that can make forward momentum uneven. Yet that resistance helps distinguish it from visual novels where choice rarely asks anything of you beyond picking a route. Here, advancing can feel earned.

Give it a chance if you like vintage Japanese adventure games and want a visual novel with more hands-on problem solving. Go in ready to experiment, pay attention to the available commands, and let the story’s central question—what people will do with Gigi’s intelligence—pull you through the rougher patches. The payoff is a memorable premise paired with interaction substantial enough to make your decisions matter.

Retro Replay Score

7/10