You are a regular college student living in a fictional American city in the near future, who has decided to buy a personal android, or AMI (Autonomous Mechanical Individual). This is a western sci-fi styled visual novel about the hijinks that ensue on your day off.

GAME INFO

Name: AMI - Autonomous Mechanical Individual
Developer: Fastermind Games
Date: April 1, 2013
Genre: Romance, Sci-Fi

So, I just saw this today in my visual novels folder. I was trying to reorganize my folders and this game caught my eye. I've always been rather interested in AI stories, and while this wasn't exactly something like it, it seemed similar enough. I just looked it up right after I played it and I'm really surprised that it's quite an old game. Wow.

STORY

The story starts out with you, a young college student, deciding to buy a personal android assistant of your own. The story is set in the (very) near future, 2022 I believe, and everyone is already used to the idea of robots and androids all around them. Virtual reality is a thing, and android cafes where the servers are robots actually exist. It's a very high-tech world, and you, the player, surely wouldn't want to miss out. But when your brand new android, AMI, arrives... well, let's just say she isn't exactly what you expected.

Wow, this is really neat.

WRITING

The dialogue for this game was really, really good. Descriptions are almost non-existent; not that it matters, since I thoroughly enjoyed the dialogue between the characters anyway. I was surprised by how quickly I got hooked into the story. It unravelled pretty well, with just the right pacing for the game. I also got very interested in AMI and in how her relationship with the player character would develop. However, I have to say that I was quite disappointed in the latter parts of the game. It picked up the pace around 3/4 into the story, and it just went downhill from there. The ending, to say it simply, felt very rushed. I totally wasn't expecting the turn of events-- and I don't mean that in a good way. I do see that there was some attempt to foreshadow the real story behind everything, but the delivery wasn't very good in my opinion. That's certainly a shame, since everything was going so well in the first half of the story.

Hmm, I hate to admit it, but you got that right, AMI.

ART

The art was decent. I'm not a personal fan of the style, but I can say that much time and effort were given in creating them.

Ich spreche... nein Deutsch! Nein Deutsch!

MUSIC

I like the music in this VN. I personally found them so soothing and well-done. At some points, they disappeared randomly though, so that's definitely not a plus.

GUI

It uses custom GUI, which I personally liked. I think it matches the theme of the game really nicely.

WRAP-UP

I’m really happy I found this in my visual novel folders, honestly! I have no idea when I downloaded it, haha, but it must’ve been quite some time ago already since I already forgot all about it by the time that I actually got around to playing it.

I’m gonna give it seven out of ten strawberries. Man, I would’ve given it a much higher helping of strawberries if only it didn’t fall short near the end. Still, if you’re interested in AI and like playing visual novels, then this one is worth a try. It’s really short, so it’s not like it would take a huge chunk of your time anyway, haha.

DOWNLOAD

You can download this game at the dev's website right here.