Newton and the Apple Tree explores the ideas of the issues which come with time traveling into the past and Sir Issac Newton, in reality being a flat-chested genius girl. While it does include a hefty dose of humor, some absurd ideas and a sprinkling of sexual content (if you use the free 18+ patch), this is actually a rather serious story.
If you are buying this game on Steam, a lot of the mature content has been cut. The content itself is for the most part, fairly standard with some mild exceptions. As mentioned, the 18+ can restore this but as an additional option, there is a 17+ patch to restore all but the x-rated content. This gives the reader more options than normal in regard to the content they wish to see, which is always appreciated. These patches can no longer officially be found due to the closure of Sol Press.
The story opens with you and your childhood friend trying to find your grandfather whom you expect is living abroad in England at Tenbridge University. He is a famous scientist who is obsessed with Newton. Due to a twist of fate, you and your childhood friend accidentally end up traveling through time and by coincidence, stop the famous event with Sir Issac Newton and the apple, where he discovers the idea of universal gravitation. Of course, being a visual novel you stop this by accidentally falling on her and your childhood friend and groping them both. This then proceeds to your character moving into a dorm and living with a number of girls.
As always with time travel stories, the butterfly effect occurs, making the future change. The story continues both with the search for your grandfather and trying to restore the timeline to its previous state.
The featured girl, Alice Bedford takes the name Issac Newton as a pen name as women were not regarded highly in academics. Publishing under her own name would cause issues, so she decides on a male name. She is shown to be incredibly intelligent, but just as conceited. She fits the tsundere trope neatly on top of that.
Lavi Gier is another genius scientist who is more than slightly unbalanced at times. She is known for causing fires around Tenbridge university and is incredibly impulsive at times. Her greatest strength may be her intuition. Unfortunately, she sees the main character as a test subject.
Yotsuko Utakane is your childhood friend. She is obsessed with taking measurements and since meeting your character’s grandfather, has been devoted to becoming a scientist. Her area of expertise is numbers. Her character is incredibly blunt at times and she has quite a sharp tongue.
Haru Tsukumo is another Japanese person in England. She is good friends with Alice, probably her only close friend. Her area of expertise is astronomy and she dreams of visiting Japan, which she has never seen herself due to Japan’s closed borders. She is known to be a very kind girl.
Emmy Felton is the final girl. Unlike the others, she is not a genius. In fact, she’s quite an airhead and an oddball on top of that. Emmy works as a maid at the university to support her family. She has an odd obsession with potatoes and is a very earnest and helpful girl.
The other character of note is the main character, Syuji Asanaga. Your character is known for hating science due to comparisons with his famous grandfather. Despite his failing attempt to become a musician, he generally has more common sense than most of the other characters.
Each of the girls mentioned has a route of their own, though the player may only access Yotsuko’s and Lavi’s route until completing the Lavi route. I personally took about five hours to complete a single route including the common route and one character route, but each girl’s individual route is fairly short so subsequent playthroughs did not take long. I found all of the routes enjoyable but personally found Lavi’s and Alice’s to be the best. All the characters had a fair amount of backstory and depth to them, though this was mostly explored in the common route.
The writing itself is well done, with a few minor issues in spelling. Due to the high standard throughout the majority of the writing, I felt these were forgivable.
I found that the artwork is all to a very high standard and there are tons of CGs. The music is well done too with a good variety which fits the scenes well and the voiced characters are all done well with voices which fit the characters.
I would personally recommend Newton and the Apple Tree to visual novel fans who enjoy games with a focus on story, but don’t mind the odd lewd joke or more depending on their version. I personally felt like it overdid it at times, but not to an extreme. The cast of characters is quite interesting, as is the story.
NEWTON AND THE APPLE TREE IS RECOMMENDED
This Title Can No Longer Be Purchased
If you are looking for another visual novel, you may enjoy White Album: Memories Like Falling Snow. We have also covered a wide variety of visual novels both original to English and localized from Japanese, which you can check out here.
Thank you to Sol Press for providing a PC review code for this game.
A gamer since the days of Amstrad and DOS and someone who has dabbled in a variety of professions. He enjoys a wide variety of genres, but has been focusing on visual novels and virtual reality in recent years. Head Editor of NookGaming. Follow him and the website on @NookSite.
