R
Rintaro Okabe
protagonistSelf-declared mad scientist who calls himself Hououin Kyouma. Runs the Future Gadget Laboratory above a CRT repair shop in Akihabara; wears the paranoid-genius pose like armour.
blind choices · time travel · chuunibyou protagonist
Steins;Gate
STEINS;GATE
STEINS;GATE
**-Decide The Fate Of All Mankind-** CAN YOU CHANGE THE COURSE OF FATE? Read more →Collapse ↑
**-Decide The Fate Of All Mankind-** CAN YOU CHANGE THE COURSE OF FATE? AND SAVE THE ONES CLOSEST TO YOU?
Steins;Gate follows a rag-tag band of tech-savvy young students who discover the means of changing the past via mail, using a modified microwave. Their experiments into how far they can go with their discovery begin to spiral out of control as they become entangled in a conspiracy surrounding SERN, the organisation behind the Large Hadron Collider, and John Titor who claims to be from a dystopian future.
[From (https://store.steampowered.com/app/412830/)]
- Developer
- MAGES. Inc., NITRO PLUS, MAGES.
- Publisher
- Spike Chunsoft, PQube
- Length
- 39–48 hrs
- Rating
- 15+
Consensus
8.6
5 ratings
Time to finish
39–48
hours
Platforms
9
win · ios · and
Curator reviews
6
6 public reviews
04Tags · ordered by curator score
Your reading
Sign in to track your reading — status, progress, route completion, notes, pace against the median.
Sign in03The book
What the text actually does.
Synopsis, structure, content advisories — editorially written, not machine-extracted.
13The Premise
What you’ll actually read.
**-Decide The Fate Of All Mankind-** CAN YOU CHANGE THE COURSE OF FATE? AND SAVE THE ONES CLOSEST TO YOU?
Steins;Gate follows a rag-tag band of tech-savvy young students who discover the means of changing the past via mail, using a modified microwave. Their experiments into how far they can go with their discovery begin to spiral out of control as they become entangled in a conspiracy surrounding SERN, the organisation behind the Large Hadron Collider, and John Titor who claims to be from a dystopian future.
[From (https://store.steampowered.com/app/412830/)]
14Cultural moment · release cadence
- 2009
Japanese release
Original edition, shipped by the developer.
- 2014
English release
English localization · 5 years after original.
16Platforms & editions
| Lang | win | ios | and | psp | ps3 | ps4 | psv | swi | xb3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CS | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| DE | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| EN | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| ES | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| HU | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| IT | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| JA | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| KO | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| PL | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| PT-BR | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| RU | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| TR | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| VI | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| ZH-HANS | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| ZH-HANT | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Per-platform edition detail (physical / download / fan-patch) ships once catalog.editions lands.
17Cast · anti-spoilered · 8 billed
K
Kurisu Makise
heroineEighteen-year-old neuroscience researcher already published in Science. Sharp, contrarian, allergic to being called “Christina,” and the only person in the room willing to puncture Okabe's bluster to his face.
M
Mayuri Shiina
heroineOkabe's childhood friend and the lab's emotional centre. Cosplayer, catchphrase “tuturu~,” disarming in a way the scientists in the room keep underestimating.
I
Itaru “Daru” Hashida
supportSelf-styled super-hacker and Okabe's oldest friend. The only person who treats the mad-scientist act as the shared joke it has always been.
S
Suzuha Amane
heroineCheerful part-timer at the CRT repair shop below the lab. Rides an old bicycle everywhere; holds herself older than her face suggests.
F
Faris NyanNyan
heroineReigning queen of a premier Akihabara maid café and an elite Rainet tournament player. Cat-speech verbal tic; Akihabara family further back than her surface sparkle lets on.
L
Luka Urushibara
heroineShrine-maiden-in-training at Yanabayashi Shrine. Quiet, ceremonious, and perpetually mistaken for someone other than who they are.
M
Moeka Kiryu
supportWithdrawn freelance journalist whose entire communicative life runs through her mobile phone. Intense about the device to a degree that makes the lab pause.
Descriptors stay spoiler-safe — surface traits only. Full character pages ship alongside per-route spoiler gates in Phase 2.
18Content advisory
- none
Sexual content
On-screen adult content flagged at the catalog level.
- none
Violence
On-screen violence flagged at the catalog level.
- present
Age rating
Rated 15+.
19Structural map · 6 routes · spoiler-safe summaries
Common routeBranches into 6 routes
Mayuri End~12h · 3 decisions
Suzuha End~14h · 4 decisions
Faris End~14h · 4 decisions
Luka End~14h · 4 decisions
Moeka End~14h · 5 decisions
Steins;Gate · El Psy KongrooRequired first
Mayuri End
Suzuha End
Faris End
Luka End
Moeka End
Steins;Gate
- Mayuri End
- The default Act 3 destination. Reached by not threading the phone-trigger sequence — Okabe's time with the lab simply runs out. Short, devastating, and the rails from which every other route diverges.
- Suzuha End
- A short branch that closes out on the bicycle in the rain. Answers a question you didn't realise the lab had been asking — then stops before answering the one that matters.
- Faris End
- The warmest-lit of the heroine branches; spends more of its runtime inside the Mayushii Family's Akiba than inside the lab. A rare route where Okabe lets someone else run the scene.
- Luka End
- The branch most tied to Yanabayashi Shrine — ceremonial, lower-key, slower than anything the lab produces. The thesis about identity hiding inside the thesis about time.
- Moeka End
- The loneliest of the heroine paths. Sits uncomfortably close to the central mystery without ever cracking it open, and ends on a silence the other routes never quite reproduce.
- Steins;Gate · El Psy KongrooGated behind the El Psy Kongroo flag sequence in Act 3 — unreachable without correct phone-trigger choices
- The canonical ending the anime adaptation follows, and the only one that reconciles the lab, the timeline, and the neuroscientist. Unlocks only after the reader threads the phone-trigger sequence through Act 3 precisely; otherwise the path ends in one of the heroine reels.
~12h · 3 decisions · tragic ending
~14h · 4 decisions · bad ending
~14h · 4 decisions · bad ending
~14h · 4 decisions · bad ending
~14h · 5 decisions · bad ending
~20h · 6 decisions · true ending
20Memorable · 3 spoiler-safe pulls
“El Psy Kongroo.”
“El Psy Kongroo.”
“My name is Hououin Kyouma. I am a mad scientist. It is so cool. Sonuvabitch.”
“Tuturu~”
04What curators say
The discourse around the book.
Long-form reviews, disagreements made visible, what readers keep returning to.
21Featured reviews · newest first
Sign in to review
@toffeesan
2d ago
Try it honestly
Honetly, try it. Waaaah adssasfasf a fsafas fa asfsaf ac asf as faf asf asf adg asfd xcg dx gz vasd gfvbg bs efg xv asg gzf zsf f sfs zxx gdz gd f as fa dg zd ag sd zx sdg d d gdsg xd vdgdvsd vd ss dd s sg sgd gsd gsdg sdg zxsd gb sdgfgbdsf sd gds bsdg fx zdgb dfxgddz ff dz f bx vsb ds g fsgr gfd gdg sdg x dsg g br ggsdg d gseg e sd sd gsdg sdg sdg sd gsdg sdg sdg sd gvbsd sd gsdg sd vcxv sdg s
@routes_and_endings
4d ago
9/10
What the bad end is for
People file Steins;Gate under "time travel" and stop there, but the architecture is the real story. The first half refuses to commit to a genre — it wanders through microwave pranks and lab-member hijinks long enough that you stop bracing for a plot. Then the plot arrives, and every previous scene turns out to have been load-bearing.
The route gate is well placed.
The route gate is well placed. The bad end that locks the true route behind it is a failure you have to live with for an hour before the game lets you reach back. The secondary heroine routes read as true side-trips, not gated content — they matter because they lose to the true route, not because they unlock it.
@vn_archivist
4d ago
9/10
The version to read
Filing this under: kinetic-first half, branching-last third. The 5pb. releases across Xbox 360, PS3, PC, PS Vita, and iOS all ship the same script with tweaked tips; the 2014 JAST English release is the one to use if you're deciding between versions.
The anime is a faithful condensation of the true route but leaves the secondary heroines as background.
The anime is a faithful condensation of the true route but leaves the secondary heroines as background. If you watched it and bounced, the VN's expansion of Suzuha and Faris is the piece that was missing.
@mei_reviews
4d ago
10/10
What the game is actually about
What the game is actually about — underneath the microwave and the CRT tube — is the cost of refusing to let anyone go. Okabe's mad-scientist bit is a coping posture, and the story strips it down one iteration at a time.
By the back half you're no longer watching a time-travel plot; you're watching a boy learn that every worldline he rejects has to be carried with him anyway. The true route is not a reward for clever play. It is the route where he stops asking for a different worldline and accepts this one.
@blerdy_otome
4d ago
7/10
Patches I wish hadn't been needed
I keep wanting to like Kurisu more than I do. The game writes her as the only person in the room who can shut Okabe down, then spends most of the script using her as his reflector — she pushes back on his bit but rarely gets a scene that isn't about him. Her route patches this a little; the true route patches it more. I wish it hadn't needed patching.
Mayuri is the better test of the script's sincerity.
Mayuri is the better test of the script's sincerity. The game asks you to take her seriously as a person worth saving, and it earns that — partly by refusing to turn her into a romance subject. That restraint matters.
22Velocity · completion · heatmaps
Median time to finish
—
populates once finishers log sessions
Completion rate
—
% of readers who reach an ending
Chapter heatmap
—
hot spots where readers slow down
23Rating distribution · 5 raters
1
2
3
4
5
6
17
18
29
110
24Argued takes · where curators disagree
Argued takes will surface where curators stake opposite readings. Requires at least two contradicting reviews before the pairing shows.
25Lists featuring this VN · 1
26Reading group
A synced reading group lights up when three or more readers you follow are currently in the book.
27Recent notes
Opted-in reader notes appear here as readers allow their private annotations to be shared.
28Full archive · 1 more review
C
Also reviewed by @catboy_jpAllCurators onlyFinishedMost helpfulMost recent
05Adjacent reading
Where to go from here.
Overlap by tags, series position, and curator picks. Sponsored sits behind the sage wall.
29Adjacent shelf · by tag overlap · 5 results
5%Umineko When They Cry - Question Arcs
07th Expansion · 2007 · 68–84h
5%Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
Spike, Spike Chunsoft · 2010 · 27–33h
5%Girls! Girls! Girls!?
Myosuki · 2023 · 8–10h
4%G-senjou no Maou - The Devil on G-String
AKABEiSOFT2 · 2008 · 32–39h
3%Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair
Spike, Spike Chunsoft, Gemdrops, Inc · 2012 · 36–44h
30Series chain · Science Adventure · 5 entries
predecessor · 2008
CHAOS;HEAD NOAH
you are heremain · 2009
Steins;Gate
sequel · 2015
STEINS;GATE 0
thematic · 2014
CHAOS;CHILD
shared universe · 2019
ROBOTICS;NOTES DaSH
Reading order reflects narrative continuity, not release order.
31Curator picks
Three curator picks with personal rationale. The pick list populates as curators publish their recommendations.
32Sponsored · publisher partner
Partner titles you might like
Yumefumi earns a commission when readers purchase from partners. Partners do not influence editorial coverage and live behind an architectural wall from the catalog.
No publisher partnerships are active yet. This block reserves its footprint so the sage wall sits in the right place when partners do light up.