Columbus

A nameless weapon, bound to a young master

Columbus's premise is compact but distinctive: you play as Weaponzzie, described on the store page as a nameless weapon trapped inside a wealthy estate, whose entire relationship with the estate's young master is shaped by the dialogue choices you make across the story. Rather than framing that relationship as a simple romance meter to fill, the game's own pitch leans into ambiguity, promising outcomes across a spectrum from tenderness and freedom through ruin and downfall, and stating plainly that "your bond with the young master is defined by you." That's a clear, specific hook for a dark fantasy visual novel with dual male leads, built around a single core relationship rather than a wider cast of romanceable characters.

Ten endings, and choices that read like a puzzle

The headline structural feature is ten distinct possible endings branching off the same core scenario, and that's borne out directly in both the store page and the small review sample. The more detailed of the two available reviews, however, raises a specific and fair criticism of how those branches are actually navigated in practice: the reviewer describes the dialogue options as lacking strong subjective direction, writing that they "couldn't figure out which choice would lead to a good ending" and were reduced to working through combinations "like doing a math problem" rather than making choices that felt narratively legible in the moment. That's a meaningful critique for a branching narrative game specifically built around choice-driven consequence — if the choices themselves don't signal their likely emotional weight, working toward a specific ending becomes trial and error rather than genuine roleplay.

What a tiny, split review sample actually says

At the time of this review, Columbus has exactly two public reviews, one positive and one negative, both written in Simplified Chinese. The negative review is the more substantial of the two, and beyond its complaint about opaque dialogue choices, it goes on to say that after playing through several endings, the reviewer still didn't feel they understood who the protagonist really was, how the young master truly viewed them, or what exactly these characters had done to one another — describing the core cast as shaped "ambiguously" even after multiple attempts. That reviewer is explicit that the initial store description read as more interesting than the actual experience delivered, though they also note plainly that they kept trying regardless. The shorter positive review takes a lighter tone, describing the game as "especially short" and admittedly hard to fully parse, but singles out reaching an ending where the protagonist is saved by the young master and runs toward the freedom they had been longing for as a satisfying capstone to their own playthrough.

Achievement data suggests players are exploring more endings than the reviews alone imply

Because the two-review sample is both tiny and mixed, global achievement completion data is unusually useful here as an independent signal. Roughly ten of the game's tracked achievements appear tied directly to specific numbered endings, and rather than the steep, narrow drop-off toward a single dominant ending that many branching-narrative games show, Columbus's ending-related achievements sit in a comparatively tight, high band — ranging from roughly 37.5% up to 93.7% completion. That spread indicates a meaningfully large share of the current player base has reached several different endings rather than the overwhelming majority converging on just one "true" path, which is a genuinely reassuring signal about the branching structure actually functioning as advertised, even if individual reviewers found the specific choices that steer toward each ending difficult to read in the moment.

Beyond the ten endings: what the rest of the achievement list suggests

Columbus's full achievement list runs to nineteen entries, not just the roughly ten tied to specific numbered endings. The remaining achievements appear to track separate story milestones and named scene completions rather than additional endings, and several of them sit at meaningfully high completion rates in their own right — one non-ending achievement clears above 93%, suggesting it corresponds to an early, hard-to-miss story beat rather than a hidden or optional discovery. Taken together with the ending-specific data, the fuller achievement picture points toward a game structured less around a single critical-path playthrough with one "true" ending bolted on, and more toward a compact set of story checkpoints that most players pass through on the way to whichever of the ten conclusions their choices land them on. For a visual novel this short, that's a reasonable way to give a single playthrough some internal shape without demanding a much longer runtime to get there.

A short runtime matched to a budget price

Both available reviewers logged well under an hour of playtime — 42 minutes and 28 minutes respectively — and both describe the game as very short in their own words, independent of whether they enjoyed the experience. At NZ$1.59, that runtime lines up reasonably with the asking price rather than representing an unexpected shortfall, though prospective buyers should go in expecting a single sitting's worth of content per ending attempt rather than a substantial, hours-long visual novel.

Final verdict

Columbus is a tightly scoped, budget-priced dark fantasy visual novel whose central hook — a nameless weapon's undefined bond with a wealthy young master, branching across ten possible endings — is distinctive enough to stand out in the genre, even if its extremely small, evenly split review sample can't yet build much of a consensus around how well that hook actually pays off. The most substantial available critique, that its choices feel more like solving a puzzle than making readable narrative decisions, is worth taking seriously, but broad, high achievement completion across most of its ending slots suggests the underlying branching structure genuinely works and rewards replaying. For genre fans specifically drawn to short, multiple-ending BL visual novels, Columbus is cheap enough to be a low-risk pickup, with the clear caveat that its story left at least one attentive player still uncertain what it was ultimately trying to say.