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Chances are, if you've stumbled upon this, you have at least a marginal clue of what Starry Sky (also known as SeiSky, or even StaSka) is. But there's also the chance you have no earthly clue with an otomoe game or visual novel is, and that's fine! Starry Sky is pretty simple, all around.
Starry Sky is a franchise put together by honeybee, which brought the world gems like the Sheep Counting drama CDs. Can't sleep? Pop in a CD and let the seiyuu who voiced your favorite male character count sheep to you! (Only Japan. >implying I haven't downloaded several of these CDs)
Starry Sky, on the other hand, is series of games, and drama CDs. We'll start with the games, since the games are there to give the drama CDs more context, anyway.
Each game is standard visual novel fare -- point, click, read. A visual novel is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: a novel with visuals. If you've ever played an RPG, it's kind of similar. Just remove everything that isn't reading, visuals and sounds. However, Starry Sky is more of an otome game than a visual novel. Basically, a dating sim that was created with a female audience in mind.
If you've never played any of these before -- don't worry, Starry Sky is pretty simple. Once you start it up, you'll know exactly what you're doing.
The long and short of it: Starry Sky is School Days for girls. Just, without the blood, gore and sex and animation. (So it's not like it at all.)
Starry Sky itself has a simple premise: astrology. We all know of it, we know at least our sign, it's a pretty mainstream thing at this point in time. As previously mentioned, Starry Sky is a dating simulation game and each guy represents a sign. They're not a personification of their sign, but rather, honeybee took all the personalty traits you see assigned to that sign and put them to one guy.
For example: I'm a Cancer. The Cancer guy is Suzuya Tohzuki. Some traits that are associated with Cancer are being family oriented, hiding their emotions, and taking care of other people. These are all things you can see in Suzuya. He's jokingly called "Mom", and thinks of himself as a "guardian" towards his friends.
Rinse and repeat for each guy, and now you have a cast of characters that are just as developed as the last.
In the games, you play as Tsukiko Yahisa (or any name you wish to input for her), the only female student at Seigetsu Academy. Seigetsu specializes in the stars: it teaches the mythology of them, the technical aspect of them, and other classes. Recently, the school changed from a boys' school to a co-ed school. As of now, Tsukiko's the only girl.
Each game features three different guys, along with a few sub characters. The length of the games depends on how fast of a reader you are -- for me, it took about eight hours to play through one route of Spring. So, all around, I'd say there's around ten hours of gameplay for each route (at least in In Spring).
The games feature voice acting, in addition to visuals and music. I honestly think the voice acting is pretty well done, but honeybee is a company that releases audio drama. That aside, it features big name seiyuu like Akira Ishida, Kamiya Hiroshi, Daisuke Ono, Tomokazu Sugita, Kenichi Suzumura, Daisuke Hirakawa -- the list goes on. Chances are, you're going to recognize more than a few of the voices. Of course, if you don't like hearing the boys talk, you can mute them -- same goes for the background music and sound effects.
There are, currently, two series of games. The first set is the In Season games, of which there are four, with three guys. The In Season games are In Spring, In Summer, In Autumn and In Winter.
Recently, the After Season series of games began being released. After Spring was released December 2010, and the rest of the games are slated to follow soon after. The After Season games show what happens after you get with your man, and also have special bonus stories at the end of each route.
As of this post, only a patch for In Spring has been released.
As said before, honeybee is a company that specializes in audio dramas. There are a lot of drama CDs for this series, and the majority of them are untranslated. However, that doesn't mean they're any less enjoyable to listen to.
There are thirteen (13) date CDs in total, one for each of the twelve, and another, special date CD that you can only get if you purchased the initial twelve. The special date CD is for Ophiuchus, the thirteenth sign in the tropical zodiac. In addition to these, one CD comes with each of the games and features ~wacky hijinks with the boys. There's also a few extra CDs, like Bitter Season, that can be purchased.
There is also now a new slew of drama CDs -- the Seiza Danna series -- that has recently been released. Each of the CDs feature two of the guys, and in the CDs you are married to them. (Not... at the same time -- each guy gets his own tracks, and they're seperate from the other's. Of course, there's the track where you're in bed with both of them but that's beside the point.)
However, the audio dramas are completely optional. You can completely disregard this section of you'd like.
An ONA (Original Net Animation) began airing in Japan during December 2010. Produced by Studio DEEN, it airs on the Animate.tv website, with new episodes every Thursday.
I would really like to say you should stay away from the anime, because it's really not that good. And it's no wonder, with twenty minutes per what was once around ten hour routes, it's pretty obvious things will be... watered down. A lot. That said, the anime's hilariously bad, so if you're into that, well, yeah. I highly recommend playing at least In Spring before you start the anime, because then you can appreciate how terrible it is.
The anime features the same voice actors, of course, and art and animation is kind of abysmal, though the voice acting can get that bad too. (Not that I can blame the seiyuu. Studio DEEN productions always seem to have questionable voice acting, though.)
The special edition DVDs come with body pillows though, you know I am all over those.
In addition to all of this, 4koma anthologies and manga anthologies can be purchased for each Season. Of course, none of these add to the story, but they're nice to have.
There's a lot of miscellaneous stuff you can get; pretty much everything under the sun has had Starry Sky slapped onto it. From weird food items to perfume, yeah.
Another brave soul has put up direct downloads of the games, and date CDs. You can get them here. Trigger warning for the f word, though. (Thanks for that, fandom. :l) The English patch for Spring can be obtained through some clever googling.
However, if you like the games, be sure to purchase the games and/or CDs. YesAsia is pretty reliable, and the same goes for CD Japan.
Feel free to ask questions o7!