Apathesis is an ambitious project that aims higher than it could possibly reach.

There's a clear care and admiration for literary works on display here. With references to Shirley Jackson's The Lottery and Le Guin's Omelas, it is clearly aiming to tackle tough and deep subjects.  While there's an interest to make good on those references and inspirations, the transition to VN is far from smooth. Apathesis is wordy and imprecise in an artistic way that doesn't quite fit the format at hand. Non-textual aspects are used in a decent way but they are relegated to play second fiddle to a writing that ends up too big for its own good.

The story and prose fit the project really well, but that comes at a cost to the experience of actually reading it. Moments of meandering over description are recurring and distract from the "emotional-intellectual struggle" that commands the story. The nature of the location and actions presented do benefit from this method of description, but actually sitting to down to read it, one easily gets marred by it.

As for the plot itself it works pretty well. Though there are loops of places, characters and interactions, it's all connected by a gameplay light enough to not take away from the focus, but just deep enough that one should still be paying attention. The pacing at which choices are introduced is a mixed bag and will only make sense once one looks back from the end of the story.

Overall, Apathesis is an overambitious, flawed, intriguing, experimental, and a smidge pretentious project whose parts connect in unusual ways, resulting in a rather excellent big picture worthy of experiencing even if putting it together is undoubtedly a chore.