What an absolute treat. I'd gotten Jill O' Lantern on a sale, but I didn't get around to playing it until I actually went back through the sales I'd bought, scouring them for stuff I'd like. The title and cover picture immediately sold me on Jill O' Lantern, but it was still some time before I got around to playing it.

Now that I've gotten the true ending of the game, I can say that this was one of the best purchases I've made on Itch. The game's blend of traditional visual novel scenes and experimental 3D low-polygonal dolls that recreated scenes work so good together, telling the story in alternating adorable and terrifying moments. There were a few mistakes I noticed here and there, but never anything that made the production look cheap. I can only imagine the creativity it took to put together some of the dioramas.

The creativity extends to the game's cast. The demon Jill is very different from what I'd have guessed during the introduction. That's true of many of the cast members, but once you add in the metaphysics and supernatural cosmology that explains what's going on, you're in for a ride. And that ride includes a cast of queer characters, poly relationships, and neurodivergence that are just so dang sweet! I feel like sometimes the author was gushing in delight through the characters, which did bring me out of the experience a bit, but it's honestly just such an empowering message that it makes up for how it throws off the pacing.

The mystery isn't what expected. I knew there would be investigative elements thrown around, but I thought the game would be more or less giving equal time to that aspect. Instead, the clues-hunting portions of the game are brief, occasionally asking the player to interpret the clues. This turned out to be just fine, and I was able to keep track of most of the mystery until the end.

But once the supernatural aspect of the game gets confirmed, we get a steady flood of new supernatural twists. I love this because it made for some excellent scenes. However, it also got confusing by the end, in part because we get a lot of explanation in long blocks of text. But there's another problem: how can I solve the mystery if I literally cannot know what's going on because it depends on supernatural elements that haven't been introduced and explained yet?

That's not to say that the supernatural stuff is bad. It's one of the game's best elements. I love the story it builds up. I know that the developers weren't including it just to deus ex machina an explanation for things. It just doesn't fit neatly for a mystery.

I got the True Ending on my first time playing the game, just going by whatever choices seemed the most natural (beside the one time I intentionally went for a Bad End). I don't think it'd be hard for anyone playing the game to get there, but if you do get stuck, the developers have a safety net that'll take you back through critical choices where you made a mistake.

The game's got a lot of unlockables you can get if want to explore everything it has to offer. I haven't unlocked most of it, so I can only speculate, but... I don't think any of it would add significantly to the story being told. The story is - in fact - impressively self-contained. For players like myself who have little patience for unlocking everything, it's a grace. For the rest of you, enjoy finding dozens of extras to check out.

I've said so much, and yet it feels like I've said so little. This game is excellent, queer- and neurodivergent-progressive, sweet, a little scary, funny at times, and enthralling in the moment-by-moment storytelling. Definitely check it out.