Ah, spoilers. And I mean like massive ones, whoops.

Apologies if this is a bit incoherent, I finished (?) the game, or at least finished as much as I could figure out a couple minutes before I wrote this.

Also an important clarification for some of my statements about being a scaredy-cat and possibly missing some stuff on how to finally do the repenting: I played this because I saw a couple streamers play this years ago but got aggravated that they didn't realize the tilde button after certain points allowed you to do cheat commands and didn't want to backseat game, so I played this on my own and am now reviewing so the game can get more exposure and hopefully get played by someone more competent than me.

The overall visuals and implied substory with the different anomaly textlines is very interesting, and I think the primary writers did a good job at developing the overall tone and setting implied behind the game, and I think the game manages to capture the feeling of the textures of early PS1 and PS2 era games while keeping its own spin, in the same breath. The audio tracks are genuinely gorgeous and relaxing when they need to be, and I found the overall sound designs of the later glitch segment's warnings really good, especially when paired with the visually striking graphical glitch layouts. I think of the landscapes, my favorite was the hands and the one with the nuclear plants and the rocket ships.

The only thing I do wonder about is the matter of the repentance thing mentioned in the docs itself (which I assume is a reset for if you wished to replay the game again? I could be wrong, however) or the mask figure at the end. It is possible I missed something due to aforementioned scaredy-cat behavior, as I did lower the volume a bit more than I probably should at that sequence due to being unsure if this was the type of game to have a jumpscare or not, due to 1. the relative lack of exposure this game has, and 2. the exposure it does have primarily going through the normal scenes and only reaching the first couple pieces of glitch stuff without using the commands. 

All that being said, I am not going to hold /any/ of that against the game re: me possibly missing stuff due to scaredy behavior, since it seems to be designed to be a puzzle of lore pieces and prose fragments and to be a bit, well, eerie! Like, the reason I decided to download and play the game despite being not so good with horror games is /because/ the prose fragments, visual design, and sound design intrigued me, and I wanted to actually give the game a fair shake instead of only seeing 5 youtubers play the initial 10 minutes on the same couple routes, when there was obviously a lot of care and work put into the designs and color schemes even from just watching those videos ( and for a game that even outside of a bundle is only 3 dollars, no less! ).

I think if I had the ability to be more granular with the score, I would be more comfortably giving a 4.7 due to some quality of life things (I have some cubital/carpal tunnel issues, so I had to play the game in short sections due to the initial gameplay loop of pressing and holding the arrow keys to help make the divergence stuff happens faster via acceleration and etc, which I fully admit I'm not sure how to manage, since the direction and acceleration system are pretty important until you gain the tilde commands ^^;), but! As it stands, I'm not going to round down. The game concept was extremely ambitious, and I genuinely do adore the concepts that were explored in the game and the visuals, even if I'm not exactly the best at solving the below surface stuff, nor am I actually particularly equipped to review the more intensively 'horror' segments well.

Overall I will definitely try and poke at the game again, even if I have to reinstall cleanly to do so due to not solving the one thing, and would certainly recommend the game, with some small note re: content but without spoiling the mechanic pieces. (I would like to know how the repentance thing is supposed to work, though).

Much love to the devs, thank you for making this game, and I will definitely take a look at more of your games in the future! <3