After playing through it a couple times and getting what I assume are both endings to the game, I feel like I can adequately review this game. It's a very strange game in a sense that it isn't strange enough. Like I feel like it doesn't provide any questions or mystery surrounding our job despite the weird circumstances such as: the weird people in our office, our weird boss. the ominously tall building, etc. There are hints of something happening but they never really go anywhere. The people on our floor are just that. They aren't fleshed out or given much to say. Even people we do talk to, like the cigarette lady, don't have much to say. I feel like the vending machine has a lot more to say with the amount of drinks and descriptions of said drinks than the patients or characters. It might just be me since I'm not a big reader but I feel like a lot of these things can be shown with a shorter description to each drink. But I also don't feel like it provides a lot and is more so just a way to put in some quirky writing, which could be good, but I never feel like the tone of the game ever sticks to anything solid. It never feels serious that would contrast the zany moments and it never reaches that level of wacky that would make these moments fit well into the story it is trying to tell.
In terms of gameplay, I appreciate the effort put into the combat at the custom UI for the battles but with no explanation or guidance I found myself confused. Skills I would use would often be undone by the patient resulting in a very frustrating experience. The balancing in this game feels all over the place and I never felt like it was in my favor. I found myself not using a lot of the skills because they don't provide a very meaningful description as to what they lower and what they raise. The way I passed the majority of the sessions was by using my cooldown skill followed by a skill to lower whatever bad bar was higher. I was able to help 3 of the patients with this method but I still failed 2 of them. The patient does more damage to themselves than I am ever able to fix, especially with the freakouts they have halfway through getting their self love up. I'm not sure if that on purpose to try to say something but it definitely messes up the balancing. I was also not sure if the patients were purposely not fleshed out at all to make em feel less important, like you're just getting something done rather than taking the time to help someone. Which would be cool, but I feel like if the focus of your game is helping mentally ill patients you could at least flesh them out a little.
Now, onto what I did like. Although this game technically takes place on 1 map I do like the plugin for the map that simulates a 3d environment. It provides a really moody graphical fidelity similar to old school dungeon crawlers. I thought the art was really cute and although taking a break wasn't really necessary to progress the game I still did so to see what was happening in the breakroom. I enjoyed aspects of the game here and there. And even thought it needs works you still tried. and that's what counts. Don't get discouraged, every moment is one for learning.