Thanks for playing!
I really thought I gave enough hints to infer the entire timeline, but maybe shattering it into smaller scenes was too much? Idk.
Actually, in the original first draft there was a planned scene in the postscript where Ian would say something along the lines of “I believe that after death we still get another chance to fulfill our dreams.” But I couldn’t find a natural setting for that type of convo so I just hinted at their irl journey to the beach (to show that Tor’s dream does get fulfilled + the fact that when ur dream is fulfilled you ‘depart’). Andd if you pay attention to every word of Ian’s dream, it’d make more sense (specifically ‘quality time’ and ‘forever’)
The romance was one part of my regrets when submitting this entry. I had accidentally made my story scope too big, and the time + word constraints really hurts the build up and blossoming of their relationship.
I’d say Ian’s arc was the entire time (plus all the previous cycles mentioned in the final ending) that he’d spent here. Seeing how naive his dream is and letting him to his final decision.
For the bgs, I went out of my way to make sure that the scenes in the cycles are dreamy-ish with filters while the scenes irl (lab and the 2 postscripts) are with minimal editing for this exact purpose.
You could say it’s doomed yaoi the way they can’t ever be happy. (but trust they met again in their next life and fall in love with each other again. I said it so it must be canon and I’m not coping 😭😭😭😭😭)