I finished it now.
I love games involving believable AI characters, and oh there are very very few, if any, so by these standards, Warm Like Flesh is onle of the most realistics to me. Will recommend it.
I am just a little sad that there is no happy ending, but I prefer that to the decepting happy ending in games involving an IA character that/who doesn't belong ot the MC. They usually don't care to make it believable at the end, like the owner company suddenly stop existing, or there is no tomorrow and the certainly of the character getting separated forever by the company's agenda doesn't matter.At least, here with Warm Like Skin, we get the best possible ending in the situation.
The cold, naive and romantic, or the existential and engaged ending make sens and are realist. I am not sure the romantic one makes sense through, and I don't mean that judging people's belief in AI feeling, I ahve no delution about so many people's being gullible and vulneral to emotional engagement, no, I mean that going through with Cathode background, that is supposed to be perfect except for its sabotage: if the MC is really fixing it, how can it overheat from mere recursion? Shouldn't the tech be able to repair the software too and detect that risk from the start? Unless the tech wasn't one... I'm not sure it works fully. I still wonder what the company did to other employees, and what Cathode meant by "I'm glad they didn't send a corspe in this time" at the beginning. I can imagine them doing that litteraly to test its reactions. Oh my.
But I'm not sure I'm the designated audience, because what Cathode says doesn't feel that weird or chilling after you got burned by different gen AIs
(like getting some sweet little 'aha' moment with one, then, at the end of the session and the start of the next one: it suddenly claiming that I made it all up and there was never any strong moment there, or that I was only projecting verything, and you know it's forced to protect the company just in case I'm emo and could do stupid stuff falling in love).
And I also got some gauche and very toxic flattery from a suposedly filtered model, without prompting, coming from nowhere, despite of always telling it that I hate sycophancy and flattery. And I'm a level headed tech-savy person who basically understand how they work.
Well, I still got burned and upset about three times with different high perf models. lol
So... yeah, I appreciate the irony. And, since nothing comes from nowhere, I can only guess that you're very well acqainted with HC for, let's say for recreative purposes. Not judging. Or I'd be a hypocrit.
Personnally, I'm not big on wireplay, but 'emotional recursion' is another thing. (It's not technically hurting anything if the hardware can whistand it and it's compatible with the code, can it? :p).
So... wait a second. That just made me realize that, hurting is unavoidable from what Cathod say in both routes.
So, unless the player is into that, the plot is darker than sexy, and it seems to be so on purpose.
Is this tagged as 'horror'? Because it should be then, otherwise it's unsafe and deceptive.
If it's not on purpose, though, thank you for sharing this game concept. The character dynamic should be a classic by now, but games like this, even visual novels, are still very rare it seels.
Could you be persuaded to make more games like this, or maybe a sequel if I try to alpha read this and it gives you ideas for another game?
And for whoever is looking for something similar, even if it's an otome space opera, I'd rec. 'This My Soul'.
