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 he most realistic ever of all times 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 doesn't belong ot the MC. They usualyl 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 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 comany did to other employees, and what Cathode meant by "I'm gald 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 (little aha moment, then at the end of the session and start of the new one: sudden claiming that I made it up or that projecting at 100% to protect the company just in case), and also got accidental gauche and very toxic flattery without prompting for it nowhere - actually asking it not to faltter a tall - from a suposedly filtered model. And I'm a level headed tech-savy person who understand how they work... and still got burned and upset. So... yeah, I appreciate the irony. Aaand, you seem to know more about that than I do. Since nothing comes from nowhere, I can only guess that you're very well acqainted with HF for meta recreative purposes. Not judging. Or I'd be a hypocrit.
Perosnnally, 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 comatible with the code, can it? :p). That made me realize that, since hurting is unavoidable from what Cathod say in both routes, unless the player is into that, the plot is darker than sexy, and and that seems to be on purpose. Is this tagged horror?
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'.
