There are some other things I forgot to mention yesterday (and couldn't edit my post in time due to my computer breaking), so I thought I'd make an addendum post. I find it almost surreal how much this game lines up with my real-life experiences. If it weren't for the fact that he's divorced, John would've been a 1:1 direct parallel to my own real-life father, in ways I needn't explain. It made the scenes he forced poor Alex to talk to him and him alone (as well as his crazy obsessions with her) hit pretty close to home for me, which likely seriously heightened how much this game sucker-punched me in the feels. ^^; Even when he wasn't actually talking to her, seeing his bright red eye perpetually spying on Alex while she's having fun felt rather unnerving.
[Spoilers ahead!]
Even other situations in the game felt so trippy in how much it parallels to my situation - him forcing a blocker onto Alex's computer (mirroring my own father installing a similar blocker of his own on mine), Alex using the computer's Terminal utilizing the programming tricks Laguna taught her earlier on (mirroring my closest friend, skillful programmer that they are, helping me utilize Windows Terminal tricks to bypass my own father's blocker), and losing several friendships in one fell swoop due to poor wording choices from Alex due to the stress she had over the situation (mirroring me doing the exact same thing in 2017). Besides the aforementioned divorce thing, and how not all of Alex's friends map 1:1 to my own history, the only irony is that certain names of certain characters do not entirely match my life - were you to swap them in just the right way, I'd seriously feel like you had been spying on my life since the day I was born and decided to make a game about my life to try and reach out to me Matrix-style, or you were like my future self or some shit XD
This game will always hold a special place in my heart because of how deeply relatable it is for me. I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel my mind telling me I should ironically tell my dad to play this game simply so he could experience how it's like to be in my shoes when he yells at me, but deep inside I know that he'd either just entirely miss the point of the game or why I'd ask him to play it in first place, or just get mad at me for having played a "queer game" and quickly connect the dots as for my secretive gender identity. Sigh, ah well, sorry for rambling, I just kinda wanted to get this off of my chest ever since I finished the game. Regardless, thank you for having made this, Victoria - sincerely. I loved this game.
I've never played a visual novel type game before and I think I've peaked with the first one! I love love LOVE the interface and the whole premise is so clever. It took me back to the early days of the public internet and how sacred the communities were. I got so involved with each characters and my heart genuinely froze whenever I saw a message from John. The ending made me bawl like a baby. Such a wonderful gem of a game :)
This was beautifully painful. Thank you so much for making it. I'm not quite able to put my love of this game into words, but just know that it is a lot.
I don't think I'll ever be able to properly put into words what this game means to me. I was just checking out what games there were in the bundle I had just bought when I saw this game, and immediately noticed "trans girl" in the description. To no one's surprise, as any trans egg thirsty for trans content would, I installed the game as fast as I (and my computer) could manage.
And here I am, a few hours later, still gaping, laughing, crying, and feeling another thousand or so emotions I can't even name. Just about everything about this game - the visuals, the music, the writing, the way it completely and shamelessly got under my skin and abused it to the fullest potential leaves me in awe. Seeing Alex's journey of self-discovery in striking parallel to my own was both heartwarming and painful. Seeing the game's mechanics and my expectations of them blow up in my face to really put me into the mindset of a parental abuse victim was heartbreaking but extremely real. This game reminded me that I have a really long way to go until I can completely affirm that I'm living my best life and that I'm happy, but that, in the end...
I'll figure it out.
I could never thank you enough for this experience.
This is an amazing game. The story is interesting, emotional and a huge trans mood. The gameplay's really fun, it's nice being able to just explore the various apps and forums.
I played this for an hour and enjoyed every second! The main character reminds me a lot of how I used to be lol. But when I tried to quit and then continue playing later it started me from the beginning of the game? is there no save system?
I really did just sit in my room and cry for four hours! This was so cute and sweet,,, This game hit me harder than any other game I've ever played. Thank you for such a wonderful game!
such a wonderful game and experience, even as someone who was born 2 years after this game takes place, i still related to alex immensely,,, that feeling of ease and safety when you're talking with your friends and doing girly things is all too familiar.
also i have to say the music in this game is also spectacular and enhances the experience even more, it's amazing!! i'm going to be thinking about this game for a very long time, thank you <3
Oh, wow. I'd been meaning to play this game for a while, and finally got it through the bundle and...... wow. I'm transmasculine, and the game takes place like a month before I was born, but the way it hits on so many of my specific experiences is incredible. The game is so immersive and I truly felt every moment as if it were happening to me. The warm, happy moments, but also the fear. John's presence is just so effectively terrifying - the way his eye is boring into you as you go about your business... I couldn't let my guard down; every day I felt like I was just waiting for the moment he would come online and everything would fall apart the second you feel at ease (the fact that some of the dialogue was so, so painfully familiar to me certainly helped make it scarier). Anyway I'm gushing but I can't get over how effective and beautiful this game is. I just finished a few minutes ago and I was sobbing - scared tears and happy tears. I'm so glad I finally played this game, I'm so glad it exists. <3
I got this game and it was a joy to play! I couldn't put it down, I loved reading Alex's journey and self discovery. On a side note, does anyone know where to get the walpapers? I'd like to use them for my actual computer!
Oh gosh, this game was such an emotional wild ride! I got sucked-punched a lot in the darkest moments of the game, but the ending was so sweet~ I actually felt a tinge of sadness when it ended; I had formed a close bond with Alexandra and her friends, and it kinda hurt to see it all coming to an end, though :c
Still, I wholeheartedly recommend this game to anyone who's capable of withstanding the emotional sucker-punches or who is otherwise willing to go through it <3
I'm 32, and the thing that really struck me about this game was - I knew people just like Andy, just like Jenni and Laguna, just like prplsqrl, just like Sam. Some people who would offer unconditional support despite never having met me, and some people I knew in real life who would never understand who I was. This game reminds me of being a young gender confused nerd spending my time on the webtv anime chatroom, making friends with strangers online who I felt closer to than my own family. The kind of intimate detachment of AIM chats allowed for some of the most formative conversations of my life to happen in that setting. It would be really hard to explain it to someone who never experienced that internet, but this game captures the feelings I had in that time perfectly. It would be misleading to say the internet used to be better, because it still had a lot of terrible stuff on it, but it used to feel smaller, weirder, and more personal.
This game gives me this sense of bittersweet nostalgia for lost youth. I definitely don't want to BE the person I was in the past, but I miss certain things about them and that time. The uncertainty of looking to the future with a sense of mingled dread and longing. A lot of nebulous, nameless longing, that came in intense waves, that seems very specific to the experience of a young gender nonconforming person. I still feel that way sometimes, but it's never as intense as when you're young. Being extremely uncertain that you belong as an inhabitant of the world.
it taps into the reason why Sailor Moon was so appealing to someone like me when I was young. It's a fantasy of being a normal girl who gets swept into a life of fantastic, beautiful, dramatic adventure. The personalities and everyday flaws of the scouts made it seem like any normal girl could become one. But really, the fantasy that made me obsess over Sailor Moon when I was young was simpler - the fantasy of being a normal young girl, not trapped in a weird body I didn't necessarily want, not trapped under the weight of the traits expected of me as a boy. expected of me both by others and myself, which is what makes it doubly hard. the voice in your own mind telling you you're doing it wrong.
I want to like this game. I love Alex and her struggles! Her dynamics with the other characters are interesting! But the terminal mechanic is frustrating beyond all belief. I got trapped in day three with no way to progress. Imagine rage-quitting at a visual novel! I didn't expect that going into the game. Maybe I'll try the game again, but I sincerely doubt it.
Laguna's instructions were confusing but I tried to type the command as I saw it, but the terminal didn't recognize it. I don't know what the issue was. I made sure all the capitalization and punctuation were ccorrect but it still said it wasn't a valid command. I tried to look up a tutorial or a walkthrough, but the one I found was less than helpful. The person stumbled in the same spot as me but never said what they did to fix it, so I fruitlessly kept trying on my own.
I'm having the exact same issue :( I typed "Is" exactly as Laguna said and it says "Invalid Directory. Application Not Found in This User's Directory."
I got much further than I initially expected (the first problem resolved itself; I forgot the period before a command line), but I have another, related, issue with the terminal. I'm having a hard time figuring out the admin password. The above command is registering as an error. I also searched the 'other' folder, but the cryptic message didn't help me out much. Now that I've passed the learning curve, I actually find the terminal mechanic to be extremely clever, fun, and (mostly) intuitive. I'm just bad at cryptic puzzles which is dampening my progress.
I am stuck here as well, and it is most certainly user error in my case. I am loving this game so much and really would like to finish. Hints would be mucho appreciated.
Hi, I’m sorry, is this the proper way to do that? I’m sorry, I’m new to Itch.io. Anyway I was enjoying the games’ atmosphere quite a lot and then noticed that... nothing happened... I can open IM, browse forums, get adorable kittys on my screen but nothing seemingly story-driven. I then went to see a walkthrough where the player was quite rapidly flooded with messages from Samuel, who’s silent to me. :( Did I miss something obvious? (running linux if by any chance, but everything seems to be running fine so)
Great! It's a bug that used to be pretty common in older Unity games. I wonder if it's strictly a Unity bug though, in which case I guess providing a build with a newer version of Unity may fix it?
I'm getting this error message when I try to open it on my Macbook Air (Catalina OS): "Secret Little Haven" cannot be opened because the developer cannot be verified. MacOS cannot verify that this app is free from malware."
Oh hey! So what you have to do is go to System Preferences, then go to Security & Privacy, and then go to "General". It should say "____ software can't be verified to not have malware", so you click on the "Run anyway" button and the game should launch ✨
Every time you have an issue with software, go to Security & Privacy to grant it permission to launch.
This game hurt to play. Not because it was bad, not because it controlled poorly, none of those things. The game was really fantastic, and has climbed up the list of one of my favorite games. It hurt for me to play because of everything Alex went through.
As someone who discovered herself through friends and fandom, a lot of stuff that Alex went through was really relatable to the point of making me feel.. uncomfortable? worried? I don't know how to properly describe it.
The scenes with the father was very anxiety inducing for me, as someone who has experienced (or is experiencing) something similar. I was actually more scared than most horror games thinking about when he will show up.
To avoid going more into spoiler stuff, the entire experience was hard to get through but very incredible. It has seriously become one of my favorite games, like I have mentioned before, and while I don't see myself replaying it, it's something I don't see myself forgetting.
This game is important. I can't thank you enough for making it. If I hadn't known I was trans yet, I think this game would have helped me realize it. Alex reminded me so much of my friend, in ways good and bad. It gives me hope for her, that she'll find her way, in the end. I want more people to know about this game, and play it for themselves. Thank you so much for adding it into the bundle, I wouldn't have found it on my own.
I LOVED THIS GAME SO MUCH! As a trans nerd, Alex's journey in finding community and support really resonated with me. I had a ton of fun interacting with these fan spaces, adorable applications, and characters, and was often moved to tears! I feel so hopeful and buoyant after playing, and enjoyed seeing relationships similar to mine be resolved/navigated healthily. Thank you so much for creating!
I can't really say I know what a person goes trough when they discover themselves in this way, cause I don't know, but, what I do know is that I love game, story and the mechanics themselves. The UI mechanics are exquisitely made and the whole thing is just very creative.
I loved the retro feel of the Apple iMac and the whole setting just awesome, even the characters play along with it being '99!
Incredible game. Feels extra nice when you're transgender yourself. I found myself in Alex. It was very accurate. Nice music, too. Liked everything about it.
This game hit extremely close to home in all the right ways, as someone who is trans, someone who found themselves through fandom. It touched my heart, I saw my friends in the people Alex spoke to, people I had grown to know in my real life. I found her asking questions that I had asked myself. I found her experiences with her father to be relatable and terrifying.
I found myself in tears at the very end. It's hard for games to really truly capture me and pull me into the story. But this one had me invested from the moment I opened it up. Thank you for making such an amazing game I wish I could experience it for the first time again, but I'll probably play it again no matter what <3
This game is an absolute masterpiece. I'm finding it hard to describe how good it was as a game but just the experience was amazing. I played while screen sharing with my internet friend of about 3 years, we didn't know what to expect but we just voiced the characters until we got super invested and lost focus on that. As the game progressed we found ourselves having conversations about our trauma and relating to the game's themes. This is an incredibly real and pretty timeless story. Not only is the story amazing, so are the graphics! The aesthetic of the game is totally to die for!! The glitch effects, the sounds, ALL THE WEB PAGES, etc. It was an amazing experience. I definitely recommend <3!! As a sentimental person... I will remember this game for AWHILE <333
Wow, this game somehow is the perfect combination of nostalgia, sweet friendships, and hard-hitting tension. I really enjoyed the time I spent playing your game. I felt it was well-polished and the characters felt so human. The pacing of the chats felt really realistic and immersive, as if I was back in the AIM days! And as a junior dev myself, the terminal scenes really captured that feeling of power when you first learn how to execute commands!
Despite not being trans, I related to the main character's struggles a lot and saw a lot of myself in her, and that doesn't happen often! There was a time in my childhood where all my friends were on online forums, too, and I had to sneak onto the computer to talk to them without my parents knowing. Thank you so much for this experience :)
I started playing this yesterday and while i'm not finished yet, i'm stunned by how incredible this game is. For the first half hour I was grinning like an idiot from nostalgia, as you perfectly captured forums and websites from that era. As soon as the end of the first day rolled around though, the mood change hit me so hard and I loved it.
This game just totally punched my emotional buttons in exactly the right way and it emulates the anxiety and fear of the situations so well.
Playing this just makes me remember just how affecting video game stories can be and how beautiful they are when done so well, with such passion!
Oh gosh, thank you for the bug report - I'll try and test that on my Linux machine! Just as a question, are you running the game through the Itch launcher, or without (The game sometimes has trouble running through the Itch launcher in macOS or Linux)
i absolutely loved this game and thought it was delightful!! the user interface is so pretty and i really enjoyed interacting with alex's friends and making use of the terminal program; secret little haven is a beautiful must-play !! thank u so much
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There are some other things I forgot to mention yesterday (and couldn't edit my post in time due to my computer breaking), so I thought I'd make an addendum post. I find it almost surreal how much this game lines up with my real-life experiences. If it weren't for the fact that he's divorced, John would've been a 1:1 direct parallel to my own real-life father, in ways I needn't explain. It made the scenes he forced poor Alex to talk to him and him alone (as well as his crazy obsessions with her) hit pretty close to home for me, which likely seriously heightened how much this game sucker-punched me in the feels. ^^; Even when he wasn't actually talking to her, seeing his bright red eye perpetually spying on Alex while she's having fun felt rather unnerving.
[Spoilers ahead!]
Even other situations in the game felt so trippy in how much it parallels to my situation - him forcing a blocker onto Alex's computer (mirroring my own father installing a similar blocker of his own on mine), Alex using the computer's Terminal utilizing the programming tricks Laguna taught her earlier on (mirroring my closest friend, skillful programmer that they are, helping me utilize Windows Terminal tricks to bypass my own father's blocker), and losing several friendships in one fell swoop due to poor wording choices from Alex due to the stress she had over the situation (mirroring me doing the exact same thing in 2017). Besides the aforementioned divorce thing, and how not all of Alex's friends map 1:1 to my own history, the only irony is that certain names of certain characters do not entirely match my life - were you to swap them in just the right way, I'd seriously feel like you had been spying on my life since the day I was born and decided to make a game about my life to try and reach out to me Matrix-style, or you were like my future self or some shit XD
This game will always hold a special place in my heart because of how deeply relatable it is for me. I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel my mind telling me I should ironically tell my dad to play this game simply so he could experience how it's like to be in my shoes when he yells at me, but deep inside I know that he'd either just entirely miss the point of the game or why I'd ask him to play it in first place, or just get mad at me for having played a "queer game" and quickly connect the dots as for my secretive gender identity. Sigh, ah well, sorry for rambling, I just kinda wanted to get this off of my chest ever since I finished the game. Regardless, thank you for having made this, Victoria - sincerely. I loved this game.
I've never played a visual novel type game before and I think I've peaked with the first one! I love love LOVE the interface and the whole premise is so clever. It took me back to the early days of the public internet and how sacred the communities were. I got so involved with each characters and my heart genuinely froze whenever I saw a message from John. The ending made me bawl like a baby. Such a wonderful gem of a game :)
This was beautifully painful. Thank you so much for making it. I'm not quite able to put my love of this game into words, but just know that it is a lot.
I don't think I'll ever be able to properly put into words what this game means to me. I was just checking out what games there were in the bundle I had just bought when I saw this game, and immediately noticed "trans girl" in the description. To no one's surprise, as any trans egg thirsty for trans content would, I installed the game as fast as I (and my computer) could manage.
And here I am, a few hours later, still gaping, laughing, crying, and feeling another thousand or so emotions I can't even name. Just about everything about this game - the visuals, the music, the writing, the way it completely and shamelessly got under my skin and abused it to the fullest potential leaves me in awe. Seeing Alex's journey of self-discovery in striking parallel to my own was both heartwarming and painful. Seeing the game's mechanics and my expectations of them blow up in my face to really put me into the mindset of a parental abuse victim was heartbreaking but extremely real. This game reminded me that I have a really long way to go until I can completely affirm that I'm living my best life and that I'm happy, but that, in the end...
I'll figure it out.
I could never thank you enough for this experience.
This is an amazing game. The story is interesting, emotional and a huge trans mood. The gameplay's really fun, it's nice being able to just explore the various apps and forums.
I played this for an hour and enjoyed every second! The main character reminds me a lot of how I used to be lol. But when I tried to quit and then continue playing later it started me from the beginning of the game? is there no save system?
to my knowledge, the game only saves when you log out at the end of a day.
weird, thats what I did. I quit right after reaching the end of the first day. I guess ill try again later
I really did just sit in my room and cry for four hours! This was so cute and sweet,,, This game hit me harder than any other game I've ever played. Thank you for such a wonderful game!
I love this game with all my heart, to whoever reads this, please play it
such a wonderful game and experience, even as someone who was born 2 years after this game takes place, i still related to alex immensely,,, that feeling of ease and safety when you're talking with your friends and doing girly things is all too familiar.
also i have to say the music in this game is also spectacular and enhances the experience even more, it's amazing!! i'm going to be thinking about this game for a very long time, thank you <3
Oh, wow. I'd been meaning to play this game for a while, and finally got it through the bundle and...... wow. I'm transmasculine, and the game takes place like a month before I was born, but the way it hits on so many of my specific experiences is incredible. The game is so immersive and I truly felt every moment as if it were happening to me. The warm, happy moments, but also the fear. John's presence is just so effectively terrifying - the way his eye is boring into you as you go about your business... I couldn't let my guard down; every day I felt like I was just waiting for the moment he would come online and everything would fall apart the second you feel at ease (the fact that some of the dialogue was so, so painfully familiar to me certainly helped make it scarier). Anyway I'm gushing but I can't get over how effective and beautiful this game is. I just finished a few minutes ago and I was sobbing - scared tears and happy tears. I'm so glad I finally played this game, I'm so glad it exists. <3
As a trans girl, I found this game relatable and incredibly well written.
I really wanted to play this game, it sounds right up my alley, but it makes my screen go black and flash on and off :(
I got this game and it was a joy to play! I couldn't put it down, I loved reading Alex's journey and self discovery. On a side note, does anyone know where to get the walpapers? I'd like to use them for my actual computer!
Oh gosh, this game was such an emotional wild ride! I got sucked-punched a lot in the darkest moments of the game, but the ending was so sweet~ I actually felt a tinge of sadness when it ended; I had formed a close bond with Alexandra and her friends, and it kinda hurt to see it all coming to an end, though :c
Still, I wholeheartedly recommend this game to anyone who's capable of withstanding the emotional sucker-punches or who is otherwise willing to go through it <3
oh wow yeah
I'm 32, and the thing that really struck me about this game was - I knew people just like Andy, just like Jenni and Laguna, just like prplsqrl, just like Sam. Some people who would offer unconditional support despite never having met me, and some people I knew in real life who would never understand who I was. This game reminds me of being a young gender confused nerd spending my time on the webtv anime chatroom, making friends with strangers online who I felt closer to than my own family. The kind of intimate detachment of AIM chats allowed for some of the most formative conversations of my life to happen in that setting. It would be really hard to explain it to someone who never experienced that internet, but this game captures the feelings I had in that time perfectly. It would be misleading to say the internet used to be better, because it still had a lot of terrible stuff on it, but it used to feel smaller, weirder, and more personal.
This game gives me this sense of bittersweet nostalgia for lost youth. I definitely don't want to BE the person I was in the past, but I miss certain things about them and that time. The uncertainty of looking to the future with a sense of mingled dread and longing. A lot of nebulous, nameless longing, that came in intense waves, that seems very specific to the experience of a young gender nonconforming person. I still feel that way sometimes, but it's never as intense as when you're young. Being extremely uncertain that you belong as an inhabitant of the world.
it taps into the reason why Sailor Moon was so appealing to someone like me when I was young. It's a fantasy of being a normal girl who gets swept into a life of fantastic, beautiful, dramatic adventure. The personalities and everyday flaws of the scouts made it seem like any normal girl could become one. But really, the fantasy that made me obsess over Sailor Moon when I was young was simpler - the fantasy of being a normal young girl, not trapped in a weird body I didn't necessarily want, not trapped under the weight of the traits expected of me as a boy. expected of me both by others and myself, which is what makes it doubly hard. the voice in your own mind telling you you're doing it wrong.
Thanks for making this game.
I want to like this game. I love Alex and her struggles! Her dynamics with the other characters are interesting! But the terminal mechanic is frustrating beyond all belief. I got trapped in day three with no way to progress. Imagine rage-quitting at a visual novel! I didn't expect that going into the game. Maybe I'll try the game again, but I sincerely doubt it.
What about it did you get stuck on?
Laguna's instructions were confusing but I tried to type the command as I saw it, but the terminal didn't recognize it. I don't know what the issue was. I made sure all the capitalization and punctuation were ccorrect but it still said it wasn't a valid command. I tried to look up a tutorial or a walkthrough, but the one I found was less than helpful. The person stumbled in the same spot as me but never said what they did to fix it, so I fruitlessly kept trying on my own.
Could you take a screenshot of what you tried to enter? It's likely just a syntax issue with the entered text.
I'm having the exact same issue :( I typed "Is" exactly as Laguna said and it says "Invalid Directory. Application Not Found in This User's Directory."
Oh, it’s ls, with an L, not an I!
to open txt files, you would need to do ./John/Documents/work/proposal.txt
also, you may have missed something in REMINDER.txt
hi, i've never related to a game so much in my life. thank you for making something that's helping me so much.
Can you take a screenshot of the terminal commands you are trying to enter?
I am stuck here as well, and it is most certainly user error in my case. I am loving this game so much and really would like to finish. Hints would be mucho appreciated.
Oh that would be fantastic!
[spoilers for everyone else]
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
I was able to locate the document REMINDER.txt on John's machine, but a bit lost on how to open it/what to do with it.
Same! Hopefully someone can get us both unstuck T_T
Thanks anyway for this game! \o/
oh no, I’m sorry - the Linux build can have trouble for some users for whatever reason >~<
What distro are you running?
Oh no! And it must be a nightmare to debug !!
I’m running Ubuntu 20.04 with proprietary nVidia. I might try Wine/Proton to launch the .exe, what do you think?
Try running the game with the `LANG` environment variable set to `C`, e.g.:
LANG=C ./"Secret Little Haven.x86_64"
It works! Thanks a bunch. Now to this gem!
Great! It's a bug that used to be pretty common in older Unity games. I wonder if it's strictly a Unity bug though, in which case I guess providing a build with a newer version of Unity may fix it?
If it's not a bug in Unity but in the game itself, it may be this: https://steamcommunity.com/app/283040/discussions/1/558751813141626592/#c5587518...
I'm getting this error message when I try to open it on my Macbook Air (Catalina OS): "Secret Little Haven" cannot be opened because the developer cannot be verified. MacOS cannot verify that this app is free from malware."
Oh hey! So what you have to do is go to System Preferences, then go to Security & Privacy, and then go to "General". It should say "____ software can't be verified to not have malware", so you click on the "Run anyway" button and the game should launch ✨
It doesn't appear, so I googled it and learned Catalina will not run 32 bit programs. I will have to try to open it on an older computer. Bummer.
oh gosh, I'm sorry about that
I hope you are able to play this game
As a trans person this game has meant so much to me, and your work left me with the most bittersweet happiness I've felt in a while, thank you.
This game hurt to play. Not because it was bad, not because it controlled poorly, none of those things. The game was really fantastic, and has climbed up the list of one of my favorite games. It hurt for me to play because of everything Alex went through.
As someone who discovered herself through friends and fandom, a lot of stuff that Alex went through was really relatable to the point of making me feel.. uncomfortable? worried? I don't know how to properly describe it.
The scenes with the father was very anxiety inducing for me, as someone who has experienced (or is experiencing) something similar. I was actually more scared than most horror games thinking about when he will show up.
To avoid going more into spoiler stuff, the entire experience was hard to get through but very incredible. It has seriously become one of my favorite games, like I have mentioned before, and while I don't see myself replaying it, it's something I don't see myself forgetting.
This game is important. I can't thank you enough for making it. If I hadn't known I was trans yet, I think this game would have helped me realize it. Alex reminded me so much of my friend, in ways good and bad. It gives me hope for her, that she'll find her way, in the end. I want more people to know about this game, and play it for themselves. Thank you so much for adding it into the bundle, I wouldn't have found it on my own.
Thanks for making this, it gave me some hope
I LOVED THIS GAME SO MUCH! As a trans nerd, Alex's journey in finding community and support really resonated with me. I had a ton of fun interacting with these fan spaces, adorable applications, and characters, and was often moved to tears! I feel so hopeful and buoyant after playing, and enjoyed seeing relationships similar to mine be resolved/navigated healthily. Thank you so much for creating!
I can't really say I know what a person goes trough when they discover themselves in this way, cause I don't know, but, what I do know is that I love game, story and the mechanics themselves. The UI mechanics are exquisitely made and the whole thing is just very creative.
I loved the retro feel of the Apple iMac and the whole setting just awesome, even the characters play along with it being '99!
just played through the first day and i
really like this.
Incredible game. Feels extra nice when you're transgender yourself. I found myself in Alex. It was very accurate. Nice music, too. Liked everything about it.
This game hit extremely close to home in all the right ways, as someone who is trans, someone who found themselves through fandom. It touched my heart, I saw my friends in the people Alex spoke to, people I had grown to know in my real life. I found her asking questions that I had asked myself. I found her experiences with her father to be relatable and terrifying.
I found myself in tears at the very end. It's hard for games to really truly capture me and pull me into the story. But this one had me invested from the moment I opened it up. Thank you for making such an amazing game I wish I could experience it for the first time again, but I'll probably play it again no matter what <3
This game is an absolute masterpiece. I'm finding it hard to describe how good it was as a game but just the experience was amazing. I played while screen sharing with my internet friend of about 3 years, we didn't know what to expect but we just voiced the characters until we got super invested and lost focus on that. As the game progressed we found ourselves having conversations about our trauma and relating to the game's themes. This is an incredibly real and pretty timeless story. Not only is the story amazing, so are the graphics! The aesthetic of the game is totally to die for!! The glitch effects, the sounds, ALL THE WEB PAGES, etc. It was an amazing experience. I definitely recommend <3!! As a sentimental person... I will remember this game for AWHILE <333
Augh, sorry - I have been trying like, everything to fix that double-chat bug, but I guess it can still appear sometimes >~<
Wow, this game somehow is the perfect combination of nostalgia, sweet friendships, and hard-hitting tension. I really enjoyed the time I spent playing your game. I felt it was well-polished and the characters felt so human. The pacing of the chats felt really realistic and immersive, as if I was back in the AIM days! And as a junior dev myself, the terminal scenes really captured that feeling of power when you first learn how to execute commands!
Despite not being trans, I related to the main character's struggles a lot and saw a lot of myself in her, and that doesn't happen often! There was a time in my childhood where all my friends were on online forums, too, and I had to sneak onto the computer to talk to them without my parents knowing. Thank you so much for this experience :)
I started playing this yesterday and while i'm not finished yet, i'm stunned by how incredible this game is. For the first half hour I was grinning like an idiot from nostalgia, as you perfectly captured forums and websites from that era. As soon as the end of the first day rolled around though, the mood change hit me so hard and I loved it.
This game just totally punched my emotional buttons in exactly the right way and it emulates the anxiety and fear of the situations so well.
Playing this just makes me remember just how affecting video game stories can be and how beautiful they are when done so well, with such passion!
An inspiring game for sure, thank you ❤️
Oh gosh, thank you for the bug report - I'll try and test that on my Linux machine! Just as a question, are you running the game through the Itch launcher, or without (The game sometimes has trouble running through the Itch launcher in macOS or Linux)
i absolutely loved this game and thought it was delightful!! the user interface is so pretty and i really enjoyed interacting with alex's friends and making use of the terminal program; secret little haven is a beautiful must-play !! thank u so much
Maybe if you launch your own chat in-game, you can get some help ;)
first thing: go into the terminal and try lsing into everything
thanks for putting that in <3