This was such an incredibly beautiful game.
I’m amazed by what Denhop was able to achieve on a technical level within Ren’py’s limitations. The 3D art was stunning. There was such a wide range of visual styles used within the game: 3D stills, 3D videos, 2D scribbles, irl videos … And it all felt cohesive. The sheer amount of assets created for this game, and the numerous scenes are astounding. The animations were so well crafted and believable. The light was so perfectly used to create the various moods. The recurring motif of the swaying leaves in various media was so calming (most of the time). Denhop’s use of scenes and pictures was simply lavish – no corners cut, just an insane amount of details to create atmosphere. The glitchy music (as well as the silence) did such a fantastic job to back the story.
As a typography-lover this game had me smitten. The whole framing left space for the text to appear, and there are endless amounts of screens in the game that could just be printed like that. But also the examples in the later part of the game, were the text became unreadable were very effective. There is a scene were the two trade a secret, and the secret is printed on screen, but the camera zoomed out so far that it wasn’t readable anymore. It drove me nuts, because I wanted to know, but at the same time it was such a clever way to keep the secret between the two girls. I’m not sure how it was achieved on a technical level, but at least in a few scenes the text is part of the image. And the one that I liked most was were the text in game was the shadow of a 3D text or text texture projecting on a wall <3<3<3
The writing was gorgeous. The switching between narration, thoughts and “audible” dialog worked so well. It felt profound, but also fittingly angsty/angry for two late-teenagers. And the sheer amount of conversations that had this level of depth, made it feel surprisingly real. It was just a very well balanced mix of mundane and reflective. I loved how the characters were able to voice their feelings in such profound ways, but that they had trouble sometimes feeling those convictions themselves. They were at times brutally honest, but their love was a framework in which this was possible without hurting each other.
To me the game felt very gentle, but also very dreary – like some summerdays can feel exhausing just by how slow they seem to progress. It was a very good experience, and left so much space for those two to get to know and love each other.