This was pretty spectacular from start to finish. It's so brave to hold off on the cool twist after so much introduction, but what's really impressive is that all the introduction is SO impressive, and incredibly thematically cohesive with the eventual twist of the game. I don't want to spoil too much for anyone reading the comments before playing, but I think it's quite inspired to correlate the struggles of maintaining a game and maintaining your body itself as a performance artist, and particularly the idea that the emotional investment in a person's front-facing facade is no different than your investment in a completely fictional work. But rather than that being an indictment on the facade, it's rather a proclamation of just how powerful games are in terms of how much emotion and investment they can evoke out of someone.
Massive props to everyone involved, the writing, character dialogue, and flow was stellar, all the aesthetic was mind-blowingly polished, and the characters were wonderfuull. I am the number 1 Chieko stan forever and ever and nobody can take that away from me