So, I do want to open up with something that kind of irritated me regarding the game - admittedly, it’s kind of a me issue, but the combo of the custom UI not allowing for rollback via mouse wheel, there not being a history page (at least that I could find), and the very liberal usage of text timing and auto-advance made this really hard for me to read. Those can help create atmosphere and dictate the pacing of the work - but it operates under the assumption that the pacing which the author dictates is the pacing readers feel comfortable with. Personally, I tend to jump back and forth quite a lot while reading in order to better understand it / pick up on specific details, and I found myself kind of lost a lot of the time due to the combination of all of these aspects (though admittedly, I also just didn’t find the back button for a while because of the new UI).
That aside, I did eventually manage to overcome those issues and read through the story. Contrary to what some of the other reviewers said, I think Otsoa and the conversations with him were probably the highlight for me. When the MC was alone, the prose was pretty, but kind of hard to follow - it felt as though the same ideas were repeated over and over again to emphasize certain points, but they wound up overstaying their welcome somewhat.
Meanwhile, the conversations with Otsoa managed to genuinely develop the characters quite well - I started out irritated at the wolf and his standoffish personality, but gradually grew to understand both him and the MC better through their conversations. By the end of the story, I was genuinely sad at how things shook out - for as opposed as their desires might have seemed to Otsoa at first, they really do come from the same place of wanting something they can never have. This might just be me having come from reading The Leveret Spirit before this, but I saw the phones as representative of the internet and how it can bridge people from vastly different origins together - and of the trials and tribulations of those types of conversations.
The mystery of the phones connecting between the two was also quite intriguing - why did they suddenly appear? How the hell do they work? And, most of all, why is it that the MC can suddenly understand the other sea creatures? This all lingers in the background, but it’s developed quite well across the work - with the final action scene in particular serving to both give the reveal of “something bigger is happening here” due to the MC’s sudden grasp of the new language (which also contextualizes some previous oddities better), and provide a good climax to the work.
The one problem with the Otsoa sections is the lack of visuals - I imagine it’s in part because of jam constraints, but they have no visuals - Otsoa is a wolf only by name, because we don’t even know what he looks like. I feel as though it wouldn’t have been too far of a stretch for there to be some sort of video call, given how the phones are already quite “magical” in their function - though I do understand that it might not fit in with the author’s vision for the story to be based around solitude.
All of that is to say that I think this is an interesting work, even if I think there’s room for improvement. I do think it’s mostly a matter of taste, though - my own personal tastes are such that I didn’t particularly connect with the solo sections, but if someone’s looking for a moody and atmospheric read that’s well-made, I’d definitely recommend it.