[SPOILERS]
I felt like I was third-wheeling and just watching a couple banter the whole time. It really captured that mundane everyday feeling of hanging out with a friend, or third-wheeling your friend and their partner. Somewhere in the middle, I was thinking it felt a bit too ordinary. You know, it reminded me of the kind of conversations and moments you’d experience in high school or college.
When the ending came though, it completely caught me off guard. I thought the story would end after they picked out the pasalubong based on our choices. I didn’t expect Eli to die at all, it came out of nowhere. But I think that’s also what made it feel realistic, because things like that really do happen out of nowhere in real life. I like how the writer handled it. Even though it felt a bit slow-paced for me, I get why it was written that way.
I also really liked how each character had a lot of animated expressions. It made the dialogue feel much more alive. I do think it would’ve been even better if the backgrounds were originally drawn, or at least edited a bit more, but I understand the time for the jam was limited.
One thing that did put me off was how the dialogue appeared one sentence at a time instead of letter by letter or word by word. There were some moments where it worked well, but for most of the game it made the dialogue feel a bit clunky.