Full Disclosure, I haven't played all the routes yet (I'm very slow with playing my games these days) but I just wanted to write my thoughts after getting through a good number of them. This game's writing shines for me and I'm absolutely glad that I got it. I bought it on the racial justice bundle, but it's definitely worth the asking price for how much content there is. 

I can definitely see why it was included in the bundle. While it doesn't touch much on real-life political topics, the way it handles the supernatural community nonetheless brings up very thoughtful and nuanced discussions on community vs. individual responsibility, fairness, bias, cultural clash, and other concepts that can easily be applied to real life issues. I especially enjoyed that the MC can take part in these discussions too (with an understandable, but still flawed perspective) and that the player can decide to an extent how to react with the dialogue choices. This was especially the impression I got playing Marc's route, but it's in all of the ones I've played to an extent. 

There's a lot of heavy topics (social/political and otherwise) that come up in this game and I think seeing it so far, the writing handles them great. It helps that the characters themselves feel very real and fleshed out, even down to the main character (I wasn't expecting to enjoy Nora's character as much as I was, since a lot of Otome games tend to flatten the protagonist out so people can "project" onto them.) I also love how it's balanced with lighthearted humor and action scenes that rear up closer to the climax, so it's not too heavy. 

The replayability was what ultimately sold it for me though. Each route has several endings, some good, some bittersweet and some bad, and every romance option comes with their own plotline with a separate antagonist or problem to solve. Even the main plot that stays the same, i.e. the mystery about Nora's condition, is woven in with the Love Interest's plotline in a way that makes solving it a unique experience each time. You learn a little something different in each route. I also liked how the different routes somewhat referenced each other despite the Schroedinger's Cat element of what problem, specifically, is rearing its head (like the Ancient in the mines being mentioned in Marc's route, iirc.)

So, in short, I've really been enjoying the experience of playing this game. I see that there's another game on the way, and I think I'll definitely give that one a try too!

Thank you so much!

I feel like the Vampire routes delve a lot more into some of the struggles between humans/Cryptics because Vampires frequently find themselves at odds with humans due to the whole drinking blood thing but are otherwise quite a bit more human-ish than some other groups.

It's also really interesting to write about it from a high schooler's perspective because I feel like younger people always have these amazing flashes of wisdom and insight laced through the natural immaturity and lack of life experience. It's a really fun dynamic to play around with. I think the fact that this game was just *fun* to write and these characters were fun to work with helped us balance out some of the heavier topics.

On the one hand you have topics like "Hey, this community is not having its needs met while another community lives in ignorance about the situation..." but that's kind of juxtaposed against "Should I let my boyfriend have a nibble because he's hungry??"

And Nora offers an interesting lens to look through because her world view is so funny most of the time.

If or when you try Gilded Shadows, we hope you enjoy it too even though it's just a demo right now! It's a fun project to work on as well though the characters are older, we get to play with a lot of fun science fiction tropes

~Esh