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(+1)

This has excellent art direction. The old picture book and paper doll style (with white paper creases and everything!) appeals to me quite a bit. Much like you with my game, I had to play this twice to try and understand what was going on - but I think I might have gotten the basic twist the first time because of the very last shot. It's just that the events were so surreal that they had me thinking I was missing something (read: a lot). As far as anagnorisis goes, does it recontextualize the rest of the story? I don't know. It seems like the new context is something you could've already intuited from the visual style alone. Though maybe that's part of the foreshadowing. (Or I'm misunderstanding, like, everything.)

I think what I liked best in terms of ludonarrative was the scribbled-out dialogue. That's because even though you don't know what's being said, that's not what's important about it. What is important is what it conveys about the situation, mood and in particular the narrative arc, which is achieved via things like context and music choices. I like how these things allow the player to infer for themselves whats being said, even if there's still some mystery. Very well done.

I hope the boy stuck on the ceiling is a reference to Roald Dahl's "The Twits".  I didn't notice until the second playthrough  just how creepy and robotic his laugh was. (Just like how I didn't notice the lying down half-face in the cover image until I was rating the game. Was that always there? O.o)

Fantastic job!

(+1)

Thanks for the review! I'm sure The Twits was an unconscious influence, and Roald Dahl in general. A lot of his stories are basically monster stories where the protagonist is a child and the "monster" is an evil adult.

Honestly I think the anagnorisis in the very last shot was a bit weak, though I tried to plant a lot of mini-anagnorisises throughout the story: Who scribbled everything out and what does that represent? What is your dynamic with the boy on the roof? What is the significance of the man in the picture?

I'm really happy that you felt an emotional arc throughout the game, that was much more important to me than coming away with an intellectual understanding of the story.