OH GOSH CARROT THANK YOU FOR PLAYING, and thank you for all of the thoughts!!! This was the first game where I went really stylized in terms of art (Karamu had an aesthetic but it was mainly "stick blue over EVERYTHING") so I'm glad that it came out well!
DFGDFGD AFTER KARAMU I told myself "no more CG only VNs..." but when I actually looked at this one I was like, "wait making sprites wouldn't actually save me that much time..." (Originally I wasn't even going to have images at all, it was going to be 3 or 4 backgrounds told in an interactive fiction style...how the turns tabled...) Luckily having all of the images in black and white really sped things up, and I'm glad that they came out well! That CG is 100% my favorite (and honestly...I'm disappointed that it's so spoilery and gorey that I can't use show it off anywhere...*sigh*)
GOSH I'M GLAD, I feel like this entire VN was an exercise in "how can I make things scary even if my ability to draw dead bodies is extraordinary subpar..." AND HANNIBAL (you are 100% correct, that scene was ABSOLUTELY inspired by Hannibal gosh, I remember watching that episode and being so blown away by the sheer grotesque beauty of it all...)
===MODERATELY SPOILERY BITS UNDER HERE===
I'm really glad you thought so!! LMAO I actually came up with this story right when I was first conceiving of Raku's character (although I didn't intend to actually make it into a game at the time, just stored in the back of my mind), so I wrote him with this story in mind. So he comes off as a little needy and eerily obsessed in Karamu, but my intention is that after you play this one, his obsession...well, it's not normal, but it at least makes a little sense LOL
YES I feel like Raku obviously comes across as the...well self explanatory one, but let's not forget that Nelli does some WILD stuff too LOL so it was my intent for her past to come off as tragic as Raku's (although much less fantastical). The bathroom scene was actually one of the three scenes that I originally based the game around (the bathroom scene, the "eating" scene, and then the final scene when Raku returns home were the three). That's actually one of the most tragic scenes to me personally - the idea that her fond memories of gaming are just because they were an escape from her horrible home life (as a person who enjoyed gaming as a kid...)
DFGDFG GOSH I THINK MY HORROR COMPOSITION SKILLS STILL NEED SO MUCH WORK BUT THANK YOU
Thank you so much dfgdfgdgfghf YOU'RE TOO KIND GOSH A TUTORIAL FGHF YOU EXAGGERATE
And DFGDFG I'M VERY EXCITED TO FINISH IT, I hope that people enjoy the ending fghfghfgfghfhgfh
Thank you for playing carrot, I always love reading your thoughts!!!! *sob*