This is the first time, I’m making a negative comment / review on somebody else’s project, but I feel like I have to say something after watching this shit show transpire over this past week.
Before I elaborate, a little disclaimer: This is solely against the team leader and creator of this project: Jenny Vi Pham and not directed at any of the team members. For what they were given, the artists and composer did a great job.
This is solely directed at Jenny and I hope she takes to heart what I’m saying, at least tries to reflect and show some form of compassion and understanding.
1) Suicide & character death as a form to emotionally manipulate the player.
I’m starting with my most important and the heaviest topic from the beginning, since - frankly speaking - as a writer myself and someone affected by suicide (personally and through the loss of people close to me) I am disgusted.
The execution of the murder & suicide scenes were absolutely out of place and insensitive, suicide especially is such a sensitive topic and with how the narrative portrayed it, there was no build up to it or the cat “being the main villain”.
But what was worse was: After I reached the (DDLC copycat of a) suicide ending, the cat ending played.
In this ending the cat (loosely introduced in the beginning) reveals themselves as some supernatural / spiritual being - telling the player that they are “powerless in this world” but not “powerless in that world (reality)” and that they can bring him back to life by leaving 5.000 rates on the itchio page.
This (to me and with the hanging ending I got right before this played ) suggests “Oh you can save him from killing himself by leaving 5.000 ratings on the itch page” - which is undisputedly DISGUSTING.
And since the majority of the fans seem to be minors - proven by the people in the fanserver as well as the comments left on here - of course they would want him back!
2) No age restriction
Moving on right to the next topic: Minors - This (and I can’t believe I have to say this) IS NOT A GAME FOR MINORS. Despite this game being so graphic (especially visually, depicted by the hanging) there is NO age restriction either on this site, nor a disclaimer on the page or within the game. (At least when I played it.)
THIS IS NOT A GAME FOR MINORS.
This is actively going against itch’s terms of service.
3) Support and encouragement in the creation of alt accounts
Jenny has encouraged her fans multiple times over the course of the “full release” to make alt accounts and rating the game.
She has additionally been holding the death of Zilas over her fans’ heads, shown by clips from her VODs as well as the numerous tweets she made about it.
This just more and more feeds into the exploitation of her fans’ emotions and strong will to reach the good ending.
Some examples:
"[holding food into the camera] something Zilas will never ever be able to enjoy again unless it hits 5k"
"watch me make a video with me like 'How I killed my character and became popular out of it'
"If you guys actually make alt accounts, if you really love Zilas that much, I will give you Zilas"
"See, that's a possibility of him coming back to life; so, if you just work hard, you can bring him back to life"
She also tweeted a daily rate counter, showing how many “souls” have to be taken to revive Zilas.
4) Not the first time
This is not the first time Jenny being criticised for her lack of care when it comes to the insensitive dealings with topics such as suicide.
Within her Otome Jam 2023 entry “Innerlog” she carelessly dealt with the topic of suicide and carelessly mocked it throughout the narrative.
People tried to comment on it, trying to voice their concerns but she blocked any form of criticism.
5) No accountability
It’s clearly visible that Jenny has not learned from criticism and has been actively deflecting from criticism she got for her coverage on Going Live.
I feel sorry for the team who has to deal with all this now and I pity all the fans being emotionally manipulated like this and actively feeding into this desire for attention and popularity this creator clearly does not deserve.
Actually she should be glad that with these many ToS violations that this project wasn’t taken off of itch yet - or her entire account at that.