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Great game!

Oh man, I thought I would be playing this game as a pick-me-up... I'm sobbing as we're delving into all the different ways grief can affect people. Excellent art, excellent writing.

Edit  - and I'd like to tell myself that things are going to get better, but I did read what was in the haunted house windows, and I did recognize the guy in the painting, and I can't imagine I'm anywhere near finishing this thing. 

Wow! I came here after finishing because I wanted to gush about it but I'm astonished by how toxic these comments are, for 1) an awesome game that 2) was clearly a labor of love updated painstakingly over years with 3) a lot of emotional investment and clever writing and 4) intentional cool representation choices and 5) IS FREE. IS FREE. IS FREE. YOU PLAY IT AND IT'S HOURS OF CONTENT AND IT'S FREE. 

Anyway....

No I didn't see the ending coming (and am VERY glad I didn't check out the comments first) but having played it all in the course of a couple days, I really admire how the game starts out very much like there is something wrong, horrror or SOMEthing is present in the background, but the episodic character focused chapters lull you into a false sense of security. I thought maybe the backstory of a Murder Occuring was a loose thread, and the character being self-aware in their manipulation was more of a genre parody, before the game whacks you in the face. The title screen change was very much a rousing YOOO!! LET'S GOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!! moment. 

The character routes being linear and with obvious and immediate failstates has me feeling some type of way. When you don't get it on your first or second go, it's annoying, because you feel like you have to "game" the character's reaction instead of getting to know them - which is itself a really neat self-aware critique of dating games I think, and a cool way to address the inherant completionism that comes alongside it. It does also make me proud and a little extra attached to the ones whose routes I got on the first go. Or to the ones I failed but for reasons that, in real life, I would find really reasonable. (Theodore, I'm not a snitch. Even if in high school I was way more of a Jaxter type. Gunter, I'm 100% with you dude - I'm not well off but I have just enough money that I feel like a bad friend if I don't offer other people whatever I've got. And Mary... Mary, I'm neither bi nor ace in terms of how I ID right now, but I've never met a more relatable character in my life.) 

Speaking of representation, I really appreciate the choices to incorporate pride flags into character designs. I don't think that would work for EVERY game but it works for this one. I'm scrolling back through chapters and I'm seeing ones I didn't notice during actual play, again mostly thanks to Mary. Jaxter running around in a pan flag all night every night but (from what I remember...) switching to just blue for the dance makes me sad for him ahahaa. In a way that hints at some character beats if you squint. Speaking of, yoo, the psychosexual melodrama of high school girl crushes going on between Netina and Mary. I don't even know. Also being on the spectrum, there is probably enough in that topic I don't want to even get into for fear of discovering some kind of big bummer about my own high school memories lmao.

So much to still be said post-ending. Are we actually able to move on like we expect to? Do we have enough of a disconnect between our plans vs our actual friendships to miss what we had? We already missed Acanthibar so much that I'm skeptical that our connections are as easily severed as we want them to be. (Not to belabor the "good foreshadowing" point, but the cafeteria question that Twyla asked....!!!)

I don't think I ever got that secret chapter though... and now I'm especially curious since we had to do so much savescumming to get just to the endgame.

Edit - Oh!! I also wanted to mention the eerieness of the setting sort of wearing at you. Not in the design of the actual locations but in how the POV character keeps periodically noticing how the weather is always perfect, and how the classes are always just interesting enough to be challenging but not discouraging, how obfuscated the school's reasoning is for selecting students.

Edit- ALSO MARY'S SPRITES!! I almost forgot Mary's frogs emoting for her being the greatest thing since sliced bread

Edit - I do also still prefer Dark Evil Messed Up and Wicked music lmao, because I have an actual grandfather chime clock I got to keep my sense of time in line, so having an hour chime get in your head is so chronologically confusing hahah. Although speaking of the audio, having a text to speech option coded into the game is SO cool

Very neat short game!

oh s--!!! i obviously knew red riding hood but i liked hunter and the story didn’t seem to be playing into any of those parallels so I thought it was a design choice or something. (i got the obedient bunny ending first lol.) It wasn’t until “Grandmother. You feel uneasy” that I actually understood!!!!!! goddam!!

I had several points with the puzzles that I was ready to give up and find a walkthrough in the comments but there wasn’t one, and I surprised myself by getting there anyhow. Re: BMHL. When you interact with the paintings, Hunter offers to take them down for you. I think I was x-ing out of that interaction to go back rather than going through it, whoops.

ok!!!!! no i checked out that really cool hallway before just running and aww. got it now. although if carnation sees us going like “we got marriage counseling :D” she will be SO disturbed

… I did try touching the clock again after that, just to see if Hunter would save us… he couldn’t catch those hands

But wow you are doing something really complex, portraying these abusive situations, then humanizing the people who do it, making us want to just paint over the bad things they did to us just like Bonnie is trying to do.

very cool mechanic tying in with the story to block off places with blood bc Bonnie has a phobia of stepping in it

i wrote this in a notes app while playing since I couldn't comment down here at the same time, but I got the "actual" ending and then the lone wolf also. Incredible work!!! Top tier, seriously.

Oh, I am sobbing like a baby at the good ending. Very clever, endearing, haunting, and sweet when it needs to be. Thanks for making this.

For those like me who have specifical animal cruelty triggers (mine is about cats) - I believe the only instance of that is with a bunny, for one shot, if you specifically choose to hurt it.

Edit - Oh, when I saw what the key led to, I was like "500th customer?? D: D: D:" but now I'm like "500th customer... T_T T_T T_T"

Really great game! I love Miss Inquiry. I didn't count all the endings so I might have missed one, but I got the true ending and that's what counts. 

Interesting story! Nice work on the animation.

I got the most yandere ending first! Took a few minutes to figure out the rest. (It also wasn't a "good" date since I was genuinely annoyed about the tattoo artist and I thought the "it's a secret" thing was flirty.) Incredible game, thank you!

Ending guide, I think? I haven't tested them after doing them ^^; Also, first thing: start the game with "options" and turn "always dash" on.

Normal endings: 
Choose "you" for your meal
Have a bad date (don't share any info about yourself, be rude) and interact with enough NPCs that Serze finally finishes in the bathroom and comes to meet you
Have a non-amazing date and enter the bathroom before Serze comes back out
Have an amazing date (share all info, be nice) and interact with enough NPCs for Serze to come back out

True ending:
Have an amazing date and enter the bathroom before Serze comes back out

Hidden ending:
Have an amazing date (may not be required but I assume you at least can't be rude to the waitress), then go talk to waitress at the front counter, who will ask you to serve customers. Don't look at any other objects and don't make a mistake. (The person who came in late ISN'T the same as the diamond lady.)

Yes yes yes thank you!!

Look, to be fair, Stalker calling themself Stalker is the logical extension of "Nerd" "Gardener"... not that I knew that at the time. 

Ohp, and it turns out I was only missing Nerd ver. for ending 3!! Thank you again. This is a new favorite.

I've started writing it all down and gave up at that, but checked and I'm now only missing #3! 

This is effing incredible! I've been playing for hours and I still haven't hit 3, 4, 6, 8, or 9. I'm obviously missing something big and I'm almost ready to bust out a flowchart here. Also A+ for faceblind love interest <3

Some of my favorite screencaps so far based on the mc name...

This is so neat! I think I softlocked myself by showing the papers to CC after I'd already been told where the perp is. That unchecked my to-do box and it can't be re-checked. I'm replaying the game now to see if I can speedrun it and if I can get in after that, or if I am still missing a step.

Edit: Yep, that did the trick! I now had a new to-do to confront him in the bathroom. :) 

Cute game! I like all the datables so I didn't do anything to them until my second go-around. I played it enough times that I thiiink I got all the dialogue? (I didn't check out the description before playing, so the first harvest scene was such a surprise lmao, even though it was foreshadowed.) Pleasantly surprised that I didn't get fired after intentionally chucking everything he asked for and keeping everything he didn't. 

Jun is my fav btw!

I never talked to Romero once and don't regret it. I already knew who his most loved one would be just by looking lol. I was also polite to everyone :) Cool game, thank you!

Really cool game with the true ending being so worth it!

Very cute game! With some strategy with determining which letters to pick first.

Cute short game!

Cute game!

Really clever and interesting game!

Good game!

Thanks for making!

Sadly froze after clicking the first start button on firefox, but worked on Chrome. Thanks for making!

Sadly I couldn't open on Mac as it said the developer needed to update some files. I appreciate you having a working mac version for all other games. That is rare :)

Cool short game!

Amazing and emotional. I'm curious as to whether there's a 3rd ending, beyond the hero giving up or the queen dying. Made me have hope but maybe there really isn't a way out of our destiny and we can only live on in memory. :(

You can get him to give up by not moving, but that is the bad ending as the hero doesn't consider you a worthy opponent and you get no further dialogue. You also get this ending by not attacking them at all. 

I gave this fix a shot but sadly, the game seems to have the same issues. Downloading for Mac directly and downloading via the launcher keep unexpectedly quitting immediately before gameplay, right after acknowledging controls (sometimes I get to the point of selecting a time to wake up, sometimes it crashes first). 

The only time I've gotten past that point, it was a black screen with occasional audio reactions to my clicking, but then it crashed again with this new error message.

If you ever want screencaps of my running commentary from playing on Discord, hit me up 😂 This was really wonderful. I'm kinda finally setting it down for the day after about 2 hours and 40 minutes of rotating it in my mind.

My friend Venus wants me to comment "the cipher also says something about red to green, but part of it is garbled"

i personally was unaware of base 64 in my list of gravity falls inspired ciphers, but looking it up, I thiiiink it's "initialize red to green color vision"???

Edit**: YES INITIALIZE... those were lowercase l's the whole time!

full text is: SU5JVElBTElaRSBSRUQgVE8gR1JFRU4gQ09MT1IgVklTSU9O

For all who need this info, this is what I've figured out so far.

- The 3 digit code starts with "88" - If this is somewhere as a clue, I didn't see it. I'm not telling the last digit in the interest of not spoiling the game, but that number is the one you should be able to guess. So the code is 88X.

- If you choose to not save the body in front of the Cabin set, that is a PERMANENT decision and you will be playing the game as only Ranboo. This isn't the default and you will miss out on a lot of dialogue lol.

- Save the game BEFORE you leave after unlocking all 3 locks. You can get through the door if the bottom box turns black. If the top box turns black, the game unfortunately stops responding and becomes unwinnable. You can just refresh and play from your save point though.

Lots of replayability. I need to come back to 1) see if I can get through the door as only Ranboo - when I got that door glitch before, I thought it was because I hadn't been playing the game as intended, and 2) to go look at everything with Charlie and not Sneeg, based on that sink dialogue lol.

Incredible game, so much fun! I have enjoyed ripping Ranboo's mask off of them and supergluing it to everyone I add to my party... everyone gets a turn with the torture mask :)

Edit: I am pretty sure that ending with Ranboo-only isn't a glitch... poor guy... Although poorer Sneeg if you just leave him behind and still complete the game!

Great game!

Yes, this was a super sweet game that made my afternoon a lot nicer. I also would have liked a map / quest list (I'm PRETTY sure I've been everywhere but I only just found the light house 20 minutes after beating the game...), but the exploratory aspect was really fun and it was short enough for me to get away with just wandering. God, this really let us live out the beautiful fantasy of paying off someone's college tuition, huh

Thanks so much!

I installed the game and messed around with the basic controls to see if my way would work (since I don't have a left/right mouse button). It doesn't. I uninstalled the game and reinstalled it, but it still remembers my bad control setup and won't go back to the default. Is there a way to fix this?

Well if this isn't just the CUTEST thing!

I could tell this wasn't made by a girl (or at least the art wasn't made by a lesbian, I promise!) but this straddled the line between cute and hot. I didn't mind spamming the same kiss over and over--I really appreciated how you couldn't mess up and lose the game (except possibly at the end?), you could only win it more quickly. Low stakes made this less stressful and was just a goofy makeout game. 

Yes! In real life I am bad at dating sites (I never respond to messages!), but I chose the goofy sex ones here because I figured my character might want a one-night hookup. I haven't hit any flirty dialogue options so far... I don't think the character wants to be on Tinder in the first place. Which is fine! But surprising. 

Edit -- Not to knock on the programmers of this free game. I like the art style!

This looks cool! Unfortunately unplayable for me, since I have a Macbook and the normal method of "right clicking" (control+left click) doesn't work. Neat though, thanks!

I played this all the way through last night and I'm pretty sure I enjoyed it. I was on ambien the whole time tho