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This VN was made for a game jam in one month, and the story is short so I could finish it in the timeframe of the jam. There are no plans to add more content to this story: it is already complete.

Yes, each episode on Steam will have an achievement for finishing it 🙏 

I actually did have an idea for a sequel (I even planned one out haha) but I am not 100% sure if I will make it, since the sales were not all that good. I liked writing Taiki and Elisa a lot though, I think it'd be fun to do more with them in the future!
Maybe I would writing a wedding scene then haha, it would be cute...

!!! aw thank you, this was such a sweet comment to read haha
it made me very happy, i'm really glad you enjoyed it!

yuel is a fun character to write, he tends to be pretty down on himself and introverted (i also feel like he's especially depressed here haha) but he's also kind of snippy and sarcastic, so it's a lot of fun to write his dialogue with tavi. i think their personalities mesh together pretty well, their dialogue tends to flow pretty easily for me maybe because i've written them so much haha

the other yuel/tavi stories are mostly aus that take place in different settings, so the characters + their backstories change a little... they're always the same characters at heart though. i just like putting them in situations to see what they do haha

feels more like an experience than a narrative but i really liked this, i love the presentation. it's so unique, i've never seen another vn which looks quite like this. all of the bright colours mixed with the floating text + the gentle music is so lovely, it feels like an interactive art piece.

thank you very much for making it, i enjoyed it a lot!

i was genuinely interested in trying to get to the end but i fumbled the choices so many times since my reaction times are so poor, i simply can't click the right option to progress fast enough lol... i know the point of the game is to be annoying and it's by design but it was pretty sad this happened after the forced intermission ;;;

for a deliberately 'bad' game it's petty innovative, i liked the forced crash time looping and also the missing petal pngs hahaha
it was kind of enjoyable(?) in its own way i guess

Of course not, but if you want to criticise somebody’s writing it would help your case if you could spell the word ‘write’ correctly.

Thank you, I'm glad you like it! <3

The story doesn't stop being a horror story just because you personally didn't like it, and there are many classic horror stories which are far longer and even more descriptive than Lonely is. Just look at Dracula.

It's very sweet you would go out of your way to read Idleness like that! I hope you enjoy it! Thank you very much! <3

very emotionally evocative experience with some really nice art, i liked this one a lot. it manages to express a lot of rather complex and painful emotions in a succinct manner, and there's a lot to think about in here. thank you for making it!

Both Idleness and To Have and to Hold are rated r18 on Steam because they contain explicit sex scenes, so they are banned in China and Germany. I apologise for the inconvenience 😔

Thank you very much!

Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it!

I'm going to keep the screenshots as they are, as I don't think they spoil any major plot elements. Showing off the romantic CGs is also the easiest way for yuri VNs like this to get attention, as people typically read yuri stories for moments like these. Still, thank you for the feedback.

thank you very much! i'm glad you enjoyed it! <3

this game does some really interesting things with ren'py, going through it was definitely an experience. i love how non-linear it feels and how much you can interact with it (going through blog posts, finding hidden scenes in the save/load menu, the choice at the end with the eyes), even if the actual story is pretty much kinetic. i loved the general presentation and the art too, with the subtle animations and the largely black + white colour palette with the occasional pops of red and blue. it's clear a lot of thought went into the presentation, it's positively oozing with meaning without the game explicitly spelling the meanings out to you.

i won't talk about the subject matter (well it's fitting giving the themes of the game haha), but i did enjoy this a lot. the ending also felt surprisingly hopeful, which maybe felt antithetical to the author in the story wanting to make depressing stories to better reflect reality? but i did like the way it wraps up. it feels very unique, i don't think i've read a vn quite like it before. thank you very much for creating it!

i don't remember if i left a comment on this before (maybe i did?), but i really enjoyed this vn when i read it; it's so atmospheric! i love the character designs and the general mood!

Thank you! The aesthetics were inspired in part by NSO so I'm glad it came across haha

Thank you very much! I'm glad you enjoyed it!

The music was all composed originally for this game. No pre-existing tracks were used or remixed.

You have to launch the .app file if you want to play the Mac build.
I've heard from other developers that macs don't like to open Itchio downloads which aren't certified as a security feature, so your mac might refuse to open the file. If you can't get the .app to run after downloading the game from Itchio, you would be better off claiming a free Steam key for the game and launching it through Steam instead. Steam's launcher can bypass Mac's security and the game should open properly then.

Oh, you're right! Thank you very much!
I've fixed the issue now, so the android builds of the game (and the demo) should all be playable at the moment. Hopefully there will no more issues with the android build!

Obsession is a sequel to It gets so lonely here, you'll probably get more out of this VN if you've also read that.

I don't think the composer uploaded the extra tracks in Sweetest Monster Refrain anywhere. I can ask them about it, though!

It's not on Steam, but if it was it would be free just like the Itchio release.

All of my games are made in Ren'py, so they all support self-voicing. If you press V on your keyboard while playing all of the text will be voiced. You can find more information about that here.

Bit of a late reply haha but thank you very much! I'm very fond of the character designs too; I think the artist did a great job. I think the art really matches the atmosphere of the story and the general writing style.

And I'm very fond of the characters too, despite Bell and Robin being The Way They Are haha

Thank you once again! I hope you enjoy the sequel too!

Thank you very much! I'm glad you enjoyed it! <3

Thank you for checking it out! I'm glad you enjoyed it! <3
And I have released literally dozens of other VNs haha, I've been making VNs for over 10 years! You can see all of my stuff if you check out my Itchio profile!

Robin/Bell sharing one body selfcest is actually an incredible idea hahaha I wish I had thought of that myself...
Legit everything would have turned out so much better if the story had played out like that instead...

I also thought the ending Robin gets is the only real way this story can end based on the (gestures vaguely) everything that happens haha
He got what he deserved in the end haha ;;

Two.

!!!
thank you very much for your comment, that's very kind of you! i'm glad that you enjoyed it!
i had a lot of fun writng it, my boys are my favourites haha ;;; i like to put them in various situations so i've written quite a bit about them over the years haha, so if you like them there's a fair few more vns about them out there ;;
tysm! <3

To get CG16 you start a new game from the beginning. There's an extra scene you can unlock near the start once you've read either one of the good endings. Just skip the text you've seen already, the game will stop for you when you reach the new scene.

Thank you so much! This story was meant to have a cosy, wintery sort of feeling, so I'm glad it came across! <3

!!! Thank you very much, this is such a kind comment!

I had fun writing it, I love writing dark and oppressive stories... I should probably do it more often, I don't write horror very often. I also don't write VNs with choices all that often either, so this was a bit of an experiment. I should probably do more of that too.

I think ths VN is definitely less ambituous than DDLC (it has fewer art assets, it's a lot shorter, and I wrote the whole thing in like a week...? I don't remember the exact timeframe but I finished it rather quickly), and it's less of a polished experience. I'm glad you enjoyed it so much though, it's nice being compared to such a popular and polished VN!

I'm glad to know you were able to get it working! And I'm glad you enjoyed it too!

If somebody volunteers to translate the game into Turkish then I will add the translation, but I'm not going to actively look for people to translate the game myself.

Ah thank you so  much! I'm glad you enjoyed it!
I had a lot of fun writing this one... I don't think I intended for Abel to have quite so many Issues when I was conceiving the story, but I felt like it made thematic sense what with Edmund's own relationship with his sister and all of the unresolved Family Drama which was present in The Fairy's Secret... It felt like it would be a good thing to explore and expand upon, hence why Abel became the way he is haha
I became very fond of him as I was working on the story, so I'm glad other people like him too!

The kind words are very much appreciated! <3

The Steam version of Idleness is 100% identical to the Itchio version, so if the Itchio version doesn't work I'm doubtful that the Steam version would. I can try and take another look at it later, but as I don't have a Mac it will be more or less impossible for me to troubleshoot any issues on my own.

Are you opening the .app file? If you try to launch the .exe it won't work on Mac, as the .exe file is the Windows build.
I've had a few people report that my Mac builds don't work on Itchio, but it always turned out to be that the person was trying to open the wrong file.