itch.io

This was painful to read. It hurts, like secondhand embarrassment but instead of embarrassment you only feel rage. Sorry if I'm making this about myself, but I've been calling payment processors for the past few months, and the way in which people will just straight up lie to your face is astounding. You can correct them, show evidence of their lies, but they'll just turn tail and hide behind another excuse. You're expected to trust that the issue will be taken care of, even as you've been proven that they will take your complaints and do nothing with them.

Obviously my dealings have very low stakes, but the deja-vu I experienced reading this speaks to the accuracy of this visual novel. Every action the protagonist takes is seemingly futile, and while she is eventually "rewarded" in the end, the fact that the funeral wasn't even worth it is the coup de grace of this miserable nightmare.

There is a hollowness in my heart. Thank you.

Thank you very much for commenting. I mean it, I live for any and all feedback. My art style comes from my very limited set of tools and experience, so passing it off as an aesthetic choice rather than my only option goes a long way towards my vain attempts to look like serious artist.

I always feel weird writing romantic stuff because while my greatest wish is to be loved, I have never felt any kind of attraction to someone else before, so I always wonder if I'm writing this stuff correctly. I'm drawn to unrequited love because it's tragic in a very mundane way. "I like you, you don't like me back. It sucks, but there's nothing either of us can do about it." My favorite aspect of unrequited love is that the two characters can still stay friends afterwards, even if it's difficult and messy. I try to put an emphasis on that fact that Marcia still loves Lilia very much, even if it can't be in the exact way that Lilia wants. 

The sex in the other room thing was mostly just something I thought would be really funny and painful to read, I didn't put a whole lot of thought into it.

I'm happy that you'd be interested in a third story, but for me at least, I think this is where the story ends. Obviously Lilia still has a lot of things she needs to sort out, but I don't know how I'd write about them, and I don't have confidence that it would turn out any good. I also don't want to keep making sequels, but that's more of a personal preference, rather than a concrete principle.

Once again, thank you very, very much.

I liked this A LOT. Right up my alley. Faith seeing transformation as an escape from a life of stagnation, the lore of vampire supremacy and cruelty, and how Vi diverges from that, and how that hurts her, it's all SO GOOD. I love how cleanly the story gets split in half, where you come to the realization that Vi is kind of a pathetic dumbass and Faith is perceptive and cruel, an inversion of how the originally appear in the first half. The epilogue was also really great, the last line of "I need to get out of this town" goes incredibly hard. It all coalesces brilliantly. 

Amazing work!

Really fun game! I'm incredibly impressed at how you were able to code something like this. More importantly though, I loved your story! Betty and Audrey's relationship being sustained entirely by them both refusing to acknowledge their problems works really well with how each ending shows a different way of them dealing with that problem.

I originally thought the wrinkle was going to be that Betty was actually the real problem, and she was seeing behavior in Audrey that wasn't there. After seeing all the endings, I don't think that's the case anymore, but I do think that Audrey's manipulation is built off of fear and inability to actually discuss anything with her wife, rather than genuine disdain. 

My personal favorite ending was the domineering ending, since I think it's better for everyone this way. I wonder if Betty will be able to overcome her love of covert warfare in order to build a better relationship with Cora.

I think this was really interesting. I'm not sure if I really "get it", especially the stuff about intertextuality and the ability to skip the flashback scenes, but I still have some stuff to say.

First, I like the idea of a place that you love. I've never felt that a place was special to me, and I find Erica's attachment to Fort Colwyn to be fascinating. 

I don't know how to say this, but it feels... dry? In a good way, like something that would be on your high school's Summer Reading List. Maybe it's just because it takes place in the mid-1900's? Either way, by dry I don't mean boring, but more, comfortable? A lot of fiction I read is very, high energy, I guess. It's interesting to have something that returns me to my roots I guess, but still has interesting stuff about nations and lesbians and age gap relationships.

I just want to say that this is one of the few VNs where I "felt" the sex scene with Erica and Nicole. Nicole is obviously my favorite because she's such a goober (she has the Ocean Limited!), but her desire for Erica is communicated in such a way that actually got to me, which is incredibly rare for a sex scene.

All in all, this is amazing. The effort and skill in this work is plain to see, and you should feel proud of this, I think.

Just finished the demo, and I thought it was pretty good. The idea of being "uncleanable" is something that disturbs me very much as someone with a compulsory disorder, and being stuck in a dumpster sounds pretty bad too. Are the dolls human-size? I'm not really sure since they're unable to lift a dumpster lid with two of them, and fit inside a wheelbarrow, but in the cg they seems to be the size of a garbage can. 

This really is the modern Frankenstein, which was the modern Prometheus.

I've only been on this site for 7 months, and I'm already thinking of quitting if itch doesn't reverse their decisions. I know boycotting won't actually do anything since I only have around 500 page views combined, but I'm sick of everything.

Thank you very much! I feel like I should've specified that while the vampire hunters are an allegory, I don't want it to feel like I'm playing cover for the groups that inflict violence, but I think it's important to note that vampire hunters are not directly analogous to real world police. The hunters are an allegory for the way capitalism forces people into careers that profit off of hurting others. I somehow didn't realize that was a possible interpretation until after I submitted the game. Probably because I was too focused on making everything functional.

Not really a whole lot I can say...

Fuckin' brutal.

Really really great in a way I find hard to describe. I don't think I've ever heard anyone talk about their love of queer bookstores before. I went to one once in Vermont and it was probably the best 3 hours and $100 I've ever spent. Just the curiosity and joy of reading about things you've never thought of, seeing all types of people you never see in real life, it's just wonderful. I loved the spider's string thin tension between the two characters, each of them wondering  what exactly they messed up, and it all culminates very naturally and heartbreakingly (is that a word?). Chun getting her dating advice from PUAs without knowing was darkly hilarious and also a really sad reflection of how people kind of just fumble around with incomplete and bad knowledge.

God. I have OCD (nowhere near as bad as this) and I don't think I will ever see something like this again. That outburst from Nat because of the mud is something I experience in real life and it honestly blows my mind how good this is. maid/10

Not gonna say some "Don't commit suicide" bullshit cause it never helps, but overdosing sucks total ass. Not a good way to go. Not trying to assume your reasons or anything I've just heard a lot of people say they want to try overdosing since it would be less painful, and this isn't true, at least to my limited knowledge. 

Life really does suck, huh.

I feel like this is a warning but I'm not sure what it's a warning for. I genuinely did not understand the ending but it still messed me up. Scary...

Magnificent, in both senses of the word. I don't particularly find guro arousing (more of a blunt force gal myself), I pay immense respect to how you wrote these scenes. When the thing (not going to spoil) happened to Anhedonia I almost cried. The clericants were hateable and terrifying at the same time. The ending did really hurt, but there really was no other way the story could conclude. The thing that struck me the most was how both characters were able to push through their pain. It sounds unimaginable, but somehow they succeeded. I'm glad they did.

This is actually peak protagonist. The rest of the story is incredible, but Lea Kim is what absolutely sells it for me. Her oscillating between apathetic nihilism, self-hatred, and begging for something mercy is suuuuch interesting character writing. It's heartbreaking, it's funny, it's brutal, and dear god is it clever. Super excited and simultaneously dreading to see what you come up with next. Fuuuuuuuck Kai.

This work was not made for me. I thought it was something different, and it turned out to not be that. I am not, however, calling this misleading or bad because it does not work for me.

Even if it not what I wished for, I understand that your courage and artistic method. It is clearly something that deserves praise, due to the people who have resonated with this work for the same reasons I am unable to understand it. I may not be able to comprehend this prose, and the way everyone treats Angel makes me feel very angry, but I understand that this is not an unintentional flaw, it is the point.

However, the one thing that I was able to understand was the moment when Angel starts laughing. That, I believe, is the only scene where I felt at peace. When Angel laughs and begs for more, that is when Angel is powerful. It was very cathartic.

I write this not to center my opinion on your work as important, but to express how your art works on someone who is unable to understand. I thought it might be interesting for you. It would be for me, at least. I apologize if this review comes off as self-centered.

This is exemplary work, even if I am unable to conceptualize it.

-Calcarina

"Angel is not stupid..."

I loved this game a lot. Kristine's plight really got to me, and while I'd love to see a conclusion, I understand why that isn't really possible. "so it goes". While I personally am not super into a lot of your discography (no shade obviously it's great just not personally my thing) I absolutely adore "Date Out" (listed in the files as "grunge song"). At around :30 where the synth starts playing is perfection. Also my jaw dropped when Kristine said she was from Orange County bc I'm there too! Never thought I'd hear someone say that in a visual novel. Excellent.

Genuinely introspective in a way I haven't seen before, in a way that's difficult to describe. I've been personally struggling with the existential dread of being a person in a world surrounded by the banal horror of global politics, but what I love about this piece is that despite our Main Lesbian being an overwhelming ray of sunshine, she can't actually solve any of these problems; there's nothing she can do. The thesis statement at the very end, that "everything is horrible but there's still wives to kiss" (horrifically paraphrased by me) is one that resonates with me on a level that no other explanation for the hell that we inhabit, and I find it difficult to explain why. So I won't. Thank you for proving again that short-form queer literature is the best ever. Excellent work. <3

- Calcarina

Absolutely magnificent! Em is very relatable to an uncomfortable degree. Maybe I should get that checked out? Either way, this feels like the essence of capturing lightning in a bottle; a spark of some emotion I've never seen before, but I really, really want to experience for myself someday.

Thank you so much! I mean it, I love seeing people comment on my work. Also about the windows build. I just uploaded it so it should work now. I wanted to hold off until I finished version 1.1 but my game is basically unplayable in that state, so I needed to rectify that immediately.

The updated version won't have anything meaningful changed, it just gives an updated title screen and  a couple minor dialogue changes to make it flow better. After that, I'm done.

I'm already mapping out a sequel, but I don't want to get too bogged down in making continuations so that will likely end up being the last you'll hear from Marcia and Lilia. 

Once again, thank for your input!

Love this so so much. The class dynamics are really interesting and both of the leads are very likable. Very interested in seeing what you'll do next.