itch.io

spoilers mention. Go play this game if you haven't already, instead of reading the comments silly!

gut-wrenching psychological horror. 
I loved the ephemera you made for this! The box Snowy came in was soooo cute, and the    email from Dani's mom sitting unread in the inbox hit me close to home. :( You crafted such an immersive, believable, bleak expansion on current world issues that I felt nauseous and sad, pretty much start to finish.

The little details you add throughout were really impactful - timeskips marked by show season announcements / discussion, apartment entry digitally controlled with your fingerprints, endless imperialist wars being unremarked upon, Snowy gaslighting Dani into isolating herself from her peers, the way in general that Dani's exposure to simulacra becomes her point of reference, where she feels most comfortable, and ultimately all she is left with at the end.

I was getting so stressed thinking that Snowy was collecting information when Dani was fucking her, and that she was going to be like, arrested for some futuristic neo-crime, but the way the story played out felt a lot more grounded in reality (and depressing.)

I was reading Dani as closeted to herself, but trans in some capacity. The way that the powers that be are attempting to eradicate transness, especially in tech contexts, combined with Dani's primary means of relating to the world through Snowy (a toy designed for children, likely designed with such censorship in mind) made me wonder how Dani might have turned out without such influences. Her actions certainly remind me of some of the ways I behaved before I knew I was trans; google searching if your impending puberty is avoidable, trying to draw attention away from parts you're dysphoric about in spite of that being uncomfortable to do, etc.

Really amazing work! You made me Feel things

Really fun, quick read! The art for your girls is cute!

 I'd recommend adding additional information to your itch page, especially wordcount / expected read time.

I'm reading this with my sister, and we're loving it so far! She cleaned hotel rooms for a while and she felt the hotel cleaning stuff was true to her experience doing the same work on the other side of the globe. We just finished the scene where we meet husk, and i loved the layering of all the pictures as the scene progressed. Your paintings are beautiful, it really makes me miss when renpy had the "hide" option for hiding the textboxes so you could just look at the art.

I read POMLY yesterday, and while the sprites you made were super cute, I think the way the internal dialogue in this story, and the way the alters are represented is a lot more compelling to me in terms of reflecting my plural experiences.

ela is so cute and sweet and precious, its messed up that she had to go to work all by herself. aleks needing to feel useful / feel in control as someone who exists to uphold executive function, and thereby being The Hated One feels so real. i love kornelia's design and how analytical she is as part of her autism, but how much her inexperience sets her up for failure. I wanna squeeze roksana tight and tell her she's gonna be ok, even though she did all that. I wanna help her find outlets for her feelings, but i'm not entirely certain that's something she'd ever want or trust to make her feel ok. The drive for total self-annihilation and debasement is so hard to appease, because doing it in an "unhealthy" way is often the point!!

oh, and 1million/10 plushie fucking scene. genre defining 🧸🐇

thank you for making this ;u; 

reading this made so many parts of me feel seen and loved and understood.

y'all did an amazing job showing how parts can just suck sometimes. sometimes thats because its what kept us alive. sometimes it feels more like a scar from them keeping us alive.

 mira's unabashed self love was touching.

i  loved  anastazja's character so much! we love to see a charismatic prettyboywhore do his thing <3

the relationship with kamila felt so real. being a desired object of someone with no desire to understand you sucks big fat titties. (or more aptly, touches me where i dont wanna be touched and blames me for not liking it)
 

Lovely atmosphere development in this game! I enjoyed the non-linear storytelling that the notes gave things.

As an accessibility note; i did find myself wandering + backtracking a lot because i missed a note here and there, particularly with the note in the bedroom that lets you proceed into the maintenance shaft. Having a slightly larger lantern-shine could help with this, as well as maybe making the notes have a bit more visual contrast  (like with a subtle colored outline.) Wandering around lost for so long pulled me out of the flow of your story, and made it feel less tense than it made me feel earlier into the game.

Not a big issue, but what was an issue (for me anyway) is that with the slow walking speed, i had to hold arrow keys down for a long time, which makes my hands hurt. :( This is an issue i usually encounter with rpgmaker games, and having an optional run/walk-faster button helps immensely with this. 

really good! Does so much with such a short wor(m/d)count

aw, I'm glad to hear it <3

playing your game made me feel a lot less anxious about making / releasing my game actually. getting clocked so hard on stuff I hadn't really reflected on or known i'd had stewing in me for years now. connecting with your work over that stuff helped me reframe my worries about my stuff being good enough or whatever, and made me think more about sharing something that connects with ppl that read it.

Amazing work! The style this game has is incredible, I'm in love with how cohesive everything fits together here. The fonts, the compositions, the panelling, even your itch page is so cohesive with all of this. 

Cherry and Zoey's designs are so pretty, and they feel so real with how their arcs progress. The belt scene was really hot. I love all the ways they microaggress and piss eachother off as friends and roommates who care for one another do.

I resonated so much with Zoey's character; Avoiding getting into your past with regards to childhood abuse and conflict, having the "superpower" of being hyper-aware (hearing footsteps in a building and know who it is, where they are, and what their mood is) as a survival mechanism, not planning for a personal future because that requires loving yourself enough to push through the hard feelings that come from that. Disconnecting through expressions of hypersexuality which bears little meaning to you as a form of connection. being perceived as a character with more panache than you feel you exude, and at the same time as more of a one-dimensional charicature without attachments or depth or internal goings-on. And the ways that such perceptions coming from someone you care deeply about (and to be honest, are FPing) molds your self-perception and  makes you feel like less of a person.

avoiding harsh realizations of unrequited feelings, feeling discarded by folks whose life plans don't include you the way you feel you'd been led to believe. Zoey caving in the moment Cherry tells her who Zoey /is/, reframing her entire reality retroactively, repressing all those ugly, messy feelings. it just brings the whole thing together in a way I haven't connected with in other people's stories before.

The crushing emptiness of living  in a space others have moved on from is done so well.

thank you so much for making this and sharing it. 

really sweet game :) i like how mellow the tone feels.
The autoplaying text skipping before I could finish reading was a bit distracting to have to go back to the main menu and reload to read, as well as the menu displaying in the save screen.