itch.io

MDB2 was definitely worth the wait, even if it's only the demo. You really took everything that I liked about MDB1 and expanded on it, the character work and the worldbuilding are both great, and the mix of horrible reality and humor really permeates your works and I'm a huge fan.

I love that we get to see this whole thing from the perspective of the rangers now, and the way you write people's relationships falling apart and just... miscommunication and these types of issues is so realistic, I love it.

Can't wait for the next part, and for our two protags to meet!

I played through the game once and got what I imagine is the 'normal' ending, I don't know how I could get the other one but my first thought is choosing differently during the scene with Mariette being given the gun.

Anyway, what an experience. You really have a knack for writing stories with two women stuck somewhere and one of them having a gun, huh? It was nice to get to see another side of Xelia; she was one of the characters we got very little of during Loner Dog besides her debilitating depresssion and playing devil on the shoulder for some of her friend's dangerous habits, and her personality there is much clearer and stark now that I've played this. Though the game is short, you really make her point (as in, the view she has of herself as someone who's broken but in a useful way for her friends and for the world she wants) come across like a hammer to the face.

Her character writing is pretty great, though personally (and this might 100% be a me thing) I had a hard time at the beginning with her dialogue; it's very different from pretty much every other character in your works and I'm sure that's by design. There's a certain separation between dialogue and narration in your works and Xelia feels like she blurs the line between the two, and that's a really cool thing but the overtly technical style of the dialogue itself took me a little while to get into without it feeling distracting. 

Which I think wouldn't be a problem with a longer game, though I get that deadline and scope limitations affect this a lot. I always argue for cutting and narrowing stories but this is one of the few times where I feel like the story would've benefitted from a little more breathing room and a few more scenes, but again that's a very minor nitpick. It accomplished what it wanted and deliivered those punches well as is, just maybe feeling a little cramped.

With that said though, I really like this as a short piece; it's striking and brutal in a very angrily positive way, which I appreciate even if we live in slightly different geopolitical realities; the feeling itself and the anger are very familiar and very eloquently expressed here, and I'm a fan.

Not to mention that everything around the writing supports it very well, as usual. I'm a huge fan of the 3D models mixedd with the portraits. The music is great, and the sound design especially was delicious here; the part where Xelia's actions are narrated after she takes the gun back are so crunchy and perfect.

Anyway, great job as usual! This fucks hard.

Thank you so much!! It makes me happy that people keep enjoying my games

What a nice and heartwarming goodbye to your old pal. As someone who loves PCs and building them I know how infrequently one lets go of them, and the mix of weird excitement and sadness when you have to start the process of passing everything from your old system to your new one. I recently built a new PC for myself too, thankfully before the ram prices exploded, but I still miss my old one and its much more functional windows 10.

They really do record so much of our journey through forgotten files and folders. Hopefully you'll make new good memories with your new PC, and hopefully it'll last you a long time.

managed to play finally today, had a delightful time being killed over and over by this other girl I'm trapped in some form of purgatory with. absolutely dog shit at the combat, hopefully I'll get better with time.

loved the vibes and looks of this, o especially love how the camera zooms in and out to give a sense of distance even as you fight, it's really atmospheric. can't wait to see more of these poor girls kill each other. most likely it'll be them killing me.

insane that y'all made this in a couple of months, its amazing 

This one is such a vibe. The ambient noise almost as background radiation while these two recall their past and how they came to meet and the rest of their lives felt like talking to two friends, after everything falls apart and only formless forms remain. It felt like it went by so fast, but I could've easily read ten or so more of these vignettes, especially since I love the idea of fallen angels alongside humans so much that I've incorporated it into my own work too.

These feel like they could've been some of your previous characters too, just two wanderers after the end of the world. Immaculate stuff, I loved it!

It is a bit cruel of a joke, that hindsight can only come after suffering, but this game and so many others show well that one has to keep going because things do get better, it won't always be like this. I loved the way you showed it with the split screen, fantastic little piece. It hurt to read, but I'm glad I did.

Incredible punch of a game, the juxtaposition between Wally and Ellie, the rotting because of being stuck not really in the past but in an alternate world of hate that destroys everything around it and then the hope for a nebulous future that can only be seen if we stay alive for it... Not to mention the chosen images and the writing were stellar too. Fantastic little window into the cancer at America's heart, may it be excised with great force.

Holy shit, thank you so much for the super in-depth comment!! It makes me more happy than you know that you enjoyed my VN and got so much out of it, all of which is the kind of stuff I love my readers to parse haha. I'm glad Cabral's life and how she copes with it came across well and you enjoyed her antics, she is indeed very bad at deadlines but there's a lot more working against her than just that.

On the topic of all the magical realism stuff, some of it is explored a bit more in-depth in my other VN Blunt Soul Trauma, but I wrote this so it could be read on its own, as the magical aspects of magical realism are very rarely explained haha. Still, I'm glad you liked that too.

And that you cut right to the heart of Cabri so well! Again, thank you so much for this comment, it really means a lot. And I can't wait to read what you think about the other route!!!

(Ghost girls with knives are definitely in vogue, and for good reason,)

This was fantastically grim and visceral. There's a level of uncomfortable detail to all the minutia of how the mechs operate, how they meld with their pilots and all the physicality of it that this doesn't shy away from in the slightest, to the point it turns back around to being cold and clinical despite the grossness of it all, and it's not easy to reach that point. The descriptions were delicious, and it felt as cold as the sheet metal around them and as awfully warm as the torn insides all throughout this. 

Absolutely loved the worldbuilding of the mechs too, it felt like a natural escalation of the living mech idea, mixed with the crushing apathy of the army. Despite being so short, this felt exactly as long as it needed to be to tell the story, and I loved every minute of it.

This was a lovely little walk through a world that feels like being stuck in a labyrinth in your dreams, a little stressful but also very pretty in a way. 

In a way this feels very much like hanging out with friends and loved ones, little pockets of warmth and love in between the routine, and how that's all that really matters in the end. Your choice of words and the flow of sentences were really evocative, it felt like a poem being gasped out in a delirium of love and persistence in the world we live today. And of course the visuals are beautiful, that one pocket of warmth near the end overlooking the world and the way it stretched as I moved the camera, it was mesmerizing. I stood there for a little bit, taking it all in.

This is a beautiful gift to the people you love and it definitely inspired me, thanks so much for making it!

In a way I'm glad I played these out of order, because it was really cool to see the way these two's relationship progressed non-chronologically, giving more context to the ones that happen in the future. I love Sepia and Aseroe a lot, and I hope you make more of these so I can see them again. There's such richness to the characterization and worldbuilding here, and the vibes are just so good. I've enjoyed all of these immensely.

The feelings and thoughts captured here are something I've thought about a lot, especially as technology becomes less backwards compatible and deteriorates faster, so information gets harder to maintain. And I've always felt very conflicted about it. On one hand, it's only thanks to so much archiving and data hoarding by people that I've been able to create some of my games, but I also come from a family of physical hoarders and so I've always been quicker to just let things go digitally, even if it hurts sometimes.

I really like this game because it explores the opposite side of that, and that anxiety and fear is felt really well. Great audio and visual effects too.

I loved this!

Mechsploitation stories and very sad pilots going through it in a capitalist hellscape while eating slop and getting killed will never not be great to read about, but your poetry really elevated it, despite being so short it feels like a punch to the face and it's so cool and effective, I loved it.

This fucks hard and inmensely, thank you for letting me go apeshit for a little while

I really liked the poem and the illustration at the end, as someone who grew up with religion very closely associated with Mary instead of other figures, it strikes close to home.

I loved this! The words struck close to home, I liked the poetic presentation and the shader work was delicious!! Thank you for making this.

This was cool as fuck, what a visual trip, every piece was very unique and I couldn't look away, despite being just lights and effects it really inspired me. I also really like that it seems to take place in the same world as The Language Bodies Speak.

Great shit.

Ohhh the noise and the little pieces of art for sprites are delicious, and I really like the writing for this one. If only I was being condescended to that way as well. jk,but yeah I really liked the way you presented this!

Ohhh this was really neat as a collaboration. I liked the radiation counter as a storytelling mechanic a lot, and the idea of the radiation affecting people in ways that are also so similar to 'noise' that a lot of us experience every day is a great choice.

The art and the character designs were amazing too, I had a blast all around.

Playing this one second, it was probably not the intended way to do it but I'm liking it anyway! Had a lot of fun seeing the 'start' of these two's relationship and getting a better hang on Aseroe's past and the horrible incident that took his boyfriend from him.

Other than that spookiness, I really liked the cozy vibes here, the way Sepia made him more comfortable and both of them eventually communicated (as best they could) what they wanted from the other. This was insanely cute! I loved Nettle too, he's such an ass but in a funny way.

Thank you so much!!! I'm glad you liked the noise and the way I integrated it, and yeah I made it so both routes would be necessary in order to understand the whole thing. It was hard to get it all done in 20 days but I'm glad I managed. Again, thank you!

Genuinely felt like this was being yelled inside my brain and slamming into my eardrums, fantastic fucking noise yelling, very powerful stuff. Felt like being smashed on the face with a righteous noise hammer. Can't wait to see your other projects for this jam.

Ohhh, this is the first of this series I'm playing, but I really love this little episode on its own, and I'm looking forward to trying the rest. Sepia's story was very moving and effective for what it wanted to communicate, and I like the way you describe the patience and love between these two despite their shaky lives and pasts. I really enjoyed this!

This went in very different ways than I expected a couple times throughout the story, but I love it so much anyway. Before the reveal of our little snaily friend I was preparing myself for something sad, but what I got instead was real and heart-wrenching, that last scene with both of them in snail mode put a big smile on my face.

I love these two girlies, I love Dodie's brain and her freckles and her dumb smile, and the fact she almost killed herself with bleach.

This was a blast, thank you so much for making it.

Ohh the visual design and the sound mixing for this were so crunchy and delicious, I could've watched the sprites and the background and listening to the gravely music for hours, great shit. Also really well-written, despite it cutting off abruptly, I don't think it's a bad ending for this. Just a vignette into someone's life who's really into vinyl and who's not having the best time of her life.

Really loved it!

I loved this, it felt very real and upsetting at the same time, that inescapable noise and the way you're never sure what will trigger it and what will cause it to recede. For being so short both of the main characters were well characterized and the way you depicted the noise with all the rapidly changing backgrounds looked amazing. Great work!!

This was such a cool, upsetting and captivating experience. I was already invested from the fist couple of lines, but I couldn't stop reading as soon as the parents and the birdsong showed up, that's such a cool way to do that effect and it works for the world-building in such a good way. 

The visual and audio design, not just for the backgrounds but everything else including sprites was surprising in a good way, it adds a lot to what's already a very well-written short VN. Super engrossing, thank you so much for making it!

I really like how strongly the idea of this comes across despite the length of the game, it's so effective and also horny which is a big part of its effectiveness. The justification for the noise and the distortion as a presentation coming to me at the end was a really good moment and a perfect way to end it. The futility of censorship is the best way to describe it, yeah.

Also the art is really cute. I loved this.

The style oozing out of this game was so engrossing that I did like six runs before realizing it was randomly generated, but I enjoyed the act of just walking through these dimensions delivering pizza. Absolutely amazing, I would play a whole game of this.

ARGENTINA TRANS Y MARICA POR SIEMPRE!!!

(y muchas gracias por el comentario c:)

This wasn't bad! With a little more time to develop the game I think it would turn out really well, I like what you showed of the characters and the dialogue!

Only a few minutes into this and I could already see all the hard work you put into scripting and presentation that you were telling me about before, the different windows and pop-up notifications for different dialogues and narration boxes (which I could move around, super cool), the sprites as little square icons, everything including the sound design fucks very hard, it’s all gives such a vivid image of like… grunginess that I’m already acclimated to with your work, but you keep polishing it with every game, it’s really cool to see.

And of course the art is exceptional as usual, not just the purposefully simple and claustrophobic icons for each character, which show just enough for their personalities to come across, with some really nice backgrounds that had me guessing for a while; part of me thought they were different angles on a clock on each of those backgrounds lol. But still, both those and the CGs were gorgeous and really added to the feel of the VN.

Regarding the cast, they all immediately jump out at you, their personalities are loud and imposing, and with so many of them initially it feels a little hard to tell them apart aside from their portraits, but as I played the game I like that I began to differentiate their very specific brands of mind-rotedness and various neuroses (Haley’s burning anger which at first was hard to differentiate from the rest of the cast but now feels all the more present and tragic in retrospect, Nessa’s seemingly chill but also kind of jealous and vindictive attitude, Audrey’s weird maturity and desire to help despite not giving a shit about her body, etc.) and it’s your writing that really makes that work. Because as a story I definitely feel like you’re initially asking us to hang on a bit, to get to know these fuck-ups before passing quick judgment, kind of like Argo when it first meets them all in pretty much the same way the reader does. I thought that was a really neat way to portray that.

Also a quick aside to point out just how fucking funny this VN is. Like, there were so many out of left field lines and parts worthy of a screenshot, these fucking idiots are so entertaining when they’re not being horribly sad, sometimes both at the same time. “One of my friends shot herself in the dick” nearly made me choke.

And that kinda goes hand in hand with another thing I noticed that feels very real even if normally you’d think it seems unrealistic in writing, that being how when Argo and Nessa (or other combinations of characters) start talking for a while, that outer layer of internet irony and general disregard for everything slowly gives way to more genuine conversations and emotional dialogue, much like how sometimes it works when meeting new people. It’s arresting when it first comes up, to the point it felt a little sudden at first, but I’ve definitely had those types of shifts in conversation too.

I can definitely see the Dennis Cooper inspirations in this. I unfortunately haven’t had the chance to find copies of the George Miles cycle yet, even secondhand, and have only read The Sluts, but this strikes a very similar chord while still being very much your own game, sharply so. It was also really neat to see you tackle a more down to earth story (or as down to earth as all this shit can be) as opposed to your two previous Yuri Jam entries. The fascism and the awfulness of the world is still there of course, but in this one it’s more something the characters have to weather as they try to also weather themselves and each other, than anything they have a chance to strike against. And while the opposite is what I really praised ‘She was Swallowed by the Sun’ for, you really made sure to up the ante on the transgressive queer shit on this one, so I really have nothing to complain about, this was genuinely incredible and sickening in equal measures.

A lot of parts were very difficult to get through, and you can definitely take that as a compliment. Yet they weren’t the more graphic scenes, like all the cutting (which I did have to speed through a little) but the ones with just characters talking, which shows how strong the characterization and writing was for this one. Special shout-out to the absolutely horrible/funny/tragic part where Audrey is just trying to chill and ends up acting as a therapist for her entire friend group and inadvertently speaks to Haley for the last time. Without a doubt my favorite scene in the entire VN, my heart rate was a mess by the end.

Also on the topic of Audrey, I really love her. How is it that this idiot who shot her dick off is the one everybody comes to for advice? And it’s clearly not a new thing, it took me a while to recognize it but Audrey does have a certain… maturity? Emotional common sense? That makes her stand out amongst her friends because she’s the one everyone knows, and she’s the one kind of in the middle of all the drama without really partaking in it, and you can see how exhausting it is, I love it. I was kind of working on a similar character to her, so she quickly became one of my favorites. That, and that out of the entire cast she’s the most like the characters from your previous VNs.

“Nessa can’t remember when she last wanted to see Argo” Ouch. Just a very impactful and to the point line, really loved it.

Speaking of Nessa, I feel like she’s the only one from the group I didn’t get a very good understanding of by the end of the game. Maybe it’s because of her avoidant personality, but as the game progressed I felt kind of like Audrey, wanting her to step away from Argo a little so I could get a scene with her and her inner thoughts, her life and all that. Obviously there’s a bunch of characters already and it’s impossible to give all of them a lot of screentime, but I do wish we’d gotten a little more of Nessa, especially with how in-depth we got to know Argo. 

One thing I wanna mention is that a lot of this game gave me the specific kind of ‘magical realism’ vibe where it’s not actually clear at any point if that’s what the setting is or where the story is going, as opposed to being blatant, which I love a lot, especially with The Hole and all of that. There was definitely a level of detachment at some points simply because of cultural differences in how queer groups are and act like, I think, but that never really got in the way because the characters were so entertaining.

A lot of this game is gonna stay with me for a while, as with your previous works. I feel like I still have to process what happened to these characters… If nothing else, your VNs never fail to inspire me to write and get better in that way, I always feel a bunch of ideas blooming in my head while I read your stuff.

Anyway uhhh this has been pretty rambly and long so far, so a few quick-fire thoughts before I go. For a second I thought Harsh Noise’s glyphs had something to do with SwSBTS? Roaches… I really don’t know how I feel about Roaches, I’ll be pondering on that, I did feel like Audrey toward her in some parts. Love Noni a lot. Fuck Leah. I loved how complex of a character Maya was. Yeah.

Cuppy dog city was not what it was advertised at in those tumblr posts, but I loved it nonetheless.

very much so, yes!!! I don't know if it'll be soon, but I always try to make at least one yuri game a year for the yearly jam!!

dfshdgjsk Thank you so much!!!! It means a lot that people still play my games and comment after so long. 

Very glad you found it so unsettling, as that was the intention!

If there's something about your writing and your oeuvre in general is that it never fails to inspire me for my own writing in some ways, whether it be scenes that pop up in my head or characters or whatever. And that's no different even for this game's post-mortem, learning more about the process, the emotions and what came after the game was very illuminating and I loved reading it.

And once again congrats!! If No Empty Threats is any indication, you're certainly not losing steam.

I'm really sorry about what you're going through. Condolences aren't much, but yeah... Shit sucks.

Another certified Snek banger! I have a lot to say about this one so I’ll go off the top of my head.

The premise here is great, the vileness and disgusting nature of everyone and of the setting itself work well; there’s no moment of reprieve from the horror from the start almost ‘til the end. The dynamic of crime boss + indebted pet is a classic for a reason and it’s no different for yuri. But I’m glad you went so far with the concept, that you really made it feel as horrifying as it would probably be in real life, and thats why it works.

Heather’s great. I remember you telling me something about characters who hate when others make assumptions or act condescendingly toward them and she really embodies that. Despite how unthinkably horrible everything is in her life now, here and there you can see those sparks of defiance born more out of spite than anything else, and it’s what ends up saving her at the end. Like, a smarter character might’ve just played along until she got a chance to kill Sophie, but that sort of character wouldn’t fit this story. So Heather goes back and forth between the horror of her situation, a desire to submit and a desire to fight back, and ends up acting on all those at the wrong time each, because who wouldn’t, in her position? But what makes this story IMO is that she’s not the only one who fucks up like that.

And that brings me to Sophie, who despite having every single advantage in this ‘relationship’ does everything wrong too, and I love that. I once wrote a character very similar to her, and she was one of my favorites. And what that illustrates for me is that Sophie really is kind of pathetic and delusional.

Like, regardless of whether she wanted Heather to submit or to ‘rise above her circumstances and become a monster like her’ she goes about doing both the wrong way. She’s too horrible to give Heather the impression that submitting might be in her best interest, and she’s too wrapped up in her own sense of superiority to realize the latter just isn’t Heather’s style (in my personal reading of her, at least). Was she actually telling the truth there at the end, or is her ego so great that she has to get the last word in? Everything that happens has to be ‘part of her plan’ no matter how contradictory it is, everyone has to acknowledge how smart she is.

And that’s why I love the end. My first thought (and Sophie’s too, I’m sure) was that Heather might not outright kill her, but instead flip the script on her and keep Sophie on a leash and torture her, but that would actually prove Sophie right. Not that Heather cares, of course. Unlike Sophie, she just wants this to be over, wants to leave this horror, so she just kills her. No torture, no payback, just doing what she’s been trying to all along… leave. Sophie was wrong, and whatever she wanted from Heather either way didn’t come to pass.

It’s as good of a conclusion as you could get out of a story like this, and I’m a huge fan. I also really liked the epilogue, short though it was. My favorite scene of the whole thing was Steph and Heather lying together on the bed, sleeping and talking.

Great sprites too! Heather looks so scrunkly and like a lost kitten, and Sophie’s face is so punchable, it’s great.

The only minor nitpick I have is that I’m not sure I got the point of bringing up Anna in the middle of the story again, I get maybe Sophie wanted to fuck with Heather’s head, but it felt a bit abrupt considering it’s never brought up again.

Also this is 100% a me thing but I did have to squint a little through some of the gore at the end lol, but it was a very tense and horrible scene, good job.

But that’s very minor. I had a blast with this one, as with all of your other games before!!

Thank you so much!!! That was very much the intention hehe, I'm glad that came through with the character design and worldbuilding, and I'm happy you enjoyed it!