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Robin’s inner voice is so intense, so bitter, and so truthful. I always love seeing how your characters’ anger builds through ordinary interactions that become recontextualized into a series of hurtful moments. The cyclical repetition of words and phrases contributed to Robin’s isolation. She’s a tough girl. I’m equally as impressed by the visual style, both the incredible choice to format a whole VN like a baseball card and the red-soaked imagery of the whole VN.  Taking detailed notes on what transgender has to say about baseball.

Nobody is doing New England/East Canada representation like you two!! Always a treat to read about women being miserable in places I love so much.

I was instantly drawn in by the visual language of the novel. The use of collage and mixed media is stunning. I really appreciated that the blue/white/brown color palette of blueprints/paper/faded, older paper paired so well with Ys and Yamos sharing that same color palette, it set such a melancholy mood for the whole VN. I also spent a normal amount of time trying to figure out how/if the scorecard notation in the margins related to the dialogue it was paired with.

Ys and Yamos are very good, very meant to hurt each other. The tension between them is such a welll-writen depiction of the strain in fragile long-distance relationships. Starting inside Yamos's head when she is so immediately sympathetic and then seeing her naivety bleed out when the scope of the VN's perspective expands to Ys... incredible. Ys is so bitter, so hard to love with her fractured perspective, but a woman I feel for all the same. I can relate to her needing to capture a feeling in her history of scorecards, rather than Yamos's raw data.

Once again this is a kailot VN that I will be thinking about for a long time. It's time to get into baseball.

Loved the invasive species name easter eggs in this! It can't be easy to be born Callery Bradford, she really was assigned nerd at birth. Aila's was my fave, though (it was cool to learn that the Chinese name for Ailanthus altissima is Chouchun)! Wishing for a world where her and bug girl can be friends and make honeydew together...

Really great visual novel overall, I loved the colorful, bug-filled UI and reading other comments I know that I need to go back and check out some of the interactivity that I missed! The sound effects and the music were so enchanting too, I have not been able to stop thinking about bug girl's noises.

I enjoyed getting to stew in Callie's delusions and experience her shifting mental state... she's fucked but I get it girl. There are so many bug girls to imagine in this world.

Invasive species ryona is such a match made in heaven of a concept so I'm so glad that this exists!

Wowza!! You know a visual novel is good when you have to keep taking mini-breaks from it because of how real the emotions in it feel. Deirdre's internal monologue was so hard but so rewarding to read, I really loved how rich her descriptions of her sensory and social observations were and how disconnected that understanding was from her interactions with Kenzie and anyone else. Having been and known Deirdres I felt a very real mix of sympathy for her and frustration with her... I guess you could call that an understanding. Of sorts.

The beautiful art and UI were such a treat as well, I think that the stamps accompanying each physical/emotional setting were such a nice touch. Just like the text, seeing Kenzie and Deirdre's emotions was really hard sometimes... not to mention the scenes where their emotions aren't shown on their faces at all (probably even more gut-wrenching to see, especially at the end!).

It was wonderful seeing the complicated layers of emotion that come with social/physical/bodily/emotional isolation captured and the ways that they lead people to conflict with and hurt each other rendered so well. Thank you both for creating such a moving VN!

Cried myself to sleep after finishing this... I don't think anything has ever made me feel more homesick for coastal Maine. When I realized that y'all created the backgrounds from pictures of real place Peaks Island it was like something snapped inside me. I felt a lot of things about how much my relationship with the region has changed, how I can still visit but can't force the same experiences that I had growing up there, feelings and experiences that I passively took in and took for granted until I moved and realized how much I missed the place.

I felt a lot like Erica, who might just be my flat affect scrunkly (and who should seriously consider Nicole's offer, she has the Ocean Limited, after all...).

The richness of the writing really captured me. The dialogue between the girls is of course a highlight, especially as things go south and they all start speaking to each other with barbed tongues, but I also felt so drawn in by Alba's interludes and letters. Whether she was writing from the future or sending a half-truthed letter to Erica, she helped bring me closer to what the characters were feeling... even when the interludes had me alt-tabbing away from the VN to look up Alex Colville and Patrick O'Brian. I'm gonna have a lot to think about re: the intertextuality and the dynamic between that reader experience and Alba's teacher's critique of her writing.

I have so many initial thoughts about this game that I'm trying to put to itch.io comment paper before losing them. I loved seeing Erica and Alba's relationship fall apart in such a mundane way (been there done that), I cooed the whole VN at the adorable character sprites, and though I'm not the first say it, it can't be overstated how amazing it is a physical collection of images/collages/embroidery come to life in VN form. I loved diving into the dev log after I finished reading and so appreciate y'all sharing your process, it's very inspiring.

Thank you for making such a resonant work!