its always nice to see another trans asian in online game dev spaces. i totally get it...especially the part about seeing white beauty on social media u_u
beautiful game that really made use of decker's UI. with each message on the forum i felt more dread about res and what has/had happened to her. thank you for sharing :)
what a beautiful game! the discussion surrounding android ethics, capitalism, immortality/inhumanity of an android, as well as the parts where sofiya compared sonya to sonia were all delicately written. the monologue surrounding sonia's passing by sonya was also really touching. the slow, uncomfortable knowledge about how sofiya was sure to die very soon also really crawls on the skin, as from the pov of sonya, it's an inevitable thing that will happen, regardless of the blight. the trope of someone creating an android either in their own image or in a loved one's image is also a personal favourite, so i grinned a bit upon the reveal, especially as sofiya talked about how she kept feeling like sonia was still alive through sonya. also, stories set in russia/places with a lot of snow seem to hyperfocus on the weather, which is not a bad thing in any way, but it does surprise me as someone who lives somewhere that doesn't have any snow at all, lol. it sort of paints this oppressive, but beautiful scenery, as the snow brings with it a lot of death, i guess, and it's no different in hoarfrost wires. speaking of the death, [SPOILERS FOR THE ENDING] the part where sofiya and sonya visit sonia and alik's graves was a really fitting, melancholic ending. i thought it would be a bit more grim, with sofiya dying in sonya's arms, but this is much more fitting.
really interestingly written. had to read through this twice to figure out what was going on. it also feels like i'm reading a headache /pos. there's a lot of world building here that happens in the background, which also integrates itself into its main 'plot' rather seamlessly. that said, rip to the protagonist, she's yearning for something that will never be.
an incredibly visually impressive game, with a lot of discussion regarding love and freedom. taking place in the future, "a dialect for two" seems to raise the questions, "what happens once humans are gone? will love still exist?"
rather than giving answers to either of these questions, it presents the player with various thought experiments, conducted through pola and tetra. masterfully put together. thank you for sharing!
glad to hear you liked this! stories about robot girls have always captivated the both of us, so we put everything we liked about them in this. thank you very much for reading! :)
this is a really interesting piece that facilitates nostalgia to anyone who grew up in the early 2000s, and/or has experience with being an otaku using windows xp/98 of that time. you both really nailed the aesthetics of that era. despite the game being set in the (sort of?) distant future, it has a lot of commentary regarding the time period it was released in (the 2020s). i laughed when the stuff regarding genAI came up. very topical lol.
robot stories always like to touch on the subject of "what it means to be human", and terminal shell is no different. the way it handles this subject is nearly erotically unique, which had me grinning from ear to ear.
an all around enjoyable read, thank you very much for sharing :)
finished all of this with a friend, we were both blown away. we've been a fan of your works for a while now, so we both got really excited hearing you announce a visual novel. you're a massive inspiration to us, and everything about Z.A.T.O. was an enjoyable, and thoughtful experience. asya's philosophical worldview that is contradictory from the actual situations she finds herself in really sets the tone for the entire narrative: she's the perfect protagonist for this story. we really enjoyed the character interactions that made it seem like a slice of life despite the grimness of the reality in the setting. i was mostly smiling the entire time. the CGs are especially wonderful, and SPOILER the one at the end was particularly memorable. really, huge kudos! we will be supporting more of your work!
the amount of old school references i got while playing this surprised me... huge props. amazing overall, from the ost, programming, story, GUI, 3d models, and art direction. a very well polished game with a strong message. MAIDNIGHT!
wow!! thank you so much!! :D at first, it was rather difficult to decide how to sequence the scenes, but after talking with each other, and after writing stuff bit by bit, we thought this was the best way to condense a story with a lot of "backstory" to it without cluttering the meat of it. me and the other writer really liked unreliable narrators, so we hoped to convey that as much as we could! very happy that you have such high praise for it ^_^
we also greatly love miyuna and aiko, they're basically the culmination of all the nasty traits we like in female characters, most of which are usually stuck in straight stories, so we wanted to change that ^^;;;. thank you so much again!! it means a lot to us :)
i played this game with my friends, and i was telling my fellow fujoshi friend that this game seemed like it was heavily influenced by yaoi. to see my guess correct in postmortem was really funny... i salute to you, fellow himejoshi-fujoshi.
