itch.io

thank you for playing! im glad my game could leave an impact on you

thank you for the kind words, and i’m glad ckofntac could speak to you (and that you liked the layout… i had a lot of fun with that)

Media is weird. Censorship is weird. As much as it is easy to say, just let people write what they want. It's a double-edged sword in the grand scheme of things. Which conversations people desperately want clear-cut, all the more messy. Which I wholeheartedly enjoy since as mentioned in your aftermath from Muir, "critique requires a conversation". But it's hard to do that, especially online. Hm.

yeah, absolutely. i think one of my biggest issues with sunny-style critique/engagement in online spaces is that… its not really critique - or at least, good-faith critique. social media is a terrible place for these types of discussions bc so many platforms encourage ragebait and mass-harassment of creators (esp marginalized creators) for clicks and social capital. and on the creator end, they’re just expected to take the bad-faith criticism as part of the job while forcing themselves to foster parasocial relationships to pay the bills. it sucks…

thank you for playing! it was not easy for me to make, but im glad it could make you think…

a muggy massachusetts summer permeates this vn. the sweat, the stink, the oppressive heat making robin ruminate over her many, many losses. (also the descriptions of skin sticking to leather car seats... god i experienced that so many times.) 

i resonated with robin's anger and isolation, but i think the thing that got me the most about her was her anhedonic thoughts on baseball towards the end of the story. i guess i have similar feelings towards most organized sport lol (the pointlessness of it all. how players can earn millions of dollars for hitting/throwing/catching a ball over and over, how your life in this career ends at 30. how we all participate in this mass ritual anyways.) 

also the vertical baseball card format is genius. love to see renpy games play with the format for the UI. great job

great use of tension here.
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watching mammillaria slowly involve herself more and more with daizy until they're practically inseparable. i think it's awesome how her influence makes itself known early in the story with the CTC indicators... and how we see her thoughts invade daizy's mind well before she makes her physical appearance in the story. 

love the twofold toxic yuri approach too. it goes without saying that mammillaria's relationship with daisy is... skin-crawling. as other commenters have said, she's meeting daizy's needs as someone on the schizo-spectrum — but in the most violating way possible. i also wonder if daizy's mom was one of the worshipers of mammillaria, given daizy's final childhood memory in the story... also good choice of flower for mammillaria. nipple cactus. breastfeeding. never escaping the influence of your own mother.

and then there's daizy's relationship with anisia where... if you don't interrogate it too deeply, it seems like a loving and cute relationship. but there are those little moments where i had to step back and go "okay, that was strange" — like anisia fattening daizy up or any of their sex scenes together that really toed the line between "uncomfortable, bad sex" and "straight up rape." and then, of course, the epilogue, where we do see the events of the main story from anisia's POV — and we get the confirmation of her involvement in bringing daizy to mammillaria. and that shooes away any plausable deniability of her innocence in the main story. 

also i love the gradual melting of the backgrounds in the game as things get worse for daizy. lovely visual touch. adds to the dread as mammillaria takes over her life. 

great game overall! thanks for making it!!

thank you for playing!!

thank you for the kind words. i'm glad my vn could leave an impact on you. i'll try and implement an auto-forward feature in the future, though i'll probably release it after judging for the toxic yuri vn jam is done. 

these girls are messed up... loved reading through each of their povs in each section of the game. 

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ga-yeong's snarky, cynical detachment from the world she lives in — and the uncomfortable contradiction between what she says and how she behaves towards han-byeol and jenny. the scene where ga-yeong pins down jenny after eun-mi's murder and accuses her of behavior ga-yeong herself shows towards han-byeol left me cold. 

han-byeol... oh han-byeol. her pov made me so sad. the angel factory descriptions were visceral, and her seeing herself as a child bought from the factory, and needing to prove to her family and everyone else around her that she's not going to turn bad... and interpreting her parents' abuse as signs of love. even if she did kill eun-mi by accident, i feel terrible for her. she's eight. she didn't know. i pray she can find another friend like eun-mi who loves her for her, not for the idealized version that she has to put on around everyone else. 

and then jenny... jenny makes me sad for a different set of reasons. forcing yourself into the ideal valedictorian model for years and years until one day, you just snap from all of the familial pressure and spiral into a mindless routine of alcohol, addictive mmos, and niche booru browsing. i do find it interesting too that you contrast her otaku interests with her genuine concern for han-byeol's wellbeing versus ga-yeong being the exact opposite of that lol (loudly saying that jenny is disgusting while she grooms han-byeol) 

one last thing: you really capture how ga-yeong and jenny are unwilling to examine their own slices of bigotry with the one-off comments they make about gay people, trans people, black people, etc. that they meet in their lives. it adds to them being products of the conservative catholic environment they grew up in.

alas, i'm working on another game right now... :'> but im glad my team's pre-existing work could make you feel strongly about this! it's never too late to pick up renpy and start

thank you for playing! glad my game could speak to you

Thank you for playing my game! I'm glad it could leave an impact on you...
Your observations were very interesting to read. In particular, your comments on Sunny's view of Anita, and the nature of her love. 

I can only hope that at some point after the ending, Anita can reignite her passion for her artistic work again, making the kind of work she really wants to make.

thank you, kyou! that's very kind of you to say

also yes... let's destroy sunny together 

i’m afraid not… the web build is likely the last build i’ll make of this game.

thanks for playing! \o/

thank you! it’s an ending for TRUE tv lovers

thank you so much!!! apologies for the super late reply!! 

late to the reply party but thank you!!!

thank you for playing! glad my game could resonate with you!!

thank you for playing my game! i'm glad it could make you think...

thank you for playing my game! i'm glad both sunny and anita could leave an impact on you in different ways and make you think...

will do! thanks for enjoying my poisonous meal! 🫡

i like the comic-inspired presentation for this game (especially when it uses panels as mini-cgs.) the character designs are really cute, and i found the non-linear structure of the game interesting (if a little confusing at first.) 

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the title drop in-story was a massive twist of the knife. you could sense throughout that zoey and cherry want to get closer to each other, but because of their lack of communication and their own hangups about each other, whatever relationship they would've had with each other fizzled and burned out, which feels true to life. 

a lot of other commenters have said this, but you capture the "grass is greener on the other side" mentality well, especially when you contrast cherry's perception of zoey to her actual lived experiences. everyone seems to be doing so much better than you until you actually walk up and talk to them. good stuff. thanks for making this!

thank you so much! yes, all of the sprites and most of the cgs/ui were hand-drawn. glad you had a good time with my postmortem.

yeah! it's brief but i always loved the stylization of that title. glad you enjoyed the postmortem.

thank you oscar!! i'd love to create a reading list for this game a little later... there's more where that came from

thank you!!!

thank you so much!! \o/ and what a funny coincidence omg

tender and sickening, all at once. beautiful prose and dialogue, where what isn't said screams loudest of all. the stark reds and whites of the art add to that intensity. will forever think about scarlet's observation of the two bathrooms in her school, or blanche being told she's too sensitive by her coworkers, or the split-second observation scarlet has of a mop of blonde hair rising from her bed. little reminders of the systemic failures that led to blanche's and scarlet's lonely, exhausted existences.

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the way this vn presents rumination, and complex intrusive thoughts is fantastic, too. i genuinely felt ill during the final scene from scarlet's pov — her desire to comfort and support her mother as an equal, mixed with the nauseating realization that this wasn't what she wanted, that she was violated, even if it was gentle.

the final sequence, where blanche's pov is shown was also powerful in the short time we see it. watching everything get ripped under her feet in a split-second, and her own intrusive thoughts, her own violating experiences made the earlier scenes between her and scarlet even more painful. 

i'm going to chew on this one a lot. thank you for making this.

thank you so much, im glad you enjoyed my game! i put a lot of effort into making the dialogue feel natural in terms of pacing, so im happy you noticed that.

yeah, i 100% feel you on the criticism. as you mentioned, i made this within 6 weeks...  if i had more time to cook, i'd refine sunny's character more... give her more space to act like a normal human being before things go off the rails with her. i felt like i was on-the-nose with everything about this visual novel LOL so you are not alone. 

women with sharp teeth should never be evil. sad! truthnuke!!!!!!!!!

kigyo, im so sorry that things ended up like this. i've quietly watched artificial selection's development from afar, and i've always admired your dedication to your project. you're a fantastic coder and puzzle designer, and i loved what i saw of all of the sinners the last time i met them (which reminds me, i need to go and play the latest demo update... how's saeva doing.)

marketing and trying to earn wishlists for a game really, really sucks — but AS has so much meat to it, which'll make promoting your game a lot easier on places like tiktok/insta/whatever. if you want to bite the marketing bullet, i can send you a couple of tips i've learned to make it as painless as possible. 

take care of yourself, okay?

LOVE the presentation on this visual novel. the triptych framing is inspired in of itself, but my favorite part of the art is watching the little chibis walk around the room dioramas...

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 ...and also seeing character sprites jump out of the triptych — emphasizing them overpowering another character in a conversation. this mainly applies to Wulfwynn but the scenes where animals are used as metaphor were great too. 

speaking of animals and metaphor. the story is great, and your characters are well-defined — especially louisa herself (is it just me, or does winston remind me of george ushiromiya?) while the ending was a bit abrupt, i came away loving and fearing for louisa's future with wulfwynn... the striga family was chased away — but with louisa's and wulfwynn's respective animals being a doe and a wolf... it doesn't bode well for their future, does it? at the end of the day, as angry and tired as she from repressed anger, past sexual harassment, the looming threats against her and her sister... louisa is still prey. and 

the magic system is great too. the constellations as representations of how strong a character's network is. the fact that a person's magical power is based off of the connections they build with other people, and that the stronger their connections are, the more devastating their magic will be when they use it against others... that gave me a lot to chew on with who could use this magic, and who'd forever remain powerless (like the servants under louisa's employment.) in a way, this magic system already exists in the real world — powerful people with friends in high places can get away with anything. something something a tale as old as time. 

if i had one crit, i wish there was more music and sfx — but only so that i could immerse myself in your world even more. otherwise, well done!

strong atmosphere. love love love the soundtrack, the backgrounds of rotting urban architecture and mushrooms, the cgs and how they mesh adorable character designs with grimy real-world photos... to me reading this vn felt like watching an unknown scifi OVA from the early 2000s and listening the new millenium series (but especially risoukyou ~utopia~)
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from the start, i knew that the girl in the future segments was the robotic version of nita, but you handled that reveal well, esp with the way that you witheld her appearance until the very end. i also love how galia's personality had been integrated into the mushroom hivemind... always a big fan of that in fiction. 

likewise, i loved reading about how nita and galia lived their lives, and coped with the oncoming apocalypse. one of my favorite types of stories is just... watching people try to live through normal routines when they know everything will end in a matter of days. the shopping scene said so much with its visuals, and i legit got nervous when nita forgot the money as she and galia went to the hospital. i have been in both hers and galia's position and it is Not pleasant either way. the questionnaire scene was fantastic too, and i have to wonder if nita's answers affected the personality uploaded to her machine copy. 

great stuff all around. ill be thinking about this one a lot

thank you so much for playing! im glad my game could leave an impact on you

thank you so much for playing! glad you enjoyed what you saw so far. :>

and no, you didn't do anything wrong. the stuff listed on the itch page is planned for the full game. i'm also working on an updated demo that'll some gameplay (like cleaning up), so please look forward to it!

good debut game! i love the art... esp the opening cg where lydia shows vi her face through her phone. great framing. i love cgs that emphasize the main character's perception of the world and the people around her.

spoilers

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 i don't normally seek out visual novels with lots of choices, but this game uses them well for its short story. lydia restarting vi over and over again in an attempt to bring her into total submission each time she begins to show her own desires/choices... culminating in the horror of the true ending (and the fact that you can't play the game anymore after that...)

the character sprites and the ui for this is delicious... love the callback to classic 2000s bishojo games (the music too carries that feeling across well.) super-solid prose and dialogue too. love miyuu and chinatsu's push-pull dynamic and how it's unclear if they'll improve together or repeat the same mistakes they made last time.

good stuff all around!

i played this yesterday morning and im going to be chewing on it a lot. especially nadja's experiences early diagnosed experiences as an autistic girl. her mom refusing to acknowledge the diagnosis, down to the "my child is normal! she's not failing in school" rhetoric

but also your depictions of the us's agonizing descent into fascism, and how it directly or indirectly haunts people like nadja and marie — whether literally (the nazi chernobog cult's sacrifice haunting them both) or metaphorically (marie's disconnect with the world around her as she 

and her mental/behavioral struggles are dismissed as 'white trash' behavior — and nadja's own struggles with an ignorant foster care system and marie's abuse towards her) the cherry on top of it all is seeing how its set in 2016, right before the presidential elections. great stuff.

thank you so much! as the person who handled the drawings, i'm glad you liked them all

thank you for playing!! congrats on getting all of the ends

awesome minimalist presentation in the ui and art. i really like what this game did with the classic renpy menus, putting all of the options and saves into one tiny window. really adds to the claustrophobic and lonely feeling overall. 

the main story is solidly written. i noticed quite a few typos, but the quality of the prose itself is strong. i got a good sense of who emerald hernandez was by the end of the story. also seeing toxic yuri from not one, but two relationships was something i didn't see coming. love the exploration of emerald's long, but failing marriage with her wife.

i think my most major critique (aside from being unable to click through the pauses) is that i wish i could've gotten to know sierra on the same level as emerald, esp since in the last third of the story, we are in her pov

otherwise, great work! excited to see what you do next