Definitely a last-minute submission, but I honestly love the brevity... it condenses the essence of this kind of story incredibly well. The craft itself is great.
Two girls, a bunch of problems, smush 'em together and find a way to end the story... the fundamentals are executed extremely well here. Really happy to have read this one.
An incredible story, full-stop.
The overall construction is a little obvious at times -- "here's how three different people react to these awful circumstances", but the narrative itself is so well done that any critiques I have don't really matter. It hurt to read, but in a really satisfying way, especially when these characters have such relatable neuroses...
And the Factory itself... whooo boy. It's such an effective escalation of child-logic and unreality that it echoes throughout the entire story, even if it only comes up in one chapter.
Good fuckin' job.
A well-made game with a super solid atmosphere. I found that the narrative itself ended a bit suddenly, and -- as with another commenter -- I wanted more time in the deuteragonist's head, but what's there is extremely well-told and evocative. Like, it's genuinely just a good story. Those can be hard to come by!
The art also plays really well with the script in a way that's hard to achieve. I did have to mess around with the settings to make it comfortable on my setup, and I wish there were more, but that's my only real gripe.
Altogether, it's genuinely well-constructed and well worth anyone's time.
A really interesting game. First off, the aesthetics are phenomenal -- the music, distorted maps, and character sprites work extremely well, especially in the dark, disconcerting moments where visual elements bleed together as reality takes a backseat. Dithering and denpa fundamentals are a great combination.
The writing was a bit more hit-or-miss in my experience -- sentence-to-sentence, I had trouble keeping track of things, and I wasn't sure whether that was intentional (as an element of the protagonist's worldview) or just a matter of odd grammar. On the other hand, the things which were clear indicators of that worldview -- the compulsions, repetitions, and sudden thoughts of violence -- were really fun + interesting to read, especially in conjunction with the visual changes.
In the end, I wish I'd had a while longer with these characters and seen more of who they were under these extremely interesting circumstances, and that the prose had been a bit easier to parse... but this game has such a unique feel that I really do recommend it.
A super interesting start! I'd definitely want to see the other chapters before forming a full judgement, and I think some amount of audio would really improve the overall experience -- but what's here is super intriguing.
The pixelated, almost indistinct art is super nice, and the writing captures the psychology of the protagonist quite well, with the little flourishes of corrupted text creating a compelling atmosphere. The hard cuts to more disturbing or unnerving scenes are quite well-done, and drive the reader to wonder what exactly is going on. Definitely a project to keep an eye on.
Great atmosphere, great art, only a few technical / narrative quibbles. In the end, my greatest impression was that of standing awkwardly in the kitchen during a college party while a horrid breakup happens just one room over, shoulders way too tense as you sweat into your t-shirt and pretend you're not also anxious about everything.
More specifically for the art, the sudden cuts -- with music and sprite changes -- were really well-executed, and created some genuinely frightening and fascinating scenes (like, they're really, really well-done). At the same time, I found that my eyes were most often at the lower-right corner of the screen, and it could be difficult at times to properly look at small changes in character expression or the like.
The writing also felt -- in some moments -- over-expository, but other scenes really do stand out in terms of well-written character action (the music festival in particular had really good dialogue and action pacing!), and the overall atmosphere is great. The story itself wasn't exactly my thing, but it might just be yours, dear reader, so give it a shot... and either way, the combination of nighttime city lights, ambient music, and listless wandering is well worth anyone's time.
