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I love your choice of aspect ratio, I love the feeling of your art, I love the way the text flows and trips and stumbles and breaks my heart. That crystallisation of the frustration of the "wants-but-can't-have".

I find myself entirely bereft for words that'd suffice to fit my feelings. Emptied out—but not empty. So very complete.

Thank you very very much.

I took a day and a good long walk after reading through this and re-reading through this, and I'm so horrendously, adoringly enamoured with the taste of this vn. I love how deeply the themes of the story are woven through the plot. The symbolism built into things—the heavy intent. Any story could be about a messy LDR with an age and maturity gap, and I'd feel the toxic and the yuri and I'd be able to feel the grossness in there, but this story goes further than that.  

It's just about baseball, but it's also just about baseball. 

I won't say more for the sake of others. Thank you for making something that made me think about my place in the queer world, and my relation to those who's footsteps I walk in, and those that will follow in mine. Beautiful.

Such a dynamic, fun read!! I felt a massive degree of familiarity with the characters, to the point that it was almost like they'd sprang to life off the page (I couldn't resist). I really appreciate how the comedy was played off against the real mundane crap that folks have to deal with in such a way that provided levity without detracting from anything at all, which is an artful balance to strike. Great job! love it love it love it!!!

Thank you so much!! I'm really looking forward to pushing my boundaries as well, and doing some stupid and creative things. In my early planning period, I had some aspirational ideas that I knew for sure I was not going to get done in time with my level of knowledge, so I focused on executing what I knew I could with what I had. Really looking forward to making more and more stuff!! thank you again!! 

This was awesome! It's not a rare occurrence for any story about suicide to end up holding a mirror to my own experiences and feelings, and I feel that you tackled a really hard subject with a lot of complexity in an incredibly satisfying and gratifying way. I adore how you put us inside of Yui's head, how we get to feel her perspective, and how much I could feel and see myself in Meadow. 

Simply excellent in every way! Bravo~!

Thank you so much!! I’m glad that my authorial voice is presenting itself clearly, I’m hoping it’s something that I can continue to develop with every future story I write. That trust in my skill is something I’m so happy that you could place in me, I always want to be respectful of the audience and bring them on a journey that is worth seeing through to the end. Evil groomer stories and power imbalances are the birthplace of so much wonderful storytelling potential that gets left so woefully on the table often, and I’m very glad to add to the panoply of that genre!

I look forward to creating the next thing as well! Thank you so much for your kind words!!

What is there to say about Helleborine... What isn't there to say? Could words, in their limited, imprecise manner clarify the depth of human emotion that this visual novel contains? 

I acknowledge my incredible bestie bias, but I don't care, there's SO much to say and I shan't be held back by convention of humility.

I've commented and complimented Tabbie before on it's sublime ability to write, but manages with such an incisive purpose to draw out the sensation of having a panic attack in me so effortlessly. The horror, dawning realisation, and exquisite pain that Tabbie's writing can elicit is impossible to find anywhere else. With ease, the pacing of the story transitions between states of such gentle, heart-fluttering sentimentality, only to harpoon you with heart wrenching line after line. 

It's only been recently that I've become familiar with Porksbun as an artist, and as a first impression? I am entirely enamoured!! I'm always anxious and a little embarrassed to comment on art. I'd put it somewhere around "I have the taste, but not the vocabulary to express why I like this." Forgoing fumbling foolishly for some kind of faux-intellectual statement, I think it suffices to say that the visual language, the decisions made, the intentionality, and the vibe were all delicious.

gragrgharghrhgrg i need to chew on hellen like im doing tug of war with damp rag grhagrhgharhhahrgAHRGAHGRHAGHRHGRAHGHRGHHGHHH...

yay! well done! i love this!!! perfect fun for the whole family

Oh my goodness! Thank you so much!! I’m absolutely certain that anyone with a certain, crystalline creative vision would be quite capable at hemming in on exactly the kind of evocative story as you might want to create, so I wish you so much good effort and luck on honing your vision to that! 

There’s a part of me that can’t—or won’t—believe I set high expectations, honestly. I still kind of feel like this little neophyte, working my way through things with blind amateur intentions and doing things in roundabout, results oriented ways.

Thank you SO much for your kind words, it means the world to me.

Thank you so much!! I'm absolutely overjoyed that you enjoyed it and that my intentions for the art came across so well!! I'm looking forward to throwing my hat in the ring time and time again, so thank you so much for your encouragement!!!

Thank you so much!! I'm really glad that "oncoming trainwreck" feeling hit so well, in doing a test reading with my dear bestie hearing it say "I'M SCARED!!! ashe what are you going to do!!" after we see how cute our nocturnal interlocutor is... it was invigorating!! I'm really glad I did so well as to conjure that feeling, thank you so so much!!!

Goodness! Excellent?!? I'm so so very touched by this praise. I really really enjoyed my work on the larger soundscapes in particular, chopping them and getting them to have that like, rhythmic pulsing... I felt like that's what dreams are like, yknow? I'm sorry for making you cry, but it was also kind of almost my goal... so you're welcome for crying!! thank you thank you 

Thank you so much!! I worked really hard for my like, debut on soundscape design and music as i'm not really producer much!! I think, in spite of any inexperience, I made something that fit within my vision, and that was my solitary goal. I'm glad you have much to chew on in my story~ I hope to continue making very chewable stories into the future!! thank you,, resting them SO well rn 

Thank you so much!! I always try to have a really clear creative vision for the whole work going in to anything, and attempt to hone what my paws can make with the materials I have until the work matches the vision... I'm happy to hear this vision is so well received!! thank you!! it's much better already, but I'm being gentle with it for a biiiit longer, on girlfriend's orders 

Thank you so much!!! I'm really glad you appreciate my vn!!! I think wonderful is exactly the kind of praise that warms this canid heart of mine. I'm glad that I could make something you could enjoy!

Thank you so so so much!! I'm glad that my debut is an impressive one, and I hope to keep on honing and refining my craft as I go, pushing my skills as much as possible. The project had a lot of firsts for me, and I think I pin a lot of my creative decision influences on the early days of visual novels, especially sound novels! thank you so much again for your positive feedback!!!!!

your bias is INFINITELY permitted I'm so glad you love it!!! I really wanted to pull out all the stops and set myself a high bar to hit next time... thank you thank you thank you yay!!! yay!! yay!!!!

Hi! Really proud and thankful to hear that this resonated you in this way. Thank you for reading!

thank you for your correspondence; it's something that we're working on at all points and avenues. invetibly, games that we make will be very very presciently personal and candid--innately we open a conversation with the audience that tells you a lot about us and lets us know very little about you. 

we're thankful for your hope;please live your life well

Such a gentle, elegant portrayal of the kind of relationship one needs to have with one's own self to navigate hard times. Really appreciate the symbolism of the individual aspects of the pov's healing being in gold. Sometimes, when things get better, the world does feel just a tiny bit more shiny. 

Super pleasant all in all!! Very well done.

SO unbelievably, touchingly sweet!!! Bravo~

Your feelings were already well communicated by the fact that you felt the need to comment in the first place. Any further artifice of language would only suffice to refine that feeling, but that raw feeling is well and enough for this one. 

We wish that what rules you must live by become ones that you can subvert and control eventually, and that hope never stays away for too long. 

This one hopes, with earnest sincerity, that the rules you must use to live your life become easier and easier. That the game you play lets you live in hope, and that the agony of despair never clings overlong to you.

For anyone that feels this way,  this one encourages you to try to write the rules to the game you play. Understand the design. You can change anything you understand intimately enough.

It’s okay, because it’s a nightmare you can wake up from any time. You don’t have to stay as ashe, it might only be a short journey for you in understanding, or maybe you already know well what it means to be ashe.

We had the deepest, most wonderful pleasure of reading this through live with the creators, and after having sat on the feelings for a moment, find it difficult to describe the emotions that bubbled to the surface whilst reading it. Perhaps it was prescient, then, that we were voicing Oberhau. 

Words ill suffice to describe it, though we shall try regardless. The story depicts the freeing experience of seeing, of being seen, of knowing, of being known. It's how it feels when finally someone has managed to look beyond the bars of the cage that you built about yourself and learnt to see the "I" behind the thing you had to become. It's that in spite of it all, the choices you make to be the person you want to be are the right ones. It's how you finally get to meet someone like you. It's how you get to reach out to that person, through thorns and differences and all, and ask them in one act of vulnerability to be your friend. It's a beautiful and enchanting fairy tale that depicts people that don't get depicted. It's a tale depicted so sweetly, so kindly, so softly. And that's all without speaking to the incredible quality of the art, music choice, and writing. Each character is charming and dynamic, expressive and full of life. This isn't a story or an experience we'll soon forget. 

We are endlessly thankful for permitting us the privilege of performing alongside you as your character, and for creating a story that resonated so deeply with us. 

the tender wisdom in learning how to realise you've been numb for too long and that you're letting yourself lose parts of you depicted here was very resonant. it's hard to learn how to keep that fire alive, but it's worth it.

thank you very much for the story.