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i loved this. the thoughts and memories that lurk in the shadows of the narrative lurk in the shadows of the reader, piecing bits together and never really getting the full picture but feeling grateful i have at least some sort of idea instead of having nothing at all. the writing is vivid and textural, the black mold lives in the margins and i'm left wanting to know more and accepting i will never know more.

amazing job and amazing work by this team, i would be very, very happy to read more from you all. i'll be spinning this one around in my head for a very long time, even if i cant remember

YEESH!!!!!!! i instinctively went to take a sip of my beverage and then immediately recoiled and put it back down as i remembered i have a mouth too. youre nasty for this one. keep it up

Short and.. sweet? Maybe not so sweet? Short and sour..? Short and sober...?? Wait definitely not sober. Short and sharp maybe... and a little sweet. I think.

I like when you can tell a game was truly made with a lot of love and care. From very personal sentiments, to what I imagine is a VERY tedious way to make some beautiful sprites, to entire acoustic covers-- I can truly tell just how much thought was put into this, and I hope you know how tangible it feels! I enjoyed how interwoven Jess and Alice felt, being both a sisterly and coaxing and manipulating and stagnant and expressive relationship all at once. Also Ellie is ridiculously cute.

An amazing debut into the world of VNs and I sincerely look forward to your next one~

this instantly shot up to my jam favourites. the sprites are, of course, awesome and fitting. the cgs are, of course, awesome as well. the world of the online infinity sailor community is vibrant and clearly written by someone who has been through the trenches...

the writing is incredible. the pacing is PERFECT and i played this on auto, so it really felt like i was just watching a dramedy show unfold before my eyes!! i kept smiling and laughing, fully invested, and of course feeling sicker and sicker with each click when i remembered what jam this was submitted to. ,.........................

i really cant state how much i liked this game, and am really delighted to have read it. thank you..!!

p.s. the loading screen made me feel incredibly ill. good job.

WOW!!!!!!!!! WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! going into it i knew it would be good, just because the team is stacked and the previews are stunning. but WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i was blown away!!! i am blown away!!!!!!! 

it hardly felt like playing a vn but rather watching and participating in a film, from the changing expressions and overlapping of images, the movement of the chess pieces and the commands you click, this is what the ren faire is SUPPOSED to feel like!!!!!! world building, discovery, exhilaration, horror, yes!!!!!!!!!!! so beautiful to read and to look at, the ending screen just oozes with style and will be haunting me for a long time. 

id like to come back to make a more useful and thoughtful comment but at this point im just high on getting to play it uninterrupted. i hope you are all deeply proud of making such an absolute banger.

baseball is about nothing, but baseball is about the smell of sweat and dirt and skin and salt and sea breeze and microorganisms. an ant farm colony that we watch with piss cup in hand, and a plant we forgot to water for a month.

this was beautiful, jill. the voice you've given robin is spiraling and overlapping, the cycling of imagery that haunts her haunts me haunts the story and regurgitates itself with more and more acid each pass. the story feels thick with time and memory despite only being so many words long, i feel as though i've watched robin for years. i wonder if i have?

the visuals of this game are stunning. obviously. the choice to do a card-sized ratio was crazy but genius, and added to the uncertainty and threats to topple over at any given moment. the images, in their red-stained imprints, feel like they came straight from a memory of long ago.

the music and use of sound truly blew me away. the opening song(?) is terrifying!!! i feel afraid!! hearing her footsteps run in the sand at the end truly killed me too. you've always had crazy talent for setting an audio landscape but this game you've truly outdone yourself.

baseball is combat. and baseball is nothing

I adored the presentation on this!! The paper motif overy the characters, the text, the story- it was so great and fitting for what was at hand! I really, REALLY love the photo approach to sprites, it made it feel real and helped me really feel for the MC. 

I just wanna play meimei with my best friend jaqueline....

i let the dreams wash over me, i let the memories fade in and out, i see many girls, and i see many dreams. i feel like crying. 

this has been one of my absolute favourite games this jam. i dont really know where this story goes, but neither does the narrator. its so beautifully layered, visually, contextually, audibly, i could play this again and again and find something else come through. the music is beautiful, i really love that you've recorded something yourself. it felt so personal and heartfelt, and elevated something already beautiful into something even more breathtaking.

thank you for sharing this, it will be with me in my girl dreams

despite being a quick read, this game truly paints a bleak, jagged, molding, putrid, disgusting atmosphere with ease. the visuals are amazing, and i'm really in love with the use of video, photography, pencil, and digital art. the pencil drawings of discussed videos was nauseating but perfect.

this is an awesome debut, i look forward to seeing more!

that's the way the game is meant to be played. win.

this was great!!! this is the true lifeblood of all of the games that made up childhoods, even if from the outside we were just playing with little toys, it felt like this. it felt like power and control and violence and raw emotion.

thank you for this awesomeness. obsessed with su-ji's costume btw, i would wear that to a competition too

wow.

stacked team. insane premise. crazy execution.

this game is a marvel on every front. the characters, the music, the worldbuilding, the writing, the coding, the everything works in tandem to make something insane. absolutely insane.

i would love to write a more intricate review but i literally just finished and i feel like i took 50000 hits of something that makes the 3d dungeon crawling walls cave in so all i can think to say, is wow. amazing job from everyone involved.

crazy.

you know what. hell yes. hell yes maybe i DO want to have an unhealthy codependent relationship with my houseplant. mila is so real for that one.

i'm gonna go water my plant now, and see if maybe, just maybe, a hot girl will grow from it.

even if its just their icons, i absolutely adore all of these character designs. i kept trying to decide on a favourite, but then id click and change my mind because theyre all just so cute...

im obsessed with the narrator-- bickering with me constantly and up and leaving when i'm too much of an asshole, its great.

and man. "i" sure am an asshole!!!!

god forbid molly wants to have a little fun with her bestie!!!!!! this was a fun little romp, i loved all the fun little tricks used in sprite animations and text effects!! thank you for this game!

forgeries upon forgeries... this is definitely what every college situationship feels like.

this is a beautifully presented game. i was playing wondering how lovely and smooth the coding felt, only to find out that this is.... your own code..??? thats crazy!!!!!!!!

absolutely gorgeous presentation, beautiful in every single aspect. 

I read this and wanted to let it fester in me before I commented. This was one of my most anticipated releases, particularly so because the way rom had seemed to truly dedicate every ounce of brain power into swimming-- I wanted to know how water can consume someone so deeply. I was not disappointed. Reading through really takes you into the rough waves of the ocean, or riding the aftershock tide being in the deep end of the pool as someone canonballs in. Your head goes above and under and above and under the water, constantly bobbing and reminding you that you need to take a breath in between plunges, lest water fills your lungs.

Did I ever swim competitively? God no. Did I ever do any competitive sports? Nope. But I can tell that this clearly embodies the constant weight and stress of dedicating yourself to a sport that scrutinizes your body, your comparison, your mind, your relationships to others. I always wondered what the kids that went to 6am swim meets experienced, and im reflecting on a lot of the past classmates I had that did just that. To compete is to prove yourself, which is beautiful and fulfilling, but so deeply humiliating and brutal.

Thinking about the beauty and horror of competitive sports is enthralling, and makes you even more bitter when you think about the gendering and degendering and transphobic festering that bites at it. Why the fuck should anyone be attacking athletes for something like gender identity when we already suspended our disbelief watching them perform superhuman feats? What sort of priority is that? So I really, really, really liked the swimdex. I recognized the story was referencing real world discussions but to see the last names of characters was awesome. This is barely a VN and more like the coolest presented essay I've ever seen. It even cites sources!! The intersection of gender, race, abuse, and sport is easy to acknowledge but also easy to glaze over, I liked that I had a room to sit down and open 10+ tabs to absorb real life experiences.

And all of this is doesn't address that the game is awesome as a game. The mixed media is awesome. The sound design is awesome. The pacing is awesome. I was always going into history to see what I could chew on, and enjoying the waves lapping at my screen. 

Anyways. I would like to play in the pool with you all. I would like to go to the shallow end where I can still stand and we can pretend to be mermaids, and we each have a special power. I think your tail would be silver and your power would be empathy.

w. woah. wow. damn. damn! DAmn okay!!!!

I feel like i just went on such a crazy, visceral journey. everytime i felt like i was going crazy, i remembered that this is just what it feels like when youre a teen. this is just how you are.

absolutely, positively, full forcedly, OBSSESSED with the presentation. the screenshots cant do full screen viewing justice. seeing the sprites change and overlap and seeing eraser marks and pencil smudging and tearing and stickering and scratching and AND AND AND !!!!!!!! it just is so insane to watch, to feel, to read, to experience. gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous mixed media. i need it injected into my veins.

the exchange and clammoring between control and power and hate and identity and change. and also, holy shit, this is the best gore and viscera and violence writing i think ive ever read. the way you're able to describe such horrific actions in quick sequences feels like im watching a snuff film. 

thanks for the youtube music recommendations, ready to listen to the shadow the hedgehog ost!

ive never played a fighting game more than a few rounds of smash bros wii with some cousins. but now i wanna go learn some combos and end up at my local scene to see two baddies hate each other

holy crap this is gorgeous. absolutely BEAUTIFUL... the mixed mediums and animations and colours and fleeting lines and the music and the aura wow.... wow!!!!!!!

this . was really good. but i am frowning. it was really good and thats why it makes me feel not good. i imagine this story has happened to someone already and will happen to many, many others. damn.

i do really like that snowy wasn't some evil hacking device, rather just... ch@tgpt :(( the way i see young kids who could thrive on a rp forum resort to just chatting with some chatbot of their new blorbo has always made me sad, but this REALLY makes me confront that sadness. thank you, even if it really, really hurts. (Spoilers) i'm glad the scene of dani taking her anger out on snowy wasn't any longer because if i had to read another line i think i would actually bawl my eyes out, and then feel guilty for crying over an ai, and then looking at your art and seeing a little kitten and start crying all over again. and then remember the strap on and make myself remember she is not an animal auwuuuuuuhhhhhhh.....

anyways... its really good. its really bleak. wuuahhhhhh

candy coloured visceral, i really felt like i was watching something unfold start to finish. absolutely AMAZING cgs holy crap

upon finishing, i immediately felt bad for my feet because im a little scared theyres a girl in them... i should book a foot massage.. maybe she'd like that?

oh simone. you are simply too horny for your own good. and i love that for you.

this was great!! i loved the pertinent emphasis on simone's difficulty in choosing ANYTHING, even when life is on the line. i feel her guilt transfer into me when i made her go to fox, because now i too, am a bad person.. i also loved the contrast between fox and cora, where fox scares me (positive) and cora scares me (negative)...

great work from everyone involved in this team!! beautiful backgrounds, beautiful cgs, beautiful sprites, and THE MINIGAMES!!!!!!!! I LOVE SLIDING BLOCK PUZZLE ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!!! i got so excited it made me so happy omg

i thoroughly enjoyed the handwriting and internal dialogue.. tbh what would i do if my toxic gf was a worm! i guess i dont know!!

delightful art, delightful writing, uneasy clinical flavour all the way through... i like that the line of ethics is clearly...unclear.... and how much you can ponder dr. rose's intentions.. oh marisol...

short and direct, bright yet bleak. dealing with problems that humans alone made in the least human place on earth, bending towards or away from institutional misery, reconciling with the fact your landmark in a sea of nothingness could have been an illusion the whole time.

wonderful, thank you for sharing!

this was a great little bite to chew on, weird that i just heard a bell when i said that...?

i loved the use of animation (the opening scene, the sprite movement, the mini choice icons)!!! this is a really fascinating concept that i really liked seeing explored-- what DOES the dog of pavlov fame actually feel?

i feel like someone put their hands on my shoulders and would periodically vigorously shook me to the point of whiplash and concussion while i read this game. yes it was set up to be uncomfortable from the start, but if you had asked me the way this game would piece itself together, i would have not ever, ever, ever seen it unfold the way it did.

i'm enamored by the cream and teal scenes and how they feel like im peering into a memory of someone which. maybe i was. ?. a certain scene using a boiling line overlay was absolutely, undoubtedly, the moment everything truly became 50000x more insane. which is impressive because it was already incredibly insane prior to that part. awesome

yeah.

with a premise like this you know it can only end in a messy and uncomfortable way, but wow. yeah. its like watching the worlds glitteriest cutest k-k-kawaii-est trainwreck in slow motion. both characters are clearly troubled but the ways in which they are are SO fascinating and SO grimace inducing. you just gotta watch these rainbows crash and burn one way or another........

beautiful art, beautiful colours, loved the use of parallax and other coding tricks (thank you porks for making me go back and read a particular scene......................) and am so so so proud of my awesome friend for making something So AWESOME and sad. AND PRETTY!!!!

signed, sylvie stan since day 1

actually insane. this is crazy. youre crazy. i cant decide if i need the manager or ember more. god.

i've seen some of your behind-the-scenes snapshots and felt like i was looking at a grad student's thesis article-- finally playing it i see just how much passion and personal love was poured into this (and just a demo alone!!!!) alongside the absolute mastering of the renpy craft. when i first clicked through some stat training i broke out into a huge smile getting to see the little mini embers running, reading, fencing and earning me some points. the detail in the manager's expressions, laughter, AWESOME GLASSES, the animation in the drones and cut-ins, the way the text grabs itself back once the duel begins.... it's just crazy!!!! youre crazy for making this!!!!!!!!!!

i'm so excited to play more, and will wait warmly for future updates!! i did die the first two attempts but with my third being a success i know i'm gonna win it all for sure

It's been a while since I've gotten to enjoy a good cup of Yuri. Thank you for satisfying my craving. I thoroughly enjoyed sipping upon this

This was truly a little delight to play!!!!! I love puzzles that make me think and boy did i feel sooo smart when I pieced some of these little things together... I made sure to get all 5 (unless i missed one) endings and loved that the #1 ending was the one that took the most components and thought to accomplish. It was great getting to explore this little world, seeing some of the wild worldbuilding in a certain email...

Everyone in this team truly did an amazing job!!!!

this is such a cool concept!! even if i entered into areas that hadn't been written out yet, i really enjoyed getting to explore the mansion and ending up fully padded in hada and with a mask hehe.. i'd absolutely love to see more and if you pick this back up, i'll be ready to read!!!

thank you for joining the jam! <3

this is great! i really liked being able to peruse the journal entry by entry, made me feel immersed and as if I could look over her shoulder and catch a glimpse as to what might be going on outside the pages... thank you both for putting this together and joining the jam! <3

what a little treat to read!! as someone who has worked in two different toy stores, it was kind of painfully familiar hearing miriam's description of parents and toy store behaviours, but pretty darn truthful... exploring miriam and lacey and how they function in the world around them is fascinating, id truly love to learn more!!

the sprites are adorable, the music is lovely, and i love how things move around like one plays with their dolls and toys!! 

thank you all so very much for joining the jam!~

ouuhhhhhhhh i want to see more!!!!! i want to know more!!!!!! the ui is so beautiful, the art is so stunning, the writing tells me so much about the personalities of these two strange ladies,  i just want to learn more and see whats in store... (and what hair cut we see!!)

this is such a cool project to see so i hope you two continue!!!! thank you so much for joining the jam :33

beautifully written and easy to see ones reflection within. to understand a foreign body is most certainly full of emotion and confusion... what lovely words to peruse.

thank you so much for joining in this jam, i truly hope to read more of your work~~~ <3

guuaauauauhhhhhhh this was so so so so so cute. so insanely charming and made with true love for your actual living (not) breathing (not) dolls... i just absolutely loved it. such a cute little jaunt and had me smiling the whole time through. sometimes its just better to be a doll after all!