Excuse me, may I pique your interest?
I am interested in this game on a bigger level than just a tabletop RPG and magical girl fan and wanted to e-mail you about it personally, but was not able to find it anywhere, nor have I found a way to send a DM on BlueSky, thus I am writing this comment.
I hope we can have this conversation, still.
You have shared my exact thoughts about the end to this all.
Although, with the time passing, I personally got to appreciate it a little bit, as it was intended to be Meta and, at least partially, it is pretty funny. I now feel that it's more of a "me problem" and so is "you problem" than an actual downside, cuz it's we who took it way too seriously, but that also shows just how powerful and creative everything else was.
I should say that I'm sorry for getting so emotional, cuz… I did love almost every other game this much and the entire narrative, I got invested, hard, especially since it spoke to me on a personal level, the whole thing being about a mother trying to save her child, and as a mother figure myself it always hits very close whenever I experience such a story.
It's all on me in the end and I should've seen the extra endings beings mostly meta, but again, got too invested. And this means that the project worked, and worked far too well, and I don't see this being repeated ever again in the future just for how... working it is, but hey, I really want to find myself mistaken in some future.
I do wonder still what the Sin(e)s game was about in the end cuz it's really cool but so confusing, man.
I recently played through the entirety of this collection in one sitting, and it left me with mixed feelings.
It definitely started AMAZING and even DID REALLY keep up with the more or less cohesive narrative for the first few games… up until the fall into subcon, from there it would pick up for a bit in a different but still interesting narrative up until completely breaking down with SWELL And Organ, and the games themselves from that point onward weren't even really as cool in comparison, mostly. Shell, I can't even find an explanation for how could it go from Organ to the next game… It's like there was no transference of the game in-between and so the next dev had to start from scratch again, and it only confused me even more.
In my eyes, the experiment unfortunately failed.
And yet, the collection, on its own, is mostly good, some games are great, even. As much as AVERT YOUR EYES is kind of horrid to sit through, it's also absolutely amazing and truly unique, and I would honestly love to see more of such concept evolved. And, at the very least, the ending was cool, even if it was barely a game, and it amazingly looped on itself.
Very hyped for trying out C.H.A.I.N.G.E.D. now.
I have finally finished the collection after 1.5 days of playing.
I love almost every second of it, with games being even more inventive with narrative actually truly cohesive and pretty much almost never really conflicting with each other and even when such would arrive it all could be explained by parallel lines.
…and then, today, I got to the N/A branch, and I got even more hyped and I absolutely adored the first games of it and how it tied all of other branches together…
…and then came the Endings, and I have completely lost all of my enthusiasm, with 3 of them not being games at all, one being LITERALLY A SINGLE SENTENCE (it may make sense in-the-narrative BUT THERE STILL COULD BE DONE MORE WITH THIS THAN JUST "okay you let go"), and the only game out of the four, and a really good experience with that, DOESN'T EVEN HAVE TO DO ANYTHING WITH THE PRIOR NARRATIVE AT ALL!
I wanted to sing this collection praises, for doing right everything C.H.A.I.N. couldn't, for games being even more innovative, creative, fun and narratively both cohesive and interesting and not even clashing with each other despite there being so many of them and so many branches, and the N/A branch tying them together even more!
Only for all this greatness to just… end like this, leaving me absolutely deflated, desolated, emptied out, destroyed, hollow.
I can't even feel angry, I'm that blue balled.
I can't even think of how why it would all end like this except it all being one big joke, and one of the branches already ended with a very silly and very fun one.
As much as I was bummed out by C.H.A.I.N.'s complete lack of the cohesive narrative except for the first few games which I still absolutely adore for a storyline that could've been, at least it also provided an amazing ending that looped it all on itself!
I don't know what to feel about C.H.A.I.N.G.E.D. anymore. I wanted to love it, I loved it, and now… I feel nothing. Betrayal, even. I understand how utterly silly it all sounds, but it really made me feel, and now it feels like it just played with my feelings.
I'm sorry.
