itch.io

I... thank you.

It seems like it gives plenty of context to me?

I'm not. I hope you are.

Holy crud I love this!  The bondage master clearly has a lot of practice with that tail...

Oh no to be perfectly clear I didn't think for a second that you were condoning actual abuse. I know this was made in a time limit and deals with really sensitive stuff.  Like I said the main thing that shook me was the takeaways in some of the other comments but while the writing wasn't perfect about making it clear that Erx's situation doesn't make what they're doing any better and that Yumi's guilt about leaving is *hers* and not... the narrative's, if that makes any sense, it really shouldn't have to be. 
I need to stress that apart from that I think that this was actually really well done, and that I never got the feeling that those mixed messages were intentional. 
I wanted to get things down while my emotions and thoughts were still fresh and then I tried to cap it off with clarification that I wasn't upset with you or accusing you of anything and more just pointing out an unfortunate way the writing could be read that I was afraid some others may have gone with.  I think that I probably should have gone back and interspersed some more assurances of that throughout though and I apologize for not doing so.

OMG thank you so much

I wish I still belived that we could protect us.  Every sibling I watch be taken from us while no one does anything to stop our torturers, rapists and murderers makes me believe a little less. I've loved this work of art for a long time. I still do. It used to make me feel so much better. I wish I'd commented then. I wish I'd done a lot of things then, and before. Thank you for making it. Thank you for still being here.

You have been given a free game, and then the person who gave you it told you that they can't afford to make more of the game for free because it takes so much time and effort, but that if you really want to, you can pay them and if they get enough they can add more. That's it. We live in a hellscape where people starve if they don't monetize everything they do, it's horrific but unless all the rich assholes in power keeping things that way spontaniously combust or we do something about them that's how it is. Art is WORK. Hard work. And you being an asshole about somone sharing it with you for free and then screaming at them when they give you the *option* to pay them in hopes they can do more if they get enough is silly.

Gameplay and art are very nice, the character designs are great, especially Yumi, the backgrounds are good, love the movement system and as somone who has dealt with both severe mental struggles and abuse in the past the cycle of strategic retreating and charging to manage mental energy is actually really well done and captures the feeling of fighting back against it, it's balanced very well too, and it has really good music.

I come at this game from I think a different angle than most since I have a massive phobia of mind control and mental manipulation, (I know those are content flagged, which I greatly appreciate, but I was in the headspace to deal with it and the description of it being about resisting the control rather than giving in compelled me) but being able to resist it in the way this game provides actually feels rather freeing, and I was really enjoying myself until it started to feel like the writing actually expects me to feel compassion towards the rapist which... that does really squick me out to be honest.

It feels extremely manipulative and victim-blamey to try to make the player feel sympathetic towards Erx because they suffered in the past, facing abuse and desperation, knowing how it feels, only to turn around and do similar, even worse things to another for your own benefit, is horrific beyond words. And then all of that gets orders of magnitude worse when having Yumi stay with Erx is presented as an actual option. Maybe it's intended as one last layer of control Yumi must get free of? But it seemed like the implication was that after the fight all of the control was broken completely so I don't know.

I get that there have to be options for giving in on purpose for the sake of the fantasy, and that Erx is trying to use sympathy as a weapon, but I guess my input is that the idea that leaving is somehow wrong should be more clearly the narrative being pushed "by Erx" not by the writing itself.

Honestly the most disturbing part for me is the large number other comments actually debating which ending is ethically correct, even going so far as to call Yumi "evil" for not staying with her captor and torturer. People are quick to say "it's just fiction" about this sort of thing but stories have always been how people have communicated emotions and values, and again if it was just "I have a mind control kink and think this is hot as a fantasy but horrific if it was real" that would be fine, but that's not what's happening. People are actually positing as an ethical standpoint that Yumi is evil for not staying with the person who abducted her, imprisoned her, violated her mind, her core self, and was planning on doing things to her mind and body that I really don't even want to think about in detail right now. Because... she was forced to appeal to their compassion to escape?! 

Fantasy is not reality but when people take the fictional abuser's side in their real life opinions of what's right and wrong it's enraging and terrifying, I don't even know if it's actually any of the writing's fault, or just people being awful.

I do very much hope that the author keeps making games and art in general, and hope that my feedback about the implications of the writing aren't taken as accusations aimed towards them. I wish it wasn't somthing people had to be so careful about.

I don't know how to wrap this up really... I just needed to get my thoughts expressed, and the author did explicitly ask for feedback on the tone in the author's notes at the end.

It isn't evil for a rape victim to tell their captor what they have to to break free.

This game sounds really interesting but doesn't appear to be up currently :(

Loading times seem ok to me

Oh wow I fucking love this
Also ACABDEF

I love this so fucking much.

Cute!

I wish everyone could have a felicity

Really fun, an excellent addition to both the anti-capitalist necromancer and auto battler genres.

His continued existance is worrying. May he be kept from causing additional harm until his deserved annihilation.

I really like the concept and the art style, and knocking the jerks around is really fun! I don't think I'm going to be able to finish it though. The knights that are immune to fire breath and have weapons just can't be dealt with quicklly enough without taking damage as far as I can tell, the fire breath meter seems to have enough in it to take out about two/three enemies before needing to go back for nuzzles (love that mechanic it's so cute) which would be fine if it didn't take so many boops to get back to full, and at mid/late game most of the enemies on screen either can't be pushed off without taking damage or can't be pushed off at all.  I've done about 10 or so tries and It just feels so awful and sad to see the failure message over and over again that it's just not healthy for me to continue. To be clear this isn't a bad review, as I said the characters are adorable the concept is really good, simple and well executed, the art is adorable, and the gameplay is fun and isn't even too hard... I just can't fail the cute lesbiabs again

An interesting short story, and despite not really being long enough for more than one character with a few expressions to be shown, well done art. I also really appreciate the music and the distortion effect on the vocals. Since this is almost entirely story the rest of the comment below this is going to be very spoilery so I hope it's ok if I just put a gap here, if the dev/devs mind (or even see this) please let me know and I'll edit it to just end here.

SPOILERS BELOW


The main thing that grabs me though is just how awful the purple text character is to the protagonist. I don't know if it's intended as the focus of the story but it really drives home a theme to me of how brutal it is when oppressed people reach out to others of the same community and the worst happens and they simply find more abuse. 

She acts as if *she* has somehow been betrayed dispite yellow being the one going through somthing nightmarish. Treating her like somthing evil and wrong just because of things happening to her body outside of her control, this is a trans girl who finally found the courage to be with somone, to try and find others like her and fight against a world that wants people like us dead, that puts us through agony and terrifying threats to our lives to try and prevent us from control of our own bodies, and after suffering through and surviving all of that her body is ripped from her control again.  And instead of comforting her or even just fleeing, despite the fact that yellow is still herself and clearly has no intention of hurting her, purple fucking forces her out of an 8 story window at gunpoint.  My urge to offer this poor girl a hug a blanket and some tea is a credit to the quality of the writing. Or possibly me being an emotional mess. Probably both.

P.S. of course I typed this all up in a comment instead of a review and now itch.io won't let me paste it into one. Oops. Anyway gave it 5 stars.

We are treated like we are subhuman by those who kill and torture us. They want us to think that we deserve it, that we are lesser than them, that agony and death are all that await us, but when you have seen the vilest parts of humanity brand everything good, everything kind and beautiful, everyone you love as inhuman and demonic, if you can break free of the self loathing they've inflicted upon you, you realize that in a world controlled by evil, where being "human" is to be apathetic and bigoted, to abuse, exploit and slaughter everything and anyone they can, and if resisting that is inhuman, then fuck humans.

Is there any chance of it going up again at some point?

Hello! I'm attempting to play this in chrome but just after the title screen loads the screen goes black except for a message that says: "Error: Uncaught RangeError: Maximum call stack size exceeded (see JavaScript console for details)"   I know this game's been out for a while so if you don't have the time/energy to figure out what's going on that's fine, I can try on firefox and see if that works or download it or somthing, but I thought you should know. Your games are neat and so are you btw.

Beautiful. This feels like water, and love. I could try to give more constructive, deeper feedback but no better words come to mind and I'm tired.  <3

Nice little cozy twine game, very good for a first try. Transbians good. 5/5

Tagged as "Transgender" but drops a transphobic slur on the opening page, next page has options for configuring characters that continues use of the same slur as a seprate catagory from male and female.

I think this might be the point of the game and I'm just being dense but just in case I thought I'd mention that clicking on the ship just tells me to go check twitter or somthing again even when the text on the main screen says I'm ready. Either way a good addition to the perhaps unsurprisingly common number of games by trans people about different online identities and the various ways they relate to our current selves.

Only Portrait Prophecies can give one of the most "oh crap oh crap oh crap oh crap" inducing horror expiriences I've ever had in a video game that was actually pleasant and do so in the setting of a massive spaceship fueled by edging. 5/5

Yes! I'm very glad you enjoyed it, I'm not sure if it will be the final version, but I plan on adding to it for the jam this year.

I... I couldn't complete this game.I have never wanted to give somone in a video game a hug so much, and if I had some magical device that would let me complete a game I would use it on this one, not dark souls, not any triple A game, this one.  I made it to the... ninth horrible evil sack thing, I think?
I am still on the verge of tears after forcing myself away for the sake of my own mental health, I'll be ok, but I think this is one of the best peices of art in existance at conveying what it's like for people who don't know if they will be. Who are terrified they never will be. 

Ok, I'm just going to post this because as much as I want to write an entire essay about this game I doubt this is the place to do it.

Please keep doing what you're doing.
With love and admiration,
-Vorox

Neat! I haven't been able to find a way to "win" yet, but I did last a fairly long time.

P.S.  (also spoilers again sorry)
I just realized that I assumed the part where it fades to black after Smiles tells Jamie what's going on and then maxwell shows up was the ending, but it may not have been, I couldn't find a way to see anything else though, so if there's more, sorry I missed it.

(possible spoiler warning)
Oh dear gods... this is one of the best games I've played in ages, please keep doing what you're doing, the art is simple and wonderfully atmospheric, and I can't remember detailed pixel art this good in a story heavy game. Its fairly short compared to most other visual novels but you've packed so much character development into it that I allready want to hug every single kid there and GODS DAMN IT MAXWELL IF YOU HURT SAM JAMIE OR ANY OF THE OTHER KIDS AGAIN I WILL RIP WHATEVER SERVES AS YOUR ENTRAILS OUT WITH MY- ... ahem, excuse me, got carried away for a sec. Seriously though, if I wasn't so dehydrated right now I would have cried at the end. I should get some water or somthing. Anywayinshortthisgameisamazingifyou'rereadingthisandhavemoney throwitatthesegoodgameproducingentitiesweneedmoreinclusivegamesalsoJamieisawesomedidImentionjamieisawesome(She'sawesome)MAXWELLIFYOUHURTJAMIEI'LLFEEDYOUYOURSPLEEN-ok water and stopping typing times now you're all amazing <3

YEYEYEYEYEYEYEYEYEYEYEYEYEYEYEYEYEYE! Ye. <3