As someone who's a fan of a certain folktale and tabletop roleplaying game riffing off of it, this was a lovely and creepy take on the story of (Spoiler - click to show)Bluebeard.
The letter-writing mechanic is simple but clever, and the writing itself holds together in a subtly creepy fashion. You are primed to the idea that this is one person trying to write and rewrite these letters to her sister-- that feeling contributes to the obsession and distress present in the story.
I do feel like more build-up could've been present regarding the attic, but it was a 4 hour game so, as-is, it works.
This was a trippy game. It felt raw and beautiful in its depiction of ugly emotions and behaviors, in a way that reminded me of porpentine’s neon overstim nightmares. A wondrous headache of an experience. The art and effects were stunning aesthetic glitchy eyesores. Invoked all the right feelings, and they were all horrid and gross. I only played once, which was more than enough for me.
When I use words like eyesore, gross, headache, ugly, I use them with the impression that the author would be pleased by these descriptions. If the author is not, then I wish to assure them that I use these words in a positive and impressed way.
An odd little tidbit of a game that didn’t feel quite complete, but was interesting nonetheless. I liked the little poems and word snippets written by the author. (Spoiler - click to show)Is there nothing you can do regarding the lizardfolk utterly destroying your facility? Is that just how the game always ends? I wanted to wrestle with the moral questions it started to raise, but I didn’t have the chance to.
I think the thing that quirked my mouth up the most about this game is the dead-on impression of ChatGPT and AI like it, from the memory core. I kinda wanted to see more of that.