Reviews from

in the past


This review contains spoilers

Others can't understand.

It's hard to convey what I found so compelling about Momo's Diary. Perhaps it's because I've been having a pretty rough day today. Perhaps it's because it echoes something I've felt deeply with the journey into adulthood and growing with BPD in that friends who you haven't spoken with in a long time really truly do not understand the you you are now, only the you you were. Perhaps it's because I have been here before. Never at the point where I can't get out of bed, but definitely at points where I've felt I couldn't help myself anymore.

I find it hard to convey why I like this so much, though, because even though I resonate with it more than these other titles, it has a lot of the same things that made me dislike games such as Hello Charlotte and the Milk Bag duology. Games that I felt romanticized mental illness as much as they portrayed it accurately, to a particularly unhealthy extent in Hello Charlotte. There's something idealized about being a mentally ill little pretty doll. It's a fairly adorable way to be depressed. I'm not sure what's different about that than me taking umbrage with the girl in the Milk Bag games being a conventionally attractive anime girl.

Maybe it's only that she grows more and more resentful of her former friends as time soldiers on. When I graduated high school, I lost all the friends I had made throughout it. We never talk anymore, and when we do, I feel as if they understand me to be someone else entirely. The same thing with many online friends I've made. It's a very non-endearing trait for her to have. It's hurtful.

Nobody understands Momo, and she is hateful because of it. Sometimes I am too.

But I don't even understand myself.

electricity went out and I was listening to radiohead so it felt v appropriate to play this

“Is so prettyy so beautifull all the boys wants mee~ The mean girls hates me because of this!” feel like this everyday asf

rlly vibe w squishy moss’ stuff, def made by someone raised online in fringe twitter and neocities circles and who is obviously a deeply hurt person. love the dioramas they make, how every game is a beautiful collection of photographs. good stuff <3 don’t know if I can recommend unless ur like deep into traumacore aesthetics and gross and edgy imagery and stories but yas I love it and think it def has a reason to exist

personal dump ahead, feel free to skip this one ^_~
cw: vague game typical mentions of suicide and self harm, minor mention of gender dysphoria, minor spoilers

“No one really likes what I make, but I think that’s OK.
To create is my only smile, regardless.” ▷

i find as more time passes it becomes increasingly difficult to create a respectful, nongratuitous or exaggerated mental illness narrative in gaming. i don’t find the way my own brain speaks to me as very respectful either though. this little renpy title was released only around a year prior to this review, and i felt momo’s searing monologue and pleas were dangerously familiar during a particularly rough chapter of my mid to late 20s.

quite a lot is bad right now! i’m stuck presenting as a gender i don’t associate with in a meager retail assistant role, suffering customers who look at me like i’m a bug they’ve stepped on. i endure chronic muscular pain and poor circulation which leaves me barely recovered enough for my next shift. i bite back an intense anger that doesn’t feel like me, having to physically restrain myself from striking out against a wall. i’m creatively starved and have shamefully not drawn even a single sketch for weeks, contributing to my already passive guilt. “just draw for fun! just do it!” yeah, right.

it’s alright though, i guess. i’m medicated again on a comfortable dose, speaking with a therapist fortnightly, and trying to do what i love in the simplest way possible, like playing these games and writing these silly reviews!! like momo, there are people who love me, but my (her) brain doesn't take much effort to forget these wonderful things, of course.

it’s easy enough to say i saw myself in this cute doll, far from the first person to i’m sure. To echo Archagent’s sentiment from her own wonderful review you should totally check out, there’s something idealised about being a mentally ill doll, wearing a cute little dress with bright anime eyes and thin ball joint arms and legs. this allure is heightened in eve’s dreamlike vignette digital photography she (assumed pronoun, please feel free to correct!) posts to her twitter. plastic arms manipulated into a cheer, to brandish an item, or perhaps legs bent to sit upon something soft in introspection. these limbs are not my responsibility. nothing is.

12 years ago i almost fell just like momo did. i relapse, grow frustrated at those who care about me simply because they do, and overindulge in the worst in me. but i’d like to believe there’s joy and light out there, and that none of this pain was for nothing.

thanks for reading my diary! you should read momo’s too☆

Feels weird to rate this because it's less a game and more of an art piece someone created... a painfully honest exploration of depression and suicide, I almost felt voyeuristic at times but it did get me thinking about my own mental health so that was good.