Very unique game that cleverly uses the video game medium to tell a personal story with dreamlike and evocative elements. I really appreciate games of this type, very short and designed as a very direct form of expression by individual authors who know how to create and open up a personal space for others to explore, and I think a lot can be learned on a human level from the kind of connection that can be established with works of this type.
A very interesting, strange, ethereal piece of speculative autofiction. I think the nature of its narrative has some particular synchronicities and some conflicts with the experience of actually playing through it. The interface it uses, an mix of buttons and screens that call to mind old computers, feels necessary to construct a stronger fourth wall than gaming typically has. The aesthetic too, calling back to the earliest kinds of 3D graphics, adds to that separation a bit. There’s so much distance here, between everyone and everything involved in this story — and maybe that’s the point.
The problem with experimental visual novel-esque games like this is that theyre often just trying to make a 3D comic - the mechanics are obstacles in the way of making audio visual dioramas and are not part of the storytelling in any meaningful sense. The dev is a professor and teaches classes with projects like this and yet does not think thoughtfully about the most unique element of the medium.
It's okay. The environments look cool and it can be fun to explore and go through the areas, but the plot starts to feel confused as it goes from learning about your father in his memories to things involving Japanese politics and cultural identity which left me confused and didn't really care about by the end. It's a decent game but it's not the best from this studio.