I was recommended to play this by a friend, and the game's good. I personally suffer from a pretty wily case of anxiety and this hit home on many levels. I shouldn't have looked at the reviews here because they kinda spoiled quite a bit of its magic, but it was an interesting 11 minutes regardless. The game's definitely a unique VN with a clear stylistic and narrative vision that I have nothing but respect for.

However, the game is terribly short. Brevity's good and all, but I beat this little jaunt in 11 minutes. That on its own wouldn't be bad. The game could just be a free demo, but it is a standalone game you have to pay for. Given it's a really cheap standalone game you have to pay for, but the length is definitely an issue.

8/10 - Relatable, Creative, Short.

The sequel is clearly superior to this, but after yet another unbelievable shitty day in a long string of unbelievably shitty days, this little visual novel is the only source of genuine reassurance that I've been able to find. I am capable, more importantly, deserving, of good things. I am capable, more importantly, deserving, of making good things. People go through the same things that I do. The world continues to spin. There is so much bad and there is still good too, as long as I have to will to reach out and feel the warmth of someone else's hand. I am capable of grinding to a halt, of being.

I've played a lot of games about mental health, where you play as someone that has to fight the embodiment of depression/psychosis/anxiety/etc. (GRIS, Celeste, Hellblade, etc)

Never once have I played a game where you play as the mental illness.

It's a disturbing kind of power trip. You realize that this girl is in your hands, but even you are limited in what you can affect. Your cruelty and/or benevolence is still constrained by whatever the girl is capable of thinking or experiencing. Even as a life debilitating condition, you are not all powerful. Easily one of the most thematically intriguing games I have played.

Highly recommend, it'll take you 20 minutes to finish and it's a mere $1 USD at full price.

lol fuck this game and fuck you if you like it. dead serious, there's nothing worth treasuring about this pro-abuse, pro-gaslight, pro-manipulation story that legitimately thinks the prioritization of a shitty, sociopathic bitch's life is worth more than, or just as viable as, the lives and safety of an entire town full of innocent people. Chloe Price is the absolute worst, the Vriska Serket of video gaming, a megalomaniacal and self-interested monster of a person that never gets the comeuppance she truly deserves due to the game giving her way too much sympathy, bias, and empathy. Just because she's an alt girl that dyes her hair doesn't magically absolve her of being a massive piece of shit, and Maxine is such a doormat of a protagonist that she also never properly brings Chloe to task for being the biggest bitch in Oregon. Since Max is the soulless audience surrogate, her attitude on Chloe is supposed to reflect our own, which means the game expects us to care and go along with Chloe's manipulative antics.

When the game isn't battering you with its terrible characters or its rancid dialogue, it refuses to properly explain or clarify how Max's powers work, leading to a long grocery list of confusing moments and plotholes and shit that just doesn't make sense. The time travel bullshit adds nothing to the overarching narrative, and that's not even getting into how the game approaches its 'moral choices', or rather, how it doesn't approach those supposed 'choices' you can make because all of them will be invalidated by the end. It doesn't matter if Kate Marsh kills herself or not, because her survival actually depends entirely on the final choice in the game, a choice that renders all other moments where you're made to make a "choice" completely irrelevant.

god this game is fucking bad. What sucks is that it kinda had the chance to be good. Take away the time-travel powers, make Kate the deuteragonist instead of Chloe and make Chloe the main villain that tries to sabotage and manipulate Max and Kate's friendship in the hopes of keeping Max all to herself, and bam, you have a much clearer and healthier cautionary narrative about the horrors of toxicity and gaslighting. Make Chloe the JD / Gary Smith to Max's Veronica / Jimmy Hopkins and the story instantly works a lot more. But, no. Chloe is beauty and the beast all in one, except she isn't even all that hot, she looks like trailer park skank garbage, and she's more than a beast, she's the fucking Bom from Can of Worms. wretched game. amazing how inFamous: Second Son approached the exact same 'indie alt punk aesthetic set in the rainy northwest' template and did it far better and far more timelessly than Life is Strange tried to a year after Second Son came out. grgnrhgrrnghrngh