A mixed bag. I think this game is probably worth playing if you want a milder take on institutional pressures and how they effect subjective worth, more intense versions of that tale can be found in harsher portrayals like the No One Can Ever Know, the christian trauma of We Know The Devil, and the wandering inadequacy found in Life Tastes Like Cardboard . Holy Ghost Story instead glides for a more tonally mundane relationship to such insecurities, giving a possible tonal alternative to the ideas of such suffering as this usually climactic limit-experience that breaks through to some comfort. Though it should be mentioned I highly recommend prioritizing those works if you can handle them.

That's why it's actually worth talking about seriously, since a more impressionist watercolor portrait of these issues is not seen much around. In theory, this game is really adding something totally profound and useful to the table by taking such subject to the ghost story, as it allows us to view the problems more in relationship to an abstracted past than a post-traumatized present. It allows the reader to 'refresh' from the sins of a bad grade or a failed semester. Yet at least in my view it's held back by scattered execution and sophomoric presentation.

The best parts here are in how word choice and sentence presentation reaffirms the overall theme of being too paralyzed by your own mental shortcomings to push forward.

In particular, that theme of guilt-bearing insecurity is found through how sterile a lot of the text part of the presentation is. For example the scroll of the text is at such a pace where you will be outpaced by the scroll itself while still feeling its effect. Then, the text itself is in a unfamiliar font style, what the font checking system brought up to me as blackboard, apparently mainly used for formulas in textbooks. The effect of these two operations in tandem is like looking at "letters grouped together but making no words that looked like anything to me", to quote the ghost girl protagonist Siobhan. This overall translucent makes it feel like the reader is constantly fazing in and out of focus with the text and this is a great effect genuinely as it connects well to the feelings of perpetuity. These are reinforced further by the use of classical piano riffs in the empty classroom sequence giving a hauntological 'failed learning' element added intensity. Classical music is a go to for studying and learning, but if you've ever actually tried it then like me you probably found it far too disorienting to actually keep on for very long. By using the simplified melodies that repeat rather than move through the whole movement, that hauntological element of being trapped in the past is there. Now people have almost entirely technologically adjusted to using electronic ambience or lo fi hip hop instrumentals, giving these orchestrations even more of an antiquated effect. It really captures that reality that this is in part about trying to make peace with the hauntology of past pressures. Of a tradition and feeling of learning that you may have been subject to and is familar but is not entirely your own. This is Siobhan's story, and she makes damn well sure to remind you of that at more than a few points in the narrative.

This effect on it own already produces one problem, the overall disjointedness and passiveness means that you're not going to be taken in by Siobhan's tale all at once and your initial relationship will probably be one of irritation before settling in properly. She just starts talking to you as if there's no trouble at all, and the sentences flow gives a sense of tedium and impatience that isn't really settled evenly in advance. While narratively fitting, it also relies on a profound amount of reader persistence that is likely exacerbated when considering the games weaknesses of giving the average player nowhere else to focus their attention.

For example the visual presentation in general falls much further with how rudimentary the rest of the visual information is. Siohban has her hand stuck permanently ajar her hip, with no other change in character gestures. The school space itself is so generic I was constantly wondering in the back of my mind whether it was using the same environments as Doki Doki Literature Club (altho the Prologue and Resolution settings were stellar). A lot of the dialogue is flat and there's no striking vocabulary or unique word choices for the reader to weigh. I bring this up not to be mean spirited but instead to point out that a visual novel is great for giving information in a way that distracts from the weight of the tone, the eye candy is meant to give readers something to latch onto in distraction, for particularly literary works, the point of the visual novel format is to capitalize on these distractions to such an extent as to cause the reader not to feel irritated by the oppression. Finally the 'hideki anno' style title card transitions read for me as just abruptly distracting, and just felt like a homage. Sure, the dreamlike fragmentation and the feeling of being shattered into the next piece of text is neat, but it was ineffective to me due to that minimalism.

I'm very sympathetic to the addressed reasons why the work is as rudimentary as it is, mostly being as Woodaba mentions in their own retrospective, to quote:

"Anxiety prevented me from reaching out to talented artists and musicians I know about commissioning stuff that would have helped give the game an actual visual identity to call it's own, and I don't want that to happen next time.".

The only reason I want to call attention to it at all, is because more visual novel readers weirdly don't even seem to give a shit about this quality at all in how they overall feel about a work, instead moving for philosophical or moral critique. In my mind, Milk Outside a Bag Outside a Bag is probably the best in terms of maximizing its visual information and transitions in ways that help the reader give focus away from the brutality of the work, and to no fucking avail in that case. At best you'd get an aside of admission 'its pretty' before reveling in a critique of the abstract representation of mental illness as being shallow. For a lot of people it seems the overall effect of Visual Novels matters mainly to them only how much they liked the characters and how 'shallow' they thought the thematic undertones are. This is something I know that I won't individually change at all, to the point that calling it out is probably just grandstanding. It's just hard to convey how intensely frustrating and reductive that approach can be to progress in the arts.

Due to a lack of focus given to the mechanical or formal aspects of the medium, people instead move to needless moralism, and the fact is Visual Novels as a genuine medium are not taken seriously so it makes sense why there's not a large push for those nuances. It's not until we actually start respecting the medium and even seeing these niche indie projects as worthy of critical value will we be able to see a reasonable dent in the isolation here. So as not to soapbox too much more myself, I think the best way to view this work is as an early public manuscript and prototype for getting the bearings with renpy. Otherwise it's almost entirely hard to justify the merits of it being in the visual novel form when a purely text driven system like twine would suit it 'better'. That's not to say I think it shouldn't have happened though, I think its important to ask ourselves 'would this games story and presentation fit better in x engine/medium' and then realize that if the answer to that is 'yes' and the game is an early work, its probably intended to springboard the creator into better familiarity with the engine in question than be a fully fleshed masterwork. Without that heuristic, it's easy to be unnecessarily cruel to any text that passes you by. That said I think it's still acceptable to let such distinctions affect overall opinion.

With that said there's also a lot of typos to the point the strains the immersion people tend to have with typos, which I'm quite surprised have been so overlooked by others. Last time typos were mentioned about a work that was written by a regular of the site (Post-Night Devil Disclosure) the author went back and cleaned up the typos. So maybe that's why people are not even mentioning it, because they realize such a complaint would seem dated? Nonetheless, they are frequent enough to make for a very jagged ride.

A part of me is unsure about how to feel on how choices are handled. The first 2 dont matter and the last one matters a lot, but comes as a complete refutation to siobhan's powerful characterization of self agency. However overall the character portrayal of siobhan is great, it shows her as a combination of plain and yet feisty, a combination typical I tend to see in christians I've interacted with. I do think it would have been more effective in terms of the descriptive elements if a spare adjective was thrown in now and then.

Regardless, I look forward to Woodaba's next venture here if it comes to pass. I think they have a good understanding of the foundations outlined. It's always cool to see this process of game creation demystified to as it creates the conditions for others to try it out for themselves.

I will say though for anybody reading, and I quite honestly do not mean this as a slight to this game as this is just something I've been thinking about reading obscurity projects, but if you make a game and even if you publish it publicly, its completely optional to add it to this database. This probably seems painfully obvious but if you don't upload it, odds are nobody else will either, and so you don't have to have this looming fear of having your passion projects judged by online bullies in advance. I've seen people upload internet films they've made to letterboxd and then regret it so I feel like its worth noting that immortalizing the work in a public database is optional but likely difficult to remove after including it.

Similarly, Do not add Woodaba's or any other user on here's games to IGDB without their permission. Not everything needs eyeballs, and your +1 to the games you've played is not that worth the potential detriments there. I hope I'm not stepping a line by mentioning the importance of that here.