a wonderfully playful mystery.

i went in expecting something a little bit more high risk and time management-y, but came away content with the more linear structure, as missing any shred of information about the characters or world was unacceptable to me.

a special thank you to Kobayashi's bold and expressive character artwork, and to Iwasaki's hauntingly sincere score, both massively contributing to and complimenting Honjo's vibe.

take control of your fate and play this game! i hope to cross paths with the Storyteller once again someday soon...

This adorable game starts very strong with a decent premise, interesting-at-first characters, and cute but fun management sim. You progress for a while, and at some point the game blurs over into trying to be both a management sim and a story rich game, but kind of failing to be both as the two components of the game stop being intertwined. The end of the game also has lots of bloat, where you're just waiting for time to pass so you can check guests in and out, when there's nothing else to do. Also shout out to the worst cooking minigame I've ever played in my life.

Despite me ragging on this game though, I can't really rate it lower than "eh". There is an absolute gem of an idea somewhere in here, it just gets lost along the way. If you were to stop playing the story part of the game once Barbara asks you for 50000G, and not grind out all the buildings to maximum completion, you're probably better off for it. I'm hoping that the game does update, because I wish I'd seen more from what I played.