Very hard one to rate, this one. After finishing it, I came away with a very positive impression indeed, but the more I think about it the more cracks under the surface seem to appear.

In general, the gameplay was mostly fine, but felt underdeveloped in many places; lots of concepts get introduced and then abandoned before exploring their potential, and the inconsistent quality of some of the more experimental moments of the game make it feel a bit like a 'throw everything at the wall and see what sticks' approach. For the most part, nothing was so poor to detract from the game too much in my opinion, but I found a lot of the levels too big and empty, the camera too zoomed in, the player moved too slowly and there were quite a lot of instances of enemies or hazards attacking from offscreen.

What I enjoyed about the game more was everything around the gameplay. The story was decent; there are a few major plotholes and contrivances that stack up towards the finale, but the emotional beats are done fantastically well. I particularly like how the game is not afraid to make the characters (and by extension the players) witness some truly horrific things, and doesn't shy away from showing how these things affect them. The characters are definitely the best things about the game, and it does an excellent job of conveying emotion through nothing but text and very well done sprite animations.

Everything added together, I think this game is either average or fantastic, so I split the difference for the score!