This review contains spoilers
The review here will be a bit more personal, but I think that is important in what made this game resonate with me.
A story navigating grief and denial, lost childhood and walking a line between cherishing and being imprisoned by one’s past is a lot. I understand if this game’s presentation of it through the headspace isn’t necessarily what resonates with some people, but it did for me. I have an eidetic memory. I struggle a lot to let go of my childhood and memories of it, and have coped ridiculously poorly with that at times. Moments that now are a decade ago feel like merely yesterday for me, and that’s extremely difficult. During quarantine, I’d even said something horribly dangerous, along the lines of “I died the moment my childhood ended,” and holed up a lot, while battling psychosis that I told no one about. That was how poorly I coped, and so having this game present that, and show a friend group who truly want Sunny to heal, and to heal with him really resonates. My father passed away in March. I’ve struggled a lot with coming to terms with it. I holed up all summer. I’ve done nothing with my life in those five months. I graduated college, did my grad school classes, but I also deferred my in persons by a full year for my own mental health, and have basically confined myself to my room. So it’s a wake up call to play this. A game saying it’s okay to be sad, but that you’re not shouldering that alone, and showing what that bottling up does. Of course, the situation here differs from my own, and is fantasized, but it was relevant to me all the same. I saw myself in Aubrey’s bitterness with the world in the wake of Mari’s death, and obviously Sunny’s deep depression and reclusiveness and Basil’s dark thoughts. The game is something I needed, but definitely also something that hurt, if that makes sense. But I am grateful I played it when I did. I don’t know how if I’d have loved it as much as I did had I played it earlier like I had told myself I would earlier this year.
Yeah also I stole my new name from Aubrey so this game unironically helped me realize I’m trans lol.
A story navigating grief and denial, lost childhood and walking a line between cherishing and being imprisoned by one’s past is a lot. I understand if this game’s presentation of it through the headspace isn’t necessarily what resonates with some people, but it did for me. I have an eidetic memory. I struggle a lot to let go of my childhood and memories of it, and have coped ridiculously poorly with that at times. Moments that now are a decade ago feel like merely yesterday for me, and that’s extremely difficult. During quarantine, I’d even said something horribly dangerous, along the lines of “I died the moment my childhood ended,” and holed up a lot, while battling psychosis that I told no one about. That was how poorly I coped, and so having this game present that, and show a friend group who truly want Sunny to heal, and to heal with him really resonates. My father passed away in March. I’ve struggled a lot with coming to terms with it. I holed up all summer. I’ve done nothing with my life in those five months. I graduated college, did my grad school classes, but I also deferred my in persons by a full year for my own mental health, and have basically confined myself to my room. So it’s a wake up call to play this. A game saying it’s okay to be sad, but that you’re not shouldering that alone, and showing what that bottling up does. Of course, the situation here differs from my own, and is fantasized, but it was relevant to me all the same. I saw myself in Aubrey’s bitterness with the world in the wake of Mari’s death, and obviously Sunny’s deep depression and reclusiveness and Basil’s dark thoughts. The game is something I needed, but definitely also something that hurt, if that makes sense. But I am grateful I played it when I did. I don’t know how if I’d have loved it as much as I did had I played it earlier like I had told myself I would earlier this year.
Yeah also I stole my new name from Aubrey so this game unironically helped me realize I’m trans lol.