yeah man exactly

honestly this didn't read as a cutesy "baby's first anxiety" metaphor to me i'm not sure what people are talking about. this seemed way more to me like a fond and endeared simplification of the topic from someone with lots of experience, for the sake of making an interactive story out of it.
i do have my own issues with the metaphor. like, i dislike many interpretations of mental illness that characterize it as a separate entity that acts completely separately to you rather than a part of you that cannot exist without the rest of you. however, i think that this is a unique case, because while the "anxiety wolf" type of art has rubbed off on me wrong before, the way the wolf is characterized here as having a history alongside the main character lends credence to the idea that the two are inseparable and that the situation is nobody's fault now. i like that.
moreso than that, i really appreciate the decision to make the wolf the player character. i don't think i've ever seen a take on this metaphor where you are directly asked to put yourself into the shoes of the anxiety monster. it's a really cool subversion of the idea and in my opinion a really effective way to immediately force the player to reassess how they feel about the anxiety in question. like, it's not just for shock or something that you're asked to pick the answers that would scare you the most, to play as your own anxiety, it's specifically so that you'll be in the headspace for the final act, wherein our main characters reconcile and come to understand eachother. i don't see that very often and it was really refreshing.

i think this also happened to align well with my own experience with anxiety. anxiety is not new to me by any means and i'm not just starting out in healing, but i saw a lot of my own experience reflected in this. i thought the second party was the best part. i don't know if it occurs in all playthroughs, but it did in mine. having a chapter where the wolf is the one in the right and using that to illustrate the experience of doing something you know you shouldn't and are afraid to do just to prove the fear wrong was impressive. i genuinely got a little misty-eyed saying "thank you" to the wolf for the first time, because i remembered how it felt to thank my panic disorder for the first time. to just say "that was really unnecessary and painful. but thank you for being so concerned." felt like lifting a weight off of my own chest, and i felt that for our protag, too. maybe my opinion is skewed by this fact, but with the game being so intentionally personal to its player, i'm going to cut myself some slack for it this time.

all in all, i liked it a lot. it reminded me of my own experiences in a way i thought was fun and nice, and used its admittedly common metaphor in a way that i didn't find obnoxious. which is a breath of fresh air. good game