played oct 12th for rpgmaker october (finished oct 13th)
maybe not a surprise since i think this has a light cult status in japan, thanks to it winning one of those old ascii contests, but this game is legit so incredible to me. re-remembering as a disorienting and painful process, not just narratively for having to piece the story together on your own from the memories shown out of order, but thru gameplay goals shooting so far above any other story-centered no-battles rpgmaker game, maybe even adventure games in general. the mental gauge system adds such a cool dimension to exploration; carefully thinking out each route for how much damage youll take before you do it is key, every failure and reset driving home BD's fragile sense of herself. this is a game that will make you DRAW A MAP (try to add more detail wrt the inactive nodes and interactables in each scene than i did) and DO THE MATH and i fucking love it for that. on top of this such a confident sense for direction n really compellingly airy writing style for this time!! still thinking abt that ending too and how much ironically isnt said. having to figure out which of the many inactive nodes suddenly got turned on was a bit of a pet peeve n i didnt feel bad defaulting to the walkthru for those, but that feels so minor. sightly disappointed at how few imitators this seems to have inspired over the last couple decades, simply one of the most inventive showcases ive seen for what is possible in this engine. no doubt one of my favs for this month.
maybe not a surprise since i think this has a light cult status in japan, thanks to it winning one of those old ascii contests, but this game is legit so incredible to me. re-remembering as a disorienting and painful process, not just narratively for having to piece the story together on your own from the memories shown out of order, but thru gameplay goals shooting so far above any other story-centered no-battles rpgmaker game, maybe even adventure games in general. the mental gauge system adds such a cool dimension to exploration; carefully thinking out each route for how much damage youll take before you do it is key, every failure and reset driving home BD's fragile sense of herself. this is a game that will make you DRAW A MAP (try to add more detail wrt the inactive nodes and interactables in each scene than i did) and DO THE MATH and i fucking love it for that. on top of this such a confident sense for direction n really compellingly airy writing style for this time!! still thinking abt that ending too and how much ironically isnt said. having to figure out which of the many inactive nodes suddenly got turned on was a bit of a pet peeve n i didnt feel bad defaulting to the walkthru for those, but that feels so minor. sightly disappointed at how few imitators this seems to have inspired over the last couple decades, simply one of the most inventive showcases ive seen for what is possible in this engine. no doubt one of my favs for this month.