Bittersweet Birthday

Very engaging story, battle gameplay is fun and difficult (get good!). After playing for a couple of hours I just felt that I wanted to know more and more on what was happening. The music is on point too! I loved how the game encourages you to want to read all the dialogues to get more context for the story which its not usual and has its depth. If you like thrilling stories with mistery and depth, this game is for you.

This game is GREAT. Really really really great. I'm genuinely kind of upset and confused that this game seems to be getting slept on in such a major way, so I wanna just kinda gush (spoiler-free) about it here! Combat: This is gonna be the sparsest section, because I'm pretty easy to please with combat. It felt good, I like the system that's in place to increase/decrease difficulty, and it just felt very...learnable. There were a couple of fights I had to repeat multiple times, and never once did I feel like I was just bs'ing my way through, I was always catching onto mechanics intuitively over time. It felt very satisfying to play. Story: The story is a hell of a ride!! It's definitely very story-heavy, which I personally find to be a positive aspect. It has non-linear storytelling which, if you did try to sort out in a diagram, would probably look like a mess...but it never felt all too convoluted while playing through it—I feel like there were generally decent markers of the timeline that kept it pretty understandable. The atmosphere of the game hit really well with the old RPG maker horror game fan in me. It definitely understand what it's doing with its horror aspects, and it never felt cheap or too jumpscare-y. Everything is just done with so much intention, it comes together so beautifully. Writing: This game really hits a balance that I feel like I rarely see, where there was always some element of mystery driving me to want to know more, while also not trying to obscure things in overcompensated ways. Every guess I made that I got right felt satisfying and also never over-explained, while every one that I got wrong felt wildly interesting in a whole new way. As a result, the pacing felt generally good (especially if you just move on from the flashback sections if you start to wear yourself out haha, you have plenty of time to pick those back up later). I still am kinda shocked that I spent over 20 hours playing it. I also loved how the sci-fi "science" aspect was written. I feel like with a lot of stories with similar stuff, the climax will have some BS that is barely explained and you just kinda accept it for the emotion of the moment, but this had Both the emotion and the logic. It's just written in a way that's not too dense, but also doesn't treat the audience like an idiot who can't ever read a Definition. Art/Music: Wonderful stuff. The music was absolutely perfect for the atmosphere at any given moment. And the art!! The colors in this game are so stunning. The *use* of the colors for different meanings was also so so well done. The walk cycles/run animations and the extensive spritework was fantastic at building up the characters. Once again, it all just felt so beautifully intentional. Characters: Saving the best for last: the characters!! Oh my God, the character writing was done so so so well. Not to beat a dead horse, but the intentionality behind everything is Crazyyyy!!! There were so many moments where an observation I'd made about a character came to be addressed later on. For a short game with a decent amount of majors characters and a LOT of minor NPCs, this game still manages to make them feel rich and important. And for the major cast, I was just really impressed by how...important they all were? Like, at no point did I feel that any of them were being snubbed, or that anyone was stealing the limelight (and if one in particular did a little bit...well, it sure does get addressed :)!) It's just such a well-balanced cast. And I love them all. Anyhow, 10/10 game. There may be flaws (several minor typos, the game crashed a couple of times for me after long play sessions, and for some reason Steam thinks I impressively managed to spend 22 hrs in this game without ever earning an achievement lmao) but they feel so overpowered by the sheer love put into it. Here's to hoping more and more people find this game! 🙏

Definitely an interesting case. The battles are good and well thought out for the most part...but this isn't the main focus of the game, it's mostly story based. And it DO have a great story behind, many good plot points well used. However, it's a slow burn, it start slowly, and the last third is REALLY overly wordy, it love to hear itself talk...which is a shame because the ingredient of a good plot and good characters are clearly here, i just wish it was better paced. It's still worth a look, there's clearly good care put behind the game, just be prepared for alot of reading.