i play freeware games

i get most of my freeware from terry cavanagh and weird fucking games

ZONNEBLOEM - soulsoft - 01/10

(R18) short yuri vn made for the vn cup. came second. really pretty art - lots of individual cgs, fully rendered bgs, pretty painterly style, and there was a unified colour palette throughout that really made the hazy summer setting pop. the girls were cutely stylised miscellaneously animal girls - nothing specific, but it let them do cute tail emoting. the general scene was set very well, and the mc's anxieties about being attracted to her friend were well realised and natural without being trite Kyaah But We're Both Girls trash. refreshing. actual text was acceptably written but punctuation started to break down (either a severe overuse of ellipses or missing punctuation entirely) when the girls were getting more flustered/the r18 content happened. it's annoying! it wasn't pushed far enough to be a stylistic choice to indicate breathlessness or carelessness, it was just... we didn't spellcheck this section because we were embarrassed about it. it ALMOST works with the setting/vibe this is going for but not enough to escape my wrath!!!
also, and this is maybe a more personal issue, but i get a bit bored/frustrated with works by westerners taking random elements of japanese culture (in this case, a small roadside shrine near a church, and it being set in a public bath) for no reason. nothing inherently wrong by it, but with this specifically i get the vibe the creators Only consume anime and are lacking other interests. to be fair to the authors of this - artstyle was clearly not Anime, and it's not a non-japanese exclusive thing; i also hate when japanese anime creators make anime clearly only inspired by anime that they watched when they were impressionable and what recently came before it. it feels... incurious. i like curiosity. it's what pushes me away from a lot of western vns in general.

#doubleblush - teamfreshnewlove2022 - 01/10

another short (30min) yuri vn for vn cup. PG. came second in the special mentions. I liked this WAY more than i expected to! it's nvl style dialogue over second life screenshots, and the dialogue approach is broadly, uh. chat style from the era that second life was popular. xd nwn T~T hieeeeee :3. mari comes off a little more modern - she fr-s and ish-es. i roll my eyes at this sort of thing generally, and frankly id chainblock someone for typing like this on twitter, but combined w the bgs, and the way the characters shared things they liked and changed environments, it really captured the charming feel of meeting someone new in a mid-00s mmo. hearkened back to a purer time, fearlessly, lovingly. it wasn't meta, which i'm glad about - it felt like a grounded story almost translated through the experience of playing second life instead of a story In Or About second life. if it was just the chat style it'd be beyond annoying, and if it was super serious over those screenshots i might think it amateurish, but combined it was a true statement of intent. music was great too - all made by the devs, very era-appropriate, very midi (positive). actual plot and romance was sweet and simple and about overcoming intimacy trauma, and the characters charming, and the jokes landed.

A.S. Only - gg noni - 01/10

(r??18???) again, short yuri vn for vn cup. for want of a better description, i got anne hathaway erotic mouthscaped. not technically r18 but deals with such bizarre, abstract fetishism that i feel like it should be r25 on principle. striking, tense, surreal, fascinating, exhilarating. i liked that the character and bg art were also quite abstract, leaving you to unravel the alien bodies yourself - you have to sit with the thoughts more when they come less easily. There was something... interesting in the way the perspective character, Gila, processed Hatchet's unusual philosophy - I'm starting to realise what she means, but the thought seems so much larger in her mind than in her translation of it to words - it felt very representative of the way the vn and also Hatchet washed her philosophy over Gila and the reader. The way Gila sort of almost wanted more traditional physicality at times, but this is pushed aside by the way Hatchet almost uses her as a vector for experimentation with a transhuman body that is so different to her own. How this is factored through the fact they're strangers and are struggling to learn about each other, but they know more about each other than they let on, through voyeuristic internet stalking. Despite the setup and payoff being difficult, they're both happy in this terrifying, pure sensory arrangement where they teach each other new perspectives. this probably makes as much sense as the vn itself.
few typos, but they didn't bother me much like they did the back half of zonnebloem. when you're telling me about a woman who wants to make another woman a sewer i don't think some missteps in the form is going to affect my understanding of or respect for the content - you either buy in and trust it immediately, or you don't at all.

CHIRK - dogmasque - 03/10

yuri vn for the vn cup. hour and a half, perhaps. black and white photos, with black and white line drawings of girls with animal ears on top, with black and white text on top. NVL. hard to see, sometimes. the bgm is often gentle acoustic guitar, hissing and spitting. I don't want to talk about specifics, but it's adolescent, neurodiverse chuuni realised perfectly, respectfully, bluntly. it's difficult.

Walk In The Sun - becky / gg8473 - 03/10

played too many vn cup yuri vns today and im losing things to say about them. need to play a shitty platformer or something. didnt like this one as much as the others. appreciated the ireland setting and nokia aesthetic - far more relatable to my experiences than americana - older punk girl i want to impress is also far more relatable to my experiences. writing fine, characters realised well. i just feel like it didn't have enough flair to get away with the trite 'you have multiple of the same, negative, options' dialogue choices? the auto-forwarding text to indicate stressed, racing thoughts? doki doki literature club just monika lookin ass. shame, really, because vns are a really good format for unreliable narrators and difficult choices, and it feels bad to say i dislike a one-man indie one because of it, but it did just feel. predictable. and the last 3 i played weren't. i guess when i play indie games or vns or whatever i want more experimental approaches, outside of the constraints of commercial game making, and i almost don't want to play a game that is broadly Successful like this one is. the edges are all smoothed off. op's twitter display name is currently 'remake this game but with yuri' and that's how i feel - like this is remade from something already there, successful, but with nothing different about it in the end. it has nothing i find interesting to say, or at least, nothing i care to listen to.

i want to hear that again - haoliao - 04/10

i adored this. such an evocative little thing. it's a 'music player'. it's a platformer about a little bunny. it's also maybe kind of edgeplay? you climb up some platforms, reach a part where you can't see the next platform, and leap of faith off, landing in the lake beneath - and underwater you discover you can hear music. and your little bunny smiles as it floats to the surface, peaceful, listening. you can't control it while it rises. but the music is cut off when you can breathe again, and you want to hear that again. so you travel forward, finding higher peaks, and rocks to put in your backpack, slowing you down, but weighing you down for your jumps; so you can stay underwater longer. whether or not this act is positive or dangerous is up to your interpretation. i've been playing a lot of sonic lately, so once i started getting the rocks i got worried little bunny wasn't going to have enough oxygen and that the music was going to get replaced with sonic_drowning.ogg. i kept anxiously looking at the top of the screen waiting for the sky to appear in case it didn't make it in time.

it felt like an act of self harm to me, of getting closer and closer to an edge of sanity - the way the rocks slow you down and the climbs get higher makes it feel like you're really going out of your way to... not die, but get close to it, or at least to isolate, to desperately find peace and beauty in danger. i don't think this is implied by anything within the game, though, as there's nothing audiovisual to escape from. i also think it's interesting that the first platforms you climb are abstract lines but the last ones are a more clearly defined mountain and bridge, it feels like this concept is crossing into reality. the bridge goes to nowhere, though - a structure placed by other thrill/peaceseekers? i liked that when you jump off the last bridge with 5 rocks you sink so far you can see what appears to be pyramids. a sense of discovering something new about the mundane world through this simple, visceral act. i like when you hit the water your rocks scatter and you have to wait for them to surface before you can take another shot at jumping - you have to sit in silence, listening to nothing but the nature sounds - it's really well paced, meditative. lonely, maybe.
the music is really pretty, too. you're right, i do want to hear that again.

wake up - haoliao - 04/10

lol. made me laugh when i realised what was up. nice little thing, prompted me to think about the meaning of 'start' in games. the weird in-between after you power on your console and before you press that start button. demo reels... do demo reels still exist...?

cora - brwnsteel - 11/10

you know it folks! short yuri vn! r...15? girl walks through snow consulting and relying upon her 8ball to guide her. the desolate, desperate vibe combined w dreamlike metaphorical setting and encounters made this one pretty good, despite my wincing at the regular typos. art simple but pretty - delicately flowing lines and shapes.

halleys comet - sleepy project - 11/10

yuri vn cup special mention category first place winner. this is outsider art if it was actually bad. like it's genuinely not good art. it's irredeemably illegible. if i write anything more on the subject i'm going to get angry

END OF VERSE 23,194,973,137 - xavoneir/grey leander - 11/10

yuri vn cup. liked this one, but i'm a sucker for immortality stories with a dash of gender, and careful, deliberate prose. simple bw vector graphics. an immortal has to repay a debt to a fellow immortal they hated, because said immortal became a god, and the debt is to fulfill a request by a mortal human who simply wants to give them love. it's a nice rumination on artistic inspiration and drive. i think it probably could have dropped the kaomoji for the human chara though, wasn't really bringing anything to the table.

i'd look better with angel wings - yuri & ruinedpowers - 11/10

yuri vn cup. i dont know how to feel about this one... nothing particularly wrong with any of the presentation, although i felt the art/music/writing on the boring side. overall plot is the kind of thing i really go for, but in this it feels um. pathetic? almost insulting? don't want to get into the specifics about how i personally relate to it but i felt it was really embarrassing to read such a blatant power fantasy. like the protagonist was some acne-ridden isekai fan with an oppai tshirt who looks at the camera and goes 'I'm a hikikomori i want to die i wish i was like those characters in my Light Novels i have One Friend!' and then they get whisked away by their online gf to heaven and they have sex and they have a heart to heart with their own body to resolve their body image issues and then they become a hot furry. its just...it's completely delusional. debilitatingly teenaged. i can't stomach this sort of thing at all unless it takes a step back from reading like your self-actualisation therapy homework - either by abstracting the characters by changing the setting or via superior aesthetic delivery. i have a feeling the intent was to make an inclusive isekai but it completely missed the mark by being as blunt as a sledgehammer - definitely exacerbated due to the short length of the game, but i think in this case the problems are inherent to the concept and middling overall skill level. it is - and i say this with the full weight of the word upon me - Cringe.

Akasha Dreams - Prairieland Planet - 12/10

yuri vn cup. about internet dependency and religion. really cool art and setting, great music curation, i really liked the characters, the relationships and themes felt fleshed out. i don't... know how i feel about it being explicitly Memes though? it's occasionally grating but i did think the jokes landed - it doesn't go for like, deliberate Chatspeak per se but instead each character has a kind of hyper exaggerated casual style with occasional smileys. it does actually work to shorthand their personalities and make it a smooth, funny read that reigns itself in when needed and manages to hit its emotional beats. i think...it doesn't come off as tonally inconsistent or halfassed, but i'm finding it hard to explain why. i think it would be worse if the casual text were only in the online scenes, even if that seems like it would be the appropriate route. if it were a full game it would be tiring fast tho. i have been trying to rate these on their own merits but i think 1) the tonal whiplash and actual form of the writing is more successful than dll and 2) the discussion of escapism is far more interesting and realistic than i'd look better with angel wings

good morning is a social construct - dreamscometrue softworks - 12/10

#yuri vn cup #girlslove yeah this ones good actually

Blink - Cameron H - 14/10

short metroidvania-y puzzle platformer where every time you blink you're teleported to a different part of the map. also all the text is in qr codes. really fascinating thing, i really enjoyed it - the gradual reveal of mechanics through experimentation and qr code reading was really fun, it's nice to play a game that's deliberately dealing in obscurity and how those mechanics tie into the desolate tone and storytelling. i'm finding it hard to talk about but i think there is...a pleasant synchronicity between blinking in-game and turning away from the screen to pick up your phone and look elsewhere? wiiu ass mechanic. i like that because your character will blink automatically you're forced to really rush, even though there's no real consequence for doing so. feels like research, translation, using your magic encyclopedia rectangle. i'm also interested in the narrative tie between - mild narrative spoilers - a curse by a king who is clearly interested in surveillance, and using your phone to take pictures and - mild mechanic spoilers - the way you don't teleport when you're underground and therefore narratively away from his sight and land. a very well-considered game. graphics lovely and simple, music good if a short loop, sfx/audio... a bit strange - uncomfortably breathy - but unique, and i got used to it quick. i haven't played it yet, but i wonder if it's inspired by tunic? took me about 25min, but people in the comments took like an hour...

hazels - Basil Friday - 16/10

yuri vn cup! this ones nice... a blind japanese girl meets her canadian gf for the first time. it's not particularly technically impressive - visuals are (appropriately) sparse, music is plain royalty free kind of stuff, writing is quite blunt and has a decent amount of typos - but it's such a gentle, honest story. felt like a real care in how it presents the emotions of its protagonist.

heaven knows you - drinkrust/en zu - 16/10

yuri vn cup. ehhhhhh its fine. i didnt hate it but it was missing something that made me look past the bits that annoyed me - poor art, weird clash of voice and setting, therapy plot. setting was cute and the characters were well realised though. nice to see Fantasy Yuri.

mystery cat - blake - 16/10

yuri vn cup. yeah!!!! woo!!!!!! hypercard vn about catgirl being a lab rat!!! really incredible character art and a really funny narrative voice. unfortunately unfinished but i really liked what i played of it. the mystery of the setting is really fun

Augmentinel - Simon Owen - 16/10

the game's free, but i wonder if 'free remake of 80s commerical puzzle game The Sentinel' really comes under this blog's remit? either way, i wanted to write about it, and this is my only space for it. let me hyperfixate for a second.

i have a bizarre fascination with 98's PSX/PC game Sentinel Returns. i played it on an handed down (no magazine) demo disc as a kid, and the terrifying graphics and completely abstract gameplay (and that Carpenter soundtrack!) just stuck somewhere in my pre-teen mind. i bring sentinel returns up a lot. it's a touchpoint for me when i think about Culture Experiences That Changed Me, especially in terms of game literacy and youth. i've brought up Unity Games disparagingly in the past, but as genres and engines have solidified, and how i've gotten older and wiser, i feel there's very little opportunities comparative to the experience of trying to learn an abstract game from scratch. the games news cycle contributes to knowing everything about a game before it comes out, and there's a stronger delineation between 'aaa' games and smaller titles (playing sentinel returns and other shit like, idk, kurushi? on the same console i used to play metal gear solid 1 or final fantasy 7 is definitely a sticking point for the way i treat tech advancements and console generations. i was playing these at the same time i played famiclones and flash games. today's equivalent would be phone games, roblox, and the occasional viral freeware, i guess.). it feels like there's no space to sort of... stumble across something and have to engage with it on its own merits anymore. even in areas like roblox where this could feasibly happen, the engine is standardised, and it's far easier to compare it to its peers. i suppose i - like many other people my age in the current intersection of tech and culture - am nostalgic for a time when i could be truly surprised, and in the case of sentinel returns, shocked and scared. this feeling definitely has a hand in why i have this blog to begin with.

this week i was reading an old blogpost by bennett foddy where he namedropped the sentinel, causing me to instantly run to find out if i could actually play the original sentinel - and i subsequently found this remake project. finally getting to play the game that's sort of haunted me for 20 years...
sentinel returns is a mess of disgusting horror textures - red skies, landscape withered and barren, and unknowable, ritualistic objects somewhere between flesh and rock. but the sentinel is very bright. checkerboard landscape, lowpoly trees and boulders with only 2 colours, and the sentinel itself is a birdlike totem made of red and black triangles. it's from before textures were possible! it seems kind of weird to make the sequel to a plain puzzle game into a horror game, but...despite the simple graphics, the core gameplay of the sentinel is so terrifying that the decision to throw Carpenter at it makes complete sense. I'll explain, because nobody fucking knows about the sentinel:
you navigate the world in first person. a level is a grid where every square is of a varying height, with hills and valleys. the sentinel itself sits on the highest point. your goal is to reach it. you do not 'move' on this grid in a traditional way. you place a 'robot' down with R and use Q to transfer your consciousness into this new robot. your previous robot continues to stay on the map. this costs an energy resource. you can increase your energy by absorbing objects on the map - trees, boulders, your previous robots, enemies, the sentinel - as long as you're high up enough that you can see the top of the square the object is sitting on. The sentinel is also looking to absorb energy. upon its high peak, it slowly rotates, looking for and absorbing anything more interesting than a tree. if it spots you, it starts to drain your energy, and if you run out, you lose.

it's like a... a fast, real-time board game? stealth strategy? fucked up red light green light? you have to make decisive moves, and if you mess up, you get a few seconds to panic and try to escape. it's in that deer-in-headlights panic where the sentinel truly shines. it's a fast game, but every action takes a second or so to complete; so once you see the static that indicates you've been seen, you find yourself hammering the robot and transfer buttons while paralyzed, watching your resources and your options slowly drain away. when you transfer, the screen goes black, so you have to wait and see if the decision you made was the right one. and, of course, the general concept of being Watched is scary. suddenly hearing an alert and watching your vision fade to static because you're in the sentinel's line of sight is a full on jumpscare. you have quite a limited viewpoint in comparison to your enemy, especially considering you often start in valleys, so you have to scan the landscape as quickly as possible. none of this is getting into the bizarre vibes afforded by the mechanics - movement by? transferring your soul into a new vessel and eating your previous one? the win conditions are also strange. you win by absorbing the sentinel, but you can only move on from the level by replacing it on its pedestal and transferring in its place. once you've absorbed it you can't absorb any more, so you just sit there, looking at how you've deforested the level in your rush to escape/win; trapped, unable to change anything, watching, like the sentinel. it's almost cyclical.

...i'm glad it held up to what i thought it would be. by the way, the port/remake/whatever this is runs great. it amalgamates all the ports so you get to play a perfect idealised version of the sentinel - original logic, later port music, runs on a modern computer without slowdown or visual issues. plus the addition of vr, which i think would make me cry.
christ i had 1k words to say about The Sentinel huh

There's A Beautiful Star - haoliao - 18/10

oh, so it turns out the author of these games is just really good at very small, poetic platformers that evoke strong emotions? fantastic. the non-movement verb in this game is 'tell others that there is a beautiful star', and nobody listens. the star shines brighter, though, until you can no longer see the others. it, like i want to hear that again, is a sweet and lonely game that is so open to interpretation that i can't help but want to interpret it pessimistically. being ignored is a horrible feeling, especially when it is regarding something you care for and want to share, and despite the positive imagery of a beautiful star shining brighter as you press on, the fact that at a certain point you can no longer see or share with others... you're blinded by your love, and you've given up on... intimacy? perhaps not the right word. opening up. you can't relate to people anymore. i think it's sad. i think it's interesting that you cannot change the way you share with people. you cannot try different routes. you can only say Look! There is a beautiful star. you have to be yourself.

i think you could argue that the people here don't want to listen, so it's not worth sharing your passion with them anyway, and it's good you can continually appreciate something more without needing the support of other people.

reuse, recycle, compost - domino club (DAiSy SmiLeS) - 18/10

flatgame for the domino club metal & flesh jam. i don't... actually think i've come across flatgames before! wow! i'm interested in this format... kind of flickgamesy in the way it presents pure Images as the primary goal- like a comic is sequential, but it isn't a panel a page, and this kind of captures the way you can see the silhouette of the upcoming panel you're about to read? storybook-y, treasure map-y, feels adjacent to old internet - back when geocities users hid easter eggs in their pages if you scrolled down to the very bottom of an overly-long page. webcomicsy! scrolling as primary interaction is especially interesting in 2022's 5 websites social media setup and weird bastardisation of comics into scrolling Webtoons. cool!!!

this one's about megacorps hiding unethical practices behind 'green'/recycling policies and is a funny jaunt through a ship with a corporate garden where there is a metal recycler that also eats people. the visuals for the two 'pages' are these lovely, heavily textured crayon-like drawings, set to generic jingly uke music from a 'Silly Comedy Music Pack' on soundcloud. it's a tried-and-tested contextualisation of corporate capitalism as this ugly, childish, uncultured thing that masks evil through wholesomeness. the pleasant conversational writing from the tour guide at you, the billionaire philanthropist, is great, and clearly establishes nobody here thinks Machine That Eats People is a bad thing - nobody attempts to hide it. all the evil's in plain sight if you have enough money to see it.

Twelve Cannettes - domino club (borrowed bodies) - 18/10

if for the metal & flesh jam. im not really sure how to talk about this one but i think its really good? i can't place the ui style at all but i love a weird computerlog with portraits. 12 vignettes, 'manufactured' 'cannettes' (little cans) by the 4 characters named after body parts. the setting et al reveals itself through their varied conversations with each other and discussion of their. holes? holes. in the heart in the leg in the hand in the-. relationships with the body, relationships with other people. strangers, meeting. each cannette is By a character, and it does definitely introduce unreliable narration possibilities. i like the way the ui can adjust to show different perspectives and interaction styles - were these decisions made diegetically? allowing you to interact with their archives in ways they deem appropriate? fascinating. i really enjoyed the read.

Body of Work - domino club (jade exitwound) - 18/10

if for the metal & flesh jam. silver case/13th ward-inspired noir thriller about an art museum security manger in a world where some people choose to work from home by sending robot copies of themselves into the office and manually controlling them. great writing, great music, great pacing, great visuals.

bath - domino club (jerking it) - 18/10

lmao. yeah i guess 'metal & flesh' CAN be interpreted as 'robot arm vibrator' huh. stupid joke. but seriously i love the presentation here. a tiny representation of a bath in a full-screen void - a bath IS the world when youre in it. simple, relatable thoughts. sometimes a game can just be a mood

a friendly game of chess - Mattmora - 20/10

ha. good joke. minute long thing for prompt 'game you would rather watch than play' (see last month's _TEST). in a way, i think it fulfils the prompt - yeah, i'd rather not play against a knobhead like that. nice fuzzy visuals and a funny hand design, a good animal crossing voice tone, great pacing, great delivery.

Regret is for People Who Have Choices - Gabbah Baya - 20/10

real gallery, abstract art sort of thing. very very little to work with. gurngroup rated it (and is the only person to have rated it since its release in 2018), feels adjacent to their work - unity asset reappropriation type beat. two characters overlap in a small, empty white square room - one, the pc, a small, greyscale masc character with a mohawk and terrible sunglasses, and the other, static, a slightly tan woman in jorts and a cropped black tank top. they face away, sun behind and to the right, and the camera swings around to settle behind them. the camera always does this, so it's hard to view the environment from different angles until you move. until you move you don't really notice that the woman is rendered wrong - you can see the front of her tank from the back. you can see her eyes and mouth from the back. she has no hair, either, and i somehow doubt that was what the original model looked like. the game itself doesn't really project anything immediate to think about. beyond, perhaps, a vague approach to gender? identity - inside of the woman is an untextured man, they are together he is the only one allowed to do action, together their inherent problems (one is grey one is seethrough) are still visible but the impact is minimized, they are trapped and cannot experience anything beyond their box, etc - this may be my own biases interpreting it, though. (although i know the artist uses they pronouns). the tags change it somewhat - palestine is mentioned, as is 'maze', despite it being one single room (sometimes it looked like the walls stretched out past the box - perhaps it's a walled off section of a maze?). i don't really know enough about the conflict to comment. i dont think i have any real conclusions about this but i do like to be presented with a singular space as though it were an image

Crossing - Gabbah Baya - 20/10

vn for an nyu game center assignment. a woman flees war and reminisces about her past and where someone dear to her is now. 3 choices that do not affect the writing/outcome and only give you a cg of a memory, presented to you as 2 small square thumbnails of the cg, rather than a written choice between two scenes. a really interesting format - focusing in on...i dont know...the Potential of an image to make your choice? this inscrutable minutiae, unknowable until you choose to think on it. the cgs in question are two variants of the same scene, prompting questions of whos memories they are, if they are real, of memories changed by trauma and want, of memories chosen.
music's good- a glitchy, bassy electronic kick, etheral synths, field recording samples. i like the art composition, vector lines, flat colours, but think the overlaid grunge textures and smudge effects to indicate idk.... imprecision, conflict? both literal and sensory? are a bit tacky.

Rusting Souls - Clemancipé, KuroYuki, Youli - 20/10

yuri vn cup. cyborg girls post-apocalypse taking care of each other, struggling with semimechanical bodies, and the fact theyre seemingly the last people on the planet. the pixel art is cute and reminiscent of a maplestory sort of era. the photo filtering is nice - there's a strong tone here. plot deals with some quite harsh repopulation and organic/mechanical transitioning in relation to both implicit and explicit gender transitioning but because it's i think ESL it uses some language that's a little, difficult - it's reminiscent of trans widow dialogue at some points? i'm a mark for weird romantic body horror and like, practicalities of gender in a world without society, though, so i still liked this one a lot.

saturn's rising temperature - starbage - 20/10

yuri vn cup. light scifi (so far in the future that, despite interplanetary spacecraft and manmade planets being a daily phenomenon, average humans no longer know what space or space travel is like) romance between a factory worker and a girl she sees in her dreams. it's cute! the art's lovely - a 3 colour palette of black, white, and this bright cyan with this really nice and cute expressive linework. exaggerated emotions. depressed gamer protag with some gender who wonders if her mmo members are her friends, light but goes through some darker topics, and a sickeningly sweet and optimistic ending where a character is like i unconditionally love all the things about you that you think are flaws and you can now escape the world! but it comes off a bit less Therapy Game than some of the previous ones, possibly because of the very deliberate style and full dedication to the setting? the game took its time to establish the protagonist's thoughts and her feelings for her coworker and daily life rhythms in a way that stopped her from feeling like a Total self insert, and it led to the plots build and conclusion feeling natural rather than sudden. it was really nice honestly. i feel uplifted rather than cynical. good music too, but the loops were broken a bit

save me - peanutballfun - 20/10

yuri vn cup. made me cry real bad

the citadel - avery + wildcard - 25/10

excitable, manic klik 'n' play thing. i'm woefully underequipped to talk in Detail about klik games - i know nothing about the engine, so it's hard to tell what's new and what's premade assets, what kind of movement and mechanics it natively supports. but i enjoyed my time regardless! it was very funny.

squid girl world - ophanimkei/malakhim software - 25/10

yuri vn cup. i don't...think this was very good? the writing felt disconnected and the relationship/character development unnatural, but i still liked it, honestly. it had enough fun with creating fun scenes in an interesting setting. sometimes you do just want to meet a squid girl.

100 free assets - blueberry soft - 25/10

100 free assets, arranged in the void. really fascinating thing, it plays with scale and shape and density so bizarrely. i think the more regular approach to something like this would be to arrange the assets in a way that shows them all off, or to create standard levels, and this...does not. you have a jump the height of the world, but things are spaced so far apart or so specifically vertically that you cannot get back once you've committed. you're an alien in an alien place. i know that a human hand curated this, but i have no idea by what criteria.

perverseoverride - domino club (Wanda Ballard) - 28/10

(R18) if about fucking an android. really good writing + fantastic presentation. raw