Tomato Clinic é fofo e aconchegante, além de informativo. Comparado com outros jogos da npckc, esse é mais puxado pro lado educativo do que o resto, mas isso não significa que seja isento de profundidade, e de certa forma, isso até o torna um tanto especial em relação aos outros. Com a história sendo sobre um tour numa clínica de doação de sangue aonde você deverá aprender sobre os vampiros e sua cultura, a metáfora já se revela. Isso é uma alegoria sobre como pessoas LGBT acabam sendo pressionadas a se explicar para aqueles fora de seus círculos sociais e tentar fazê-los compreender o que estão passando, mas também pode ser aplicado a outros grupos marginalizados, como neurodivergentes, indígenas ETC. Dava pra facilmente ser um roteiro didáticamente esnobe, mas esse não foi o caso. A abordagem é otimista, mas não é vazia, apresentando profundidade o suficiente na sua escrita simples e também mostra compreensão pelo indivíduo de fora desses grupos que está curioso. O worldbuilding também é bom, não é nada complexo, mas foi legal aprender sobre os vampiros e desmentir os esteriótipos ao lado de Gakuto e Marie, dois vampiros muito gente fina. Além do enredo, também curti o visual de giz de cera, e em jogabilidade, é VN, então não há muitas interações elaboradas, fora alguns minigames simplistas que são inofensivos e adequados pra experiência mais tranquila do game. Tomato Clinic pode não ser a coisa mais elaborada já feita, tanto que a minha nota alta até parece exagero, mas isso é porque ele é perfeitamente adequado pro que é e tem coração e sinceridade no que faz, ainda mais sendo de graça e durar meia-hora, chega a ser difícil dizer não pra um joguinho bonitinho desses.

It's cute and warm and fluffy! This is obviously an edutainment-style allegory game moreso than anything else, but I appreciate the game wears its heart on the sleeve, to the point you can see it answering its own criticisms that only people who are already attuned to its message would check it out. I like the fact that it has good, genuine world building rather than being overly direct, and that it could trip you up both by going too far into stereotypes, and also by assuming everything you hear is incorrect! I got 4/5 on the first quiz, 5/5 on the 2nd. Honestly, seeing an expanded game / whatnot of this universe would be fun, because the worldbuilding is neat for the time it has. Marie is absolutely my jam when it comes to characters which is a plus. I don't have the heart to go for the bad ending by being mean to them :(

The art style is very appealing and the music that's in the soundtrack is energetic and mood setting. HELLO was nice. There's plenty of deeper meaning to be found in the text about people who are "othered" having the onus to change people's minds thrust on them, but at the same time understanding for those who are unaware or curious (rather than just total assholes like the people mailing threats), which is nice. As a bisexual person, having a fluffy and optimistic game tackling these issues is pleasing, and it didn't feel condescending at all, I'd say it sounded smart. I hope we get to come back to the Tomato Clinic in the future and given I have one night, hot springs I should really check out npckc's other works already!

Sometimes you’re playing a game and the gears start turning on themes and allegory and you start thinking about things like wholesome discourse and the responsibility queer people are pressured to have when talking about themselves and their communities and how that sucks and you hate it and then you think about the couple of weeks where there was a flyer in the lobby of your apartment building letting everyone know that a couple of trans people in the neighborhood had been assaulted by a guy who had just gotten out of prison for targeting and beating trans people in particular and how you don’t pass at all and how your assigned parking space is literally the furthest one from the building and sometimes you just want to play a game by someone who gets you featuring people who get you hanging out and being cool and maybe that’s fine once in a while? I don’t know.

I think npckc has been somewhat unfairly defined as a creator who makes games that are treacly and unchallenging when their most famous work, the year of springs trilogy, I think strives to be educational and affirming without shying away from stresses and difficulties and hardships that go along with various aspects of queerness and allyship. I think the things that makes this maybe hard to identify are that exactly how much of the toughest stuff in those games you see is up to you the player via choices, and that they DO focus on positivity and affirmation over tragedy, melodrama, and the more brutal realities a lot of queer people do live. Which is cool with me! I think there’s room for this. There’s gotta be a line between criticizing games that infantilize us and try to iron out everything that is scary and abnormal and challenging to the hegemony about queerness and ones that just like, don’t want to be bummers all the time, and I think these games generally err closer to the latter camp than the former.

I don’t PARTICULARLY want to organize my thoughts and make this a whole thing because I find wholesome discourse generally annoying so I’m gonna cut myself off before I start really thinking about this and feel the need to reorganize the earlier paragraphs (EDITING IS FOR NERDS), just recommend everybody read Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity by José Muñoz and leave it at that haha.

Tomato Clinic certainly leans MORE in the direction of cutesy edutainment than other works by this creator, but I think it’s a testament to kc’s skill as a writer that the allegory works as well as it does. In a very brief window of time they create a couple of really well-sketched characters, a fun spin on commonly found urban fantasy tropes, and juuuuust enough depth in both to impress me considering the whole thing is over in twenty minutes. I would do anything Marie told me to. I want her and I want to be her, mission accomplished, and Gakuto is my friend. I will come back to the Tomato Clinic and hang out with these guys. They are cute, and they are sweet. The whole game is. I like it!

English: cute
Japanese: kawaii
Spanish: alfajor
Portuguese: noiado
Italian: ratatouille
Russian: sredi nas