I experienced too much good stuff almost back-to-back and lost the spirit to play anything, so i decided to experience something bad to rekindle my passion for gaming.

and dear god, does this game suck

I mean it 100% seriously, it's borderline rock bottom writing. Tumblr, reddit, ifunny, whatever you call it IS EVERYWHERE. I love making "haha i want to die jokes" on daily basis, but MAKE IT STOP FOR ONCE. The edgyness STINKS, it is painfully blatant that it was written by zoomers in the worst way imaginable.
This game is a constant eyerolling simulator and it means something, when avid Drakengard 3 fan says that.

No wonder this game has recieved "fetish incest game" reputation, because of this horrendous script that makes it so damn hard to tell, whether it is poor yandere fetish material or actually interesting story about incestous manipulative abuse. There is potential for that, but game handles its topics with gracefulness of a fucking potato.

Execution of routes/endings also sucks, because you are required to either comply with unlikable abusive mother(Andrew finally grows some spine there, but parrents still die) or with unlikable abusive sister(Andrew keeps dickriding Ashley). Frankly the incest part is completely optional and you need to reconfirm it twice.

Outside of that, solid character portraits with annoying face expressions, gorgeous bacgrounds, pretty good point-of-click aspect and mediocre soundtrack.

Don't waste your time outside of pure curiosity.

mano isso aqui é o nivel de uma fanfic de pré adolescente pra gente esquisita

é só tipo, nossa olha só como é chocante canibalismo, nossa incesto, ao mesmo tempo que tudo isso é romantizado pacaralho pq nenhuma cena "'PESADA"" tem impacto sobre oque eles fazem e logo depois é esquecido e tampado em cima de comédia e humor pq eles são louquinhos

tenho que admitir que o jogo é divertidinho, engraçadinho tb as vezes, mas é um bagulho de não se pensar mt, pq qnt mais tu pensa nisso mais ce ve o quão tosqueira é

After seeing this game grow popular (mostly for controversial reasons) on twitter due to the nature of some of the content of the game that’s discussed throughout I felt an extreme compulsion to check it out as I had to feel that there must’ve been something more to it, like that something this dark with this much effort put into it couldn’t simply be only edgy, right? There had to be something more to it, right?

This game is bad. It’s bad, and it’s not just because it’s an incestuous game. It’s bad because of how poorly this topic is handled, how badly written both its narrative and dialogue is, how honestly boring it is, and how, outside of its art, it has very little going for it. I’m able to try and see what the author was trying to do with this, but if they wanted to depict deeply problematic things like incest properly, the approach that was taken is a horrible one that never decides whether it wants to be comedic or serious, and loses at both, leaving it feeling like a gross game made for the sake of fulfilling a fetish and nothing else.

To start: as stated before, the topics the game attempts to depict are either never taken seriously enough or are expected to be taken seriously very randomly, with constant jokes about Andrew and Ashely’s relationship being used as ways to make ‘funny sex between siblings joke’ rather than being shown as the relationship where Ashely holds extreme emotional power over Andrew that the game shoots for at certain points. This kind of jarring separation leaves the characters never seeming to have any moments to define them between each other, and each possible moment being used as fuel for poorly written humor. The best example I can think of this is during chapter 2 when Ashely wakes Andrew up on the couch to talk, and their Mother comes in. Andrew’s mother attempts to talk to Andrew about, what seems to be, something explaining how their situation ended up being the way it was. The implication, at least, seems to be that Ashely’s manipulative and parasitic personality is part of the reason that Andrew’s mom wanted to talk to him alone, and likely to discuss and have a dialogue about (how as she states later) how horrible Ashley is and give insight into more of their past and situation, but is interrupted due to Ashely’s presence. Rather than it being taken as a sentiment for Ashely being a literal leech on Andy and the situation being taken as seriously in a way where Ashely quite literally is always attached to Andy without him really wanting it, it’s played off as a blowjob joke and moves on completely. Moments like this where any buildup for these two characters to be established as anything more than vehicles for situations for jokes about ‘woah, isn’t this soooo taboo??’ are thrown away are constantly, with other moments like Ashely’s constant sexual harassment being no more than minor annoyances to Andrew rather than any actual point for him to stand against her and are used constantly as ways to make the audience either hard or go “woahhh that’s so weird haha!!!” and completely muddy any of the points the game tries to make about their relationship to the point that while you can clearly see the attempts to make a proper depiction about Ashley’s abusive nature, it never holds anything simply due to how those few moments are thrown away for bad jokes.

Other criticism i’ve seen a lot are about how things like cannibalism are shown as bad things, but the incest isn’t, and while it’s implied it is due to how Ashley is not only the obvious perpetrator, but is also clearly an evil person, the things mentioned before make it hardly seem like an attempt to properly depict these things, and the points about it being muddied hold strong entirely because of it. When the problematic topic at hand 80% of the time is jokes, you can’t also expect me to take it seriously when it’s tried to be depicted in a heavy manor for that 20% of the time. It’s like if Miura for Berserk made constant jokes and one-liners about the s/a that Guts and Casca experienced but also expected you to care when it came to moments that mattered.
Hugely, the game has no clue what kind of tone it wants and is all over the place, with, most notably, the artstyle not helping. While the art is, yes, good, only helps to push the less serious parts of the game and completely alienate the serious tone the game tries to have. On top of this, the pacing doesn’t give the game any credit either, with the time both Andy and Ashely spending indoors being not only hardly depicted but also ending very shortly, leaving the argument of “what spending so long in isolation can push people to” not holding up for the incestuous parts at all, only really making the cannibalism aspect a real point of discussion and really not helping push the idea that the two had some kind of crazy mental breaking point to make them love each other in a long quarantine, especially with Ashely’s motivations for being the way she is stemming from childhood and hold almost zero ground and are almost random-feeling outside of her just being in love with Andy because she’s ‘just like that and always has been’. There’s basically zero grounds and buildup for any of the things to be taken as actual development between the two, with their time in their apartment only taking up roughly 40 minutes of playtime and mostly consisting of cannibalizing someone. It furthers the problems of no setup but expected payoff, where something as problematic as incest is instantly shot into the players faces and expected to be taken seriously or taken as a real point of development. It’s unexplainable both on the implication the two have been through difficult shit and with the actual evidence of Ashely being weird, again, outside of her tendency to just be overly attached to Andy. Her relationship and love for him is just super unexplainable especially considering how Andy doesn’t reciprocate. Even if it would be something explainable in chapters 3 onwards, the game would be pretending that those things exist now to explain why they’re happening, and just leaves me confused as to why Ashely is the way she is. It’s weird to have a mystery like this exist for something that’s at the forefront of the game that just leads to the author being someone inserting a weird fetish into the game, consistently pushing the idea that the problematic theme of incest is something there that, in it’s entirety, cannot be taken seriously. This point especially makes the game worse if there’s NEVER an explanation at all, meaning that all Ashely is is an overly attached incestuous sister. Relating back to the moments in the game that are very minimal in amount, the relationship the two develop can never decide if it wants to be romantic or tense, with there being seemingly constant random moments where the two want to cuddle and maybe kiss with a moment of Andy wanted to cut Ashely’s neck or Andy feeling clearly directly against what Ashely wants happening immediately after and further the muddied tone of not only the game, but their relationship in total, where despite it having paths, seemingly never showing how the path where Andy’s relationship with Ashely becomes more tense and angry actually affects their dialogue, with the key moments mattering in those routes being extremely exclusive to very specific moments and being completely unrepresented otherwise. An example of this I can think of is when Andy is forced by Ashely to make a plan to kill their parents before going to bed and is extremely upset with her. Afterwords, however, when he’s woken up, he seemingly completely forgets that he’s mad and conflicted with her and just openly accepts her and embraces her - ignoring any of the other things about her he’s conflicted with, only to immediately go back to disliking her once the actual gameplay starts up again. It’s a constant up and down of inconsistency that never ends and leaves Andy just constantly changing for no reason? If he’s implied to be completely emotionally manipulated by Ashely and do whatever, why is that held completely true at some points but completely not at others? It just never helps the stacking list of issues with the game’s writing and what it’s trying to do. On top of this, no time is built for any horror elements either, with the game just feeling like a weird mix between an rpg maker-horror influenced game and a silly, overly edgy one leading to an extremely indecisive feeling experience that can’t decide what it wants to be.

I think the best way I can describe the game with its flaws is that in its attempts to tackle important and problematic ideas it simply comes off as edgy garbage due to how lightly the game handles it’s issues on top of it expecting you to take them seriously - and if the game doesn’t want you to take it seriously or take any of the points it tries to make with honesty, or even try to care about character growth or development, then it simply defaults into being just literal edgy content that chooses not to care about anything for the sake of making bad incest jokes. These types of moments mixed in with attempts to depict a serious, actual toxic relationship not only disarm a reader but, again, further alienate anyone resonating with the point, as the manipulation, leading to incestuous moments, constantly is played for jokes rather than being taken seriously. The damage the lack of care that the problematic parts of the game have rings to disarm and disregard every other part of the game considering the antithesis of both characters being the way they are is what causes them to act the way they do with that act, once again, being pointlessly used as a funny moment and completely dismantles everything it builds up. Incest isn’t the only thing played this way, but especially how things like Cannibalism are played to be funny around 40% of the time, with moments such as the first person dead and the thought of eating him being hardly rejected by someone like Andy and how he struggles with the idea of cannibalism being very quickly thrown away for the sake of Ashely poking fun at the idea that he’s eating people now. Just because the game has a dream section where he’s confronted with a person he’s cannibalized doesn’t make him developed because of it. It’s not deep writing representative of anything, it’s just another thing to be mentioned for a short minute every 20 minutes to claim he’s “changing as a person” then played off for another 20 for silly laughs alongside other things like siblings having sex.

Another thing too - the dialogue. It’s pretty badly written where each time Ashely speaks it’s entirely expected for her to say something weirdly sexual towards her brother or be a nuisance and the response from Andy to be “ugh. You’re so weird and gross!!!” This expectation was fulfilled almost every time and each line of dialogue not only never advancing the characters but always being worded in an extremely cringe and unfunny way. Similarly, every joke the game throws falls almost completely flat (which is a lot of jokes) and leads to the further muddying of the overall tone and feeling the gamer goes for, furthering how flat the game can feel. Adding onto this, even if you choose the direct ‘no incest route’ Ashely never stops sexually harassing Andy throughout every point and constantly ruins the dialogue more.

Smaller notes are repetitive music and barely interesting gameplay, but not only are those less important, they distract from the elephant in the room of the writing being barely passable at best and downright offensive to what it means to tell a story delving in problematic themes.

In the end, that’s all it really is, though. The game’s not bad because it has incest. It’s bad because of a shallow use of problematic themes to pretend that it’s ‘actually saying something, guys!’ rather than just being a bad fetish game with a good artstyle. It’s extremely disappointing considering how every single type of important moment attempted to be tacked always falls apart because of the various things I mentioned, whether it’s the weird shifts in what it’s trying to do that make the game hard to take serious despite it’s serious topics, whether it’s the poorly written dialogue and jokes that cause every moment to not only fall flat just because they’re played as jokes, but specifically because they’re bad jokes, whether it’s the lack of buildup to give characters reasons to be the way they are, whether it’s the over-use of problematic themes for gags, whether it’s the ignorance of what could be important moments for the sake of silly gags, or whether it’s the lack of commitment to making the characters act in accordance to events that happen consistently, the game clearly tries to be something and makes attempts at telling a story with deeply developed characters but constantly falls flat because it can never stick to anything.

Maybe i'm not supposed to look into it this deeply. Maybe it's just supposed to be a fetish game. I dunno, but it's not good regardless.

What I will NOT say about this game is any form of admonishment for its portrayal of an incestuous relationship. It is simultaneously true that depiction of this type should ideally be handled with care, but in the same token it is also true that incestuousness in Andy and Leyley is one decidedly portrayed as negative and not to be endorsed or repeated. To understand this is a fundamental component of media literacy.

What I WILL admonish this game for is its writing of Ashley. It is one thing to portray a female character as a controlling freak in a heterosexual relationship (which is already its own can of worms), but when you pair this with the emotional and frequently romantically charged whining of her diatribes in chapter 1, it comes off as nothing less than a stereotype of the 'crazy bitch' that is manipulative and erratic to no end while the angelic male of the situation is forced to comb through the abuse. It is a frankly disturbing portrayal of how codepency actually works and is extremely concerning to witness. The fact that she's supposed to be annoying only works to such an extent, especially considering that Andrew had been putting up with this almost 'psychosexual' behavior at the very least when they were both school-children. It's not just unrealistic that codependency necessarily happens like this, it's probably a harmful portrayal if viewed anywhere outside the lens of intentionally exaggerated sexual fantasy- Which is, from a random outsider's perspective, not entirely apparent.

I'm glad The Coffin of Andy and Leyley achieved notoriety for its incestuous undertones (or overtones, rather), because it wouldn't have come to my attention otherwise. These depraved siblings are a delight to spend time with.

But it would take more than a hot murderer/cannibal/sister/lover/judge/jury/executioner to get me to play this game. What really caught my eye was the striking art style of the character portraits - it was love at first sight. Every time there's an event image, it's an absolute joy to see - the character designs are just that gorgeous.

I adore how this game looks, and I also love how it talks. Coffin is dark, irreverent, funny and refreshing. It carries a wit sharper than a meat cleaver, yet it also has a tragic underbelly that evokes pathos.

Look, hear me out. I know this game has attracted a lot of flak simply for its twisted themes. It's linear, has little to no loss conditions, and some might say it's not much of a game. But it's an absolute delight to play through because it tells a good story. It made me feel the same way as when I'm reading a book I can't put down - at the end, my only problem was that I couldn't play the rest of it immediately. I eagerly await the next two chapters of this psychotic Bonnie and Clyde story.

I decided to play The Coal out of morbid curiosity, thanks to everyone making this game out to be worse than Satan and @ZeusDeeGoose's disdain for the writing. Putting aside the creator's creepy, barely disguised incest fetish with the two mentally ill protagonists flirting, the gameplay is dull puzzle schlock, and the dialogue is something only a middle schooler could enjoy. How am I expected to take this "horror" game seriously when it doesn't even take itself seriously, or have anything of substance to say? Everything's just shocking for the sake of it. Satanism? Murder? Cannibalism? Shiver me timbers!!!

The cool thing about being an adult is that you can look at a game with a ton of Discourse surrounding it, and just play it for yourself because you know that fiction is allowed to include Dark topics, and what matters is how its handled

The Coffin of Andy and Leyley is........fine. Almost unremarkable if you remove the Discourse. The gameplay is peak bog standard RPG Maker walk and talking, where you press space on an object and maybe pick it up to bring it somewhere else. The kind that's perfectly servicable but occasionally slows the pacing down if you can't figure out what to interactive with, and therefore just start trying everything. If you take a break from the game and come back, you might stumble trying to remember where you left off

The writing is unabashedly edgy, and I think it would still be very polarizing without all the dialogue about Ashley wanting to fuck her brother. I actually found myself reminded a lot of Jhonen Vasquez's work, which I will admit I haven't read since I was 15 so maybe my memory is off, where they share that same slightly immature and incredibly cynical strain of humour that occasionally falls into the territory of trying too hard. There's a scene where you're in a public park and if you interact with a tree, the game is like "you picked up: used condom - you decide not to bring it with you". There's an billboard advert that says "are you tired of being alive? ask your doctor about euthanasia today!". Maybe RPG Maker is slightly to blame for this but a part of me is surprised Andy & Leyley came out in 2023, because it really feels like something that would've been made while I was in High School, and that someone like me would've loved back then

As for the incest stuff, I do think it's a bit disingenous to say "oh it's just a bad ending" when Ashley makes repeated comments that boil down to "I would like to fuck my brother". You don't need to justify your enjoyment of the game with "actually, it's a commentary on toxic relationships", because sure it is, but the game never really commits to it and that's fine! you're allowed to like this because it's a bit edgy and fucked up, that is okay. Alternatively, there's nothing wrong with saying "I'm not a prude but the gameplay is boring and the writing tries too hard"

I do think the game struggles a little bit with knowing what it wants to be, and because of that, it tends to go in circles sometimes. I did find myself getting surprisingly invested in the world and the characters, but kept wanting more since each episode length is pretty short so far. I wanna see more consequences for the fucked up things these characters do and feel, but maybe that'll be in the later chapters. I will say, the artstyle is very nice - every character is very expressive with their portraits. You can tell you're in a world of RPG Maker tiles but I think they make the most of it and the artstyle is there too

as sincerely invested in being a horror story as a Jeff the Killer fanfic. does for incest what Changed did for latex furry TF pornography, isn't much beyond that though dudes will swear otherwise. its focus is purely on its incestuous siblings and their sick 'n twisted toxic dynamic - which it thinks is hot. i'm not offended by incest porn but idk why you'd pretend this isn't that. you will witness legions of valorant eboys and egirls with personalities as appealing as their amazon basics LED bedroom lights adopt matching PFPs of it with a FOTM fervour like the many Chainsaw Man (Power i'm so sorry) characters before them. seventeen year old and thirty-two year old fandom-type gay people will probably doxx each other over it. it will be seen as 'reddit' within six months and forgotten shortly after.

have not played this but you all need to fuck off

so called free thinkers when somebody tells them to hate a game because they don't like a topic in it (They have also not played the game)

like seriously this is the same people pissed off at the ideologies of boomers wanting to ban games like gta for murder and extreme violence getting pissed off at incest, like massive hypocrisy here just saaaaaying

I was hoping this game would turn out to be a banger, despite the restrictive allegations of it simply being “the incest game”. Well guess what, that title is too restrictive! It’s actually the incest satanist cannibal game with dialogue that sounds like a 12 year old wrote it and gameplay that’s so limited that it's nearly a visual novel! I won’t say the story is bad per say, but the crime that the game does commit - aside from the many, many crimes that the characters commit - is how categorically boooooooring it is despite the chaos.

A part of me died on the inside when I found out there’s still more Coffin of Andy and Leyley to come.