there is possibly no genre of narrative game I love more than anything that captures the beautiful, fleeting, meaningful, quirky, and chaotic portrait of communities that form in online spaces, often in spite of the businesses that created them

and for that portion of this game, I was in love. the characters, the communities, the bonds, and the style of its presentation was so cool. I would play 100 games in this format and feel refreshed by the experience, every time. I miss my friends from a long list of these communities, even if I can't remember their usernames and avatars. this captured that so well

but though I respect its intentions, I felt like the primary plot of this game was weak. without getting into spoilers, if you want to talk about a Topic, it is almost always better to center its related character as the subject, and not the object. and the glimpses we got of the object character here were so tropey, so common in a gendered way, that it was equal parts frustrating and hard to take seriously. I could go into greater detail, but I won't both because of spoilers and also because that doesn't feel great, as it's an otherwise lovely indie game with its heart in the right place