messy coming-of-age point-and-click adventure with the family aesthetics/energy of roseanne set on a fictionalized fire island (mostly) in the off-season? why yes I did greatly enjoy this game

I love specificity in stories, and every little detail in this one—the characters and their complex personalities, the content and delivery of dialogue, the fatally accurate period elements (AIM I miss you), all the way down to the subtlest pixel changes on a character's face or in the seasonality of the cursor—just sang, and made for such a rich, enjoyable experience

my only real complaint is that the, uh, period-appropriate jank common in the point-and-click world was a bit of challenge sometimes, especially!! when you discover there can be multiple endings and especially when you realize how wildly unintuitive some of those pathways were to find lol

but, life is unintuitive and this is true to mara's story, so I can't be too annoyed thematically, at least, lol

all-in-all though, great time. and if you don't want to do another playthrough to see the best ending, def look it up on youtube, because it's lovely