not bad, but not very good either. as i'm sure anyone drawn to the game thinks it is very pretty, especially when it comes to the backgrounds. the inky hand drawn aesthetic looks lovely and honestly makes up for a lot of the game's shortcomings. makes me hope and wish that whoever drew them also does work on actual children's books.

when it comes to the writing (i.e. the bulk of the game), i do find a fair few of the endgame narrative concepts to be interesting for sure. while a lot of the pseudo-intellectualisms are a bit silly there are a number of them late into the game that do feel more thought-out and interesting than the rest. some even caught me off guard in terms of relatability.

one could call it throwing things at the wall to see what sticks, but i do think there's a level of intent here that's clear enough to see. it's just muddied by how relatively low in, uh, game there is. as a walking sim ou has to hold itself up entirely with the writing and presentation, and while the latter is mostly good save for the somewhat lazy sprites, the former's absolutely a mixed bag with some more misses than hits.

i don't really regret playing through this, especially for how emotionally compelling the endgame is (unfortunately at the cost of everything up till then having almost no punch). it just feels like it could have used a lot more time in the oven to flesh itself out and be polished. from what i could tell this game took a really long time to make, though, so i do get why they just sorta put it out when they could. at the very least it is quite thought provoking even if nowhere near what the writer was hoping for.