God, I really, really wanted to like this game. It has, far and away, one of the best prologues in recent memory. Its initial concept—surrounding a set of mysterious stones that can kill a person when certain conditions are fulfilled, and the possibility of resurecting a loved one through killing—is extremely compelling, with the resulting confrontations coming off like a mix of stand battles and poker.

But this game has no idea what it wants to be. Is it an intricate death game filled with weird powers and weirder characters? a fourth-wall breaking uchikoshi-style meta horror? a police procedural period piece? hell, is it a tourism sponsored edutainment game tinged with nostalgia for Japan's Showa era? I don't know! And neither does the game!

Those curse stone confrontations that fuel the prologue? They completely disappear for the rest of the story, as most of the stones either start off in the hands of—or are slowly collected by—people who refuse to use them, and then that vast majority of the game takes place in the daytime when they actively can't be used. Really interesting, complex adult characters dealing with loss like Harue and Tsutsumi? Ignored so the game can focus on high school girl hijinks and a parade of ever thinner villainous caricatures. Every time the game builds up a head of steam, it takes a sharp left turn right into a brick wall, killing the pacing and starting all the way over again.

And it sucks because when the game works, it really works. Its early color-TV aesthetic is fantastic, giving everything a ghostly, phosphorescent VHS vibe. The few bits of character development we do get with Harue and Tsutsumi are extremely well done, painting complex portraits of parenthood and grief with exceedingly terse dialogue. And the handful of meta moments really are charming—although definitely overstated, this isn't Inscryption, there's maybe three in the whole game and they're pretty small.

The charms are there but they're not enough to make this weird little mess cohere. I hope more VN experiments like this are released, this one just wasn't for me.

Also of note, this is maybe the only VN I've ever played that has actual jump-scares, be warned.