So this game has a calendar system in which you live out the day to day, seeing time pass, and trying to manage your time effectively. I went about using my time pretty casually, not concerning myself with optimization. This goes on for most of an in-game year, but near the end of the game, the protagonist and party become aware of the imminent end of the world which is just a month away. Usually I wouldn’t react very strongly to this (we see it all the time in media), but here, the calendar you saw every day practically becomes a countdown timer. Suddenly, all the little activities I went about performing had a whole new level of meaning to them.

I knew from the start that I wouldn’t be able to max out all the social links on my first playthrough, but when the countdown began I became much more concerned with who I wanted to rank up in the time I had left. I began to take into account when certain characters could hang out and how many ranks we had to go, making sure to plan things out carefully. In the last couple of weeks, I began to realize that this would be the last time my character went to school, sang karaoke, ate ramen or spent time in art club. What got to me most was realizing that it was the last time I‘d get to spend time with characters I grew attached to. I even made time to hang out with my favorite characters one last time, even though I’d already maxed them out and had nothing to gain from it aside from the role-play.

Point is, even if it’s just a tiny, safe, and watered-down fraction of the anxiety that real looming death can cause, this game brings the abstract idea of facing death into a more tangible, concrete experience. This is the kind of storytelling that videogames seem to be made for; direct, personal interaction with abstract concepts or ideas, more than simply learning about them or seeing fictional characters experience them.