I’m sure I’m not the only one here who played this game as a young kid, around 10 years old, expecting a cute and fun little game only to be genuinely traumatized by the ending. The way this game deliberately gets you attached to the characters and the world, and then just takes it all away from you by literally erasing everyone and everything from existence, is evil. What’s even more painful is that you know that they don’t want to go, that they’re scared. But they know that it’s the right thing to do, and so they all decide to sacrifice themselves to wake up that Mike kid from his coma. This game is evil. My tiny brain couldn’t even process what had happened at the end so I had to ask my older sister to explain it to me while I was literally sobbing for hours. I didn’t understand why the game was making me essentially kill Mari and Jowee, characters who I had grown to care for. When I finally realized what had happened to Mike, Heather and their parents, I was even more fucked up. Like, these kids parents DIED. They were DEAD. Heather lost her eye or some shit. She didn’t know if her brother was ever going to wake up. THIS ALL HAPPENED IN A GAME THAT LOOKS LIKE THIS.

Ok but in all honesty, even though I’m mad at this game, I still respect it. I mean, it has managed to stay with me all these years. Like it’s always there in the back of my mind. I can never stop thinking about it. So it was definitely memorable. And if we ignore the fucked up ending, the music is great and the art and character design is adorable. Too bad we had to destroy it all in the end…

Lastly, I just wanted to mention that the one thing I am more upset about than the ending is the fact that they changed the ending in another version. You can’t just fuck up a bunch of kids with one version of this game only to decide later that maybe you shouldn’t have done that. I’m almost insulted that they think changing the ending can undo the damage that was done. Everyone knows that Mike didn’t really fall out of a tree…