Ratings and Reviews by manonamora

Being kind to oneself is a struggle, especially when things are tough, when you don’t like yourself, when the changes you make in your life/yourself do not pan out the way you want.
Even so, compassion is what makes us heal, what makes us stronger. For without it, we let ourselves be consumed and blinder by pain and self loathing.
The simplicity and writing of the imagery in this entry is quite painful… but so well done.

This is essentially the moral of this short horror game, as answering the messages will send you into very wild conversations. Depending on your answers, you may find someone accusing you of stalking, someone informing they have kidnapped your brother, someone threatening you to kill you…
It reminded me of Please Answer Carefully …

In May of 1998 1 , riots erupted in Jakarta, resulting in of the diaspora of Chinese Indonesians towards, among others, Australia. This is an important context to understand the situation of the main character and her family.
As the broken family settles in their new home, a strange dynamic forms, leaving the main character in a sort of emotional limbo state, avoiding acts that could tip the balance of this fragile situation the wrong way.
It is heartbreaking.

Four candles and a counter. The first disappearing as the second increases. “You don’t have time for this”, the game tells you. Though it is not time, but words that will limit how far you go… This entry took the limited word count rule and flipped it on itself.
The story is funky, as Charon welcomes you to his boat, but not before essentially mugging you of your belonging and stealing your phone (listen, there’s no internet down there, he got to entertain himself somehow). Fun humour!

Eat, sleep, drink some water, clean yourself, and look for your human. This is the sweet, sweet, life that Puck, the cute little rat, lives. Though it might feel quickly monotonous - there is only so much a rodent can do - the game invites you to try different combinations of actions to fill in the achievement list. A really cute game indeed!

In a mix between retrospection and conversation, this entry shows that no matter how dull work can be, a friend can make up for it. Even if you never met face to face. Or their handle changes every day. But nothing matter in this corrupted document shared with that one special person, who you know so much of and yet so little.
I like the eeriness of the setting (what if they are not as friendly? what if you are being tricked) and the writing made me chuckle too. The UI also was spot on!

While this could be a metaphor for how grueling and monotonous life could be, this entry takes instead inspiration from a familiar Greek myth. Forced to complete this Sysiphian task, memories from a former life, a previous time, start to pique your mind. You slowly uncover the mystery, pushing the boulder, again, and again, fighting the pull of the great stone or complying to its wished.
Really good!

This whimsical entry, filled with dreamy illustrations, awards you three gifts, which you must choose from 11, to lessen the hardship of life. From doors to other worlds, food you can pay with memories, a pool with always the perfect temperature, to a literal slice of paradise, the hardest thing in this entry is both choose… and realise this will never happen in real life.
But one can dream…

In this small puzzle-y entry, you are faced with a tomb (which you may or may not manage to enter) and the memories of the man buried there. Memories you thought you buried as well…
I liked the puzzle quite a bit~

While working on samples, you notice strange things happening around you: misplaced test tubes, foul smell, unusual behaviour… Depending on the choice you’ve made, you may encounter one of four endings, each creepier than the last.
The entry is very atmospheric and the bareness in writing (in work notes) convey a lot more about the setting than it looks.
Really enjoyed this one!
While you can skip the typed text animation, the options are stuck being a timed, making you wait anyway. Changing the timed into a typed would be much nicer for replay value!