te/ra/to/ma

I made an account just to review this! Found it on ifarchive and I very much enjoy this work. It's hard to put into words; but this story spoke to me quite a bit, and I would recommend it any time of the day. The visuals were also quite striking, and easily make up for the lack of technical skill in them, because they convey the intended feelings quite well. It also plays quite well with contrast, flipping from pure white to pure black at-least once to portray the switch in emotions, which I enjoyed.
(Apologies if a lot of this was quite broad, I'm not too good at review.)

This is a story I can't imagine being told as effectively in any other medium. The combination of short bits of text with "click to continue" interactivity, letting the reader take each new piece of information in at their own pace, and the lo-fi Decker illustrations and text effects all work so well together. The childhood loneliness, the gendered expectations, the horror of having a womb when the idea of pregnancy repulses you--it's all here in this tiny package, presented matter-of-factly but with so much underlying emotion. An engaging and impressive work.

This game is structured like a linear visual story, with black and white hand-drawn images. It won the Short Game Showcase.

Here are the criteria I use to judge things with:

-Polish: The game is both polished and Polish (the author is from Poland), so it doubly fits here. More seriously, the game uses a variety of textual techniques to vary the appearance and the writing had no typos that I saw.
-Descriptiveness: The writing was vivid and I was able to picture what was going on.
-Interactivity/Use of medium: While there was little interactivity, I also use this category for the artwork and structure of visual novels. The art definitely contributed to the overall feeling here, expressing disinterested observation, alienation, fear, isolation, and determination.
-Emotional impact: I actually originally played this game for the first few pages a while ago and stopped because I didn't like what it was about. Finishing it later, it was not what I had originally expected. Both times I felt a strong emotional reaction.
-Would I play again?: Yes, I think I would, there's a lot here that is of interest.