![]() I chose “the highway extension came.” It inspired a memory from the writer, but the story continued without giving much attention to it. “In the year Granddad died…” the player chooses from a few possible next lines. ![]() Lines of text, possibly a poem, scroll into vision. On the screen appears a visual-novel segment. The different relationship dynamics with these characters stand out as being the biggest reinforcement of the game's coming-of-age themes, dealing with/accepting change, being responsible, etc. The secondary characters, from her friends to her family to the other Possum Springs residents, are pretty good for the most part. ![]() Our protagonist is interesting, the game does a good job of not holding back in demonstrating how genuinely flawed she is despite wanting to be better, making her growth particularly engrossing. I should mention here the soundtrack outside of these dream sequences is consistently great as well. Good music and the spacey atmosphere of these dream puzzles simply don't make up for the lackluster gameplay. It's neat in theory, and the music to be fair is VERY good, but the back-and-forth feels like it can take forever at times. It involves the character running around to these little structures that make these spirit things play music. The dream puzzles are particularly repetitive aside from the first one. Some of them are fun but some were either too easy or just straight-up boring. There is some actual gameplay, of course, with some neat little puzzles. The dialogue can also come across as immature or corny at times but mostly gets away with it given how honest it otherwise is. It's natural to include these as that's how people normally speak, but this game does it to a ridiculous degree and draws the conversations out more than need be. Much of the dialogue feels nondescript, with lots of "uh", "oh", ".", etc. The following epilogue was nice and wrapped things up well but man, I was really hoping we'd end with one last song during practice instead of just cutting out! The dialogue, the driving factor for narrative movement, has some brilliant moments but, like the story, could use some work. I get what they were going for, but the climax just didn't land as successfully as I was hoping. It feels underdeveloped in some ways and ends up being sort of anti-climactic. The narrative the game works with is neat but could honestly use some tweaking, especially considering this is the game's focus. There's even this cool retro game called "Doomtower" you can play on the side that's pretty fun. Aside from the main game though, the player has different options for a more leisurely mode of gaming, whether it be speaking to other characters in Possum Springs, playing bass, etc. It's a text-heavy, narrative-focused game, almost leaning toward visual novel territory.
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