itch.io

i think i played this game when i thought i was a straight girl and now that i'm a bisexual man it's just as funny as it was then if not more so

I'm always iffy about games with comedy, but this one made me genuinely laugh quite a lot - I was having a crappy day and this cheered me right up! The two characters are delightful, and I enjoyed how you figure out the mystery through context clues instead of the actual endings - though I guess I do wish there was a more concrete ending where you solved the crime, but either way it was great!

This cracked me up - the short story has some funny moments not present in the comic, but it's the comic that really brings the story and humor to life!

I got this game in the BLM bundle years ago and wasn't quite sure what to expect, but I really liked this game! I'm rather squeamish and have an intense fear of dying and dead things (probably stemming from a funeral I attended as a child), but aside from the wincing at the first embalming procedure in this game I was otherwise all right. I really appreciated the relaxed atmosphere of the game, and was surprised by how emotional it ended up making me (no emotion stronger than my intense hatred of corporate greed, but also sadness for the premature deaths in the game - on that subject, I thought it was very good of the game to allow an option to skip the procedure of the suicide victim with shit parents in case it wasn't a topic the player could deal with, I think there are definitely people who will appreciate that choice). And hey, lots of queer people and queer mentions in it, too! Overall, it's quite brief so full price might be asking a lot, but it was definitely worth getting in a bundle like this - both for the interesting knowledge about the mortician's profession and funeral homes in general, and for the emotional payoff that came with it. (I actually think I know how I want to be buried now because of this game.)

A cute, short, silly game that frustrated me at first but grew on and charmed me as it went on. Won't take even a half an hour of your time, so give it a shot! The Game Boy art style and music is very charming, also.

Though the story was a bit esoteric, it still elicited emotion, and the relaxing music and gameplay helped my anxiety a whole lot!

extremely adorable game with delightful and charming animations. i would die for this frog

Very odd game. Most of it is a roguelike that begins frustrating, gets fairly addictive, and then becomes super easy once you have enough power-ups, but then at the end suddenly has a complete, bizarre, and very confusing gameplay change that didn't entirely make sense or feel terribly satisfying for all the work I put in. The "no thanks" ending choice did make me laugh, though, so if you do decide to play it, go with that one.

Mmm, I dunno. It was okay, in terms of art and writing, but felt fairly generic as a phantom thief heist story, and there wasn't really enough time to be invested in the characters for that to be an aspect, so nothing about this really jumped out at me. Apparently it's the precursor to an RPG Maker game, but this comic didn't make me particularly excited about playing it, so...

The stop-motion animation is impressive, the character designs are quirky, and the concept looks genuinely fun - but when I played it, the lead character's singing voice wasn't my favorite? Not completely terrible, but enough to make me not really want to play the rest of the game. I'm very picky when it comes to musicals and music, so that might have something to do with it, though.

As a Certified QueermanTM, I was very excited for this game. And it does have things to like - it’s visually cute, with a lovely soundtrack, and the concept of “gay teen who ran away from home helping other people with their relationship problems by going inside their minds, and that being how he recognizes he is loved and deserves to be loved, while also dealing with his feelings for his best friend and missing his sister who tried her best” has the potential to be a very compelling and likable game. Unfortunately, it… didn’t feel like the writing was up to the task. The humor and slang often feels oddly forced (the usage of “flip” instead of “fuck”, for example, just felt a bit obnoxious, not to mention my adoptive mother calling me "cringe" on two separate occasions for... being cheerful?? ), and in general the dialogue and narration is extremely on-the-nose in a very unnatural way. Like, your adoptive mom starts a conversation by just apropos of nothing saying “ever since my son went missing I’ve lost the ability to feel”. While your character’s friend is just sort of standing there three feet away, clearly within earshot. The game tries to be metaphorical and deep, but it’s so very heavy-handed - at one point you have to LITERALLY BUILD A BRIDGE between a mother and her estranged son, because she “tried to build the bridge and then got really tired”. And it seems especially odd to me that the game so heavily markets itself as being about a guy falling in love with his best friend, when we see very little progression of their relationship. Alex and Jake - like most of the characters - don’t have very distinctive personalities, and have nearly nonexistent chemistry. We see them meet each other, and then they just sort of… generically get along, and that’s the extent of how we see them interact. At one point Jake says he feels like he knows everything about Alex, and I was like “damn I wish I did!” because it felt like there was not anything interesting about him to know. I feel like I’m not describing my issue with the game’s writing well enough, so my best description is that it feels like when you have a really creative and meaningful idea but are too young to write it the way you want so you sort of just try your best. That’s the kind of amateurish feeling it gives off with its thin characters (who almost feel more like metaphorical concepts than characters, though again given the character and relationship-based marketing I think that probably wasn’t intentional -I also noticed that  Alex and Jake act a lot younger than eighteen and nineteen, which reminded me of when I was young and wanted to write older characters so I’d just slap an age older than myself on there) and too-obvious writing. Repeatedly, I was struck by how x joke would be funnier, or x scene would feel more sweet, more sad, more heartwarming, in a game that pulled it off more competently… and eventually after I somehow got stuck on a puzzle, I stopped playing entirely.

I do feel bad for critiquing this game in such a way. In some senses, it reminds me of Libretta - another top-down queer adventure game with a laudable and uplifting message that feels like it was very important and healing for the creator to make, but doesn’t have the writing quality to carry its concept. Clearly this game and Libretta have resonated with people, and you know? That’s a great thing! But I figure just because a game is queer, doesn’t mean I can’t criticize it. However, just because I didn’t like it doesn’t mean I want people to stop making queer art - please do it forever. The world needs more of it, whether it’s good, bad, or mediocre, especially when it’s well-meaning like this.