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I'll premise this by saying that I appreciated Silverstone for taking risks and making me think about what it was about: my impressions over it have changed a lot as I read the story and explore all the routes. What story the VN is trying to tell is not immediately apparent. In fact, even after finishing the VN for the first time (I got the "good" ending first) I was still left a bit befuddled. It was not until playing the other endings that I got to appreciate the overarching story the VN was trying to tell. The execution is far from perfect, but I praise it for being daring.

SPOILERS to follow.

On the writing and presentation side, the art had a consistent style to it and the prose was pretty good taken on a sentence by sentence level. I do have to say that the biggest shortcoming for me was a general mishmash when looking at the larger picture. On the writing side, there were some jarring shifts from flowery to very simplistic prose, especially when it comes to dialogue. The narration, that drops refined words at you like "fugue" or interesting turns of phrase like food "residing" in the fridge, is awkwardly juxtaposed with a main character who talks mostly on the level of "Aurgh, I had a fucking hangover". The dialogue in general is a very strange beast, characters will state absolute banal things and the narration/other character has a habit of overreacting to what was just said, which left me plenty confused. (This is not helped by the characters having somewhat confused attitudes throughout, especially when you take player choices into account. Walt will shift from being love dovey with you to being frigid and rude based on random minor choices like whether you offered him your breakfast or not).

My other main criticism is that, considering the basic premise is that of two characters developing a very close connection in the span of a single day... Not a whole lot happens during that one day. Except for the MC sharing a very intimate piece of personal information, everything else is just mundane busywork and casual conversations. I feel like more time would have been better spent actually depicting the characters establishing some sort of connection outside of that one scene.

Now for the part I enjoyed the most: like I said, I love stories that force me to think and that force me to reconsider how you viewed certain things based on the unfolding of new information.

My impressions after getting the "good ending" was basically "Ok, this was a cute and harmless little tale about a character with some personal baggage opening up and finding the courage to step out of his comfort zone. I guess it was ok, even though I'm not sure what that post-credit ending scene really adds to anything."

Then, as I was playing the "worst ending" and seeing how wildly the ending was changing, I had a moment where I went "Oh, the story is trying to depict how the ultimate result is the same (death), the only thing we can really change is what preceeds that point. I love that!"

But then after the identity of the assailant was revealed in the two bad endings, I guess I had to reconsider my interpretation once more: the story was really trying to be a horror all along. I think it was a nice reveal, and it was nice how the same final sentence about the Silver Bullets changes meaning depending on the context and makes you realize what's really going on. (Though ngl, I would have prefered the suble message about being daring because death is coming for us all, over "love me or I'm gonna fuck you up real bad" lol)

So, while I don't think all creative choices worked, if you take this as a horror story that was simply holding its cards close to its chest, I think it was a very interesting read, and the kind of VN that would spark discussion. I'm probably going to be more eager to discuss this entry in the bookclub than most others that I'm going to enjoy/not enjoy.

Thanks for the feedback! Can't wait to discuss it in the Book Club!