hey, thanks for reading & leaving feedback!
i'm not particularly surprised to hear the game reads as difficult to follow. besides not really contextualizing everything related to the depicted historical events to a satisfactory degree, there are lot of one-off cultural jokes that could be explained explicitly – although, imo, "here's why this is funny" rarely produces good comedy. ultimately, i decided to prioritize keeping the piece as short and fast-paced as possible while not skipping over what i felt like were the most important bits related to what it had to say.
there's also an argument for the density of information as a literary effect – that something like this is ultimately more about the cumulative weight of the reader being assaulted with so many names, concepts, and voices. this aspect is ofc way more pronounced if you're reading the translation, but i think the original-language reading experience also flirts with it in places.
anyway, i wouldn't resist calling the game niche in its subject matter and dense in the execution to a reader-hostile degree. i really just thought of the jam as an opportunity to make something aggressively specific and "uncommercial", and am happy to see readers get whatever they can out of it!