Apathesis has balls, I'll give it that.
Before I read this, I had lightly skimmed the comments on here and on discord, and what I'd gathered was that it was a gothic entry with a handful of fanciful elements. I thought, "Wow. Okay. I like du Maurier. I like Irving. This sounds great!"
And then I read it, and it was very much… Not. That.
No, I think I would describe it as dark postmodern surrealism.
Or something similar. Idk.
The graphic presentation is simple but effective. A bit rough in places, like how the protagonist glides across the screen like she's a desktop icon. I guess that lends a certain mystical quality too? I don't mean to sound like a dick here, the handful of custom animations were appreciated, and the music is good. All of that stuff is incidental, though. The elephant here is the narrative.
The text is a dense maze that reflects the setting. It smacks the reader again and again with its difficulty: the vocab is tough and the text blocks are giant and never-ending. It repeats itself in more ways than one, and it makes the reader question what in God's name is actually happening.
I admire this approach, in a way. Few stories have the backbone to tell a reader, "Sit down and shut up because this is how we are going to do things around here." Such stories are not for everyone, and Apathesis definitely wears that badge proudly.
It reminds me of experimental music. The point is not to "sound good", but to create something textually interesting.
With all of that in mind, I have a hard time saying that I enjoyed reading this. I think it's fitting that you changed the itch noun from "game" to "exaltation" because this felt more like an experience rather than a game or even a story.
It did make me feel things. Boredom admittedly being one of them, but I can see this being a really deep and explorative read for an audience smarter than me. And, well, that's pretty much what I took away from this.
Apathesis is creative and daring. But it is also not for me.