Really cool game. The point-and-click puzzles were really simple, but honestly anything more complicated would probably have distracted from the story too much. It's weird though, unless I'm missing something, there were like two items that had no use. Are there multiple endings here?

I really love the art style and the way it changes in different points of the game, and the music was freakin awesome. FLIGHT RESPONSE and eternally grieving were my favorite tracks, the former for its weirdness and the latter for its otherworldly beauty. Good job toooooooo sewagechrysalis! Gosh it's nice to have music rooms with credits on each track. All the other music was great as well, those two tracks just stood out.

The story's plot and themes were great-- I'd say more, but it's getting late and I might need to reread parts of it to fully comprehend what it's all about. The moment-to-moment writing was pretty solid as well, going between quirky and heartfelt pretty smoothly. Though, some of the writing felt a little weird to me, and I don't know how to describe it besides "it didn't feel Touhou-like enough." Like, there's a lot of cussing here, and it pretty much always feels really goofy to see that in a Touhou story. That, plus a few moments like the Harry Potter (?) reference and Alice's 'I used to have really bad panic attacks, but now I take specialized medication, and it's not so bad now' line, makes the characters feel more like present-day outside-worlders than 2010 Gensokyo residents-- this stuff is fine in more comedic stories, but this game takes itself really seriously, so stuff like that kinda takes me out of the experience.

Oh also, without spoilerz, what a great ending. The last two minutes alone bumped my overall rating from 4 to 5 stars. Oh also, shoutouts to "a cup to a god, an ocean to an ant"-- it's not important to the story, but I love that line so much. Oh also that Eyes in the Dark piano song was great n unexpected, I really liked that. Also even though I don't like MariAli very much, the way their relationship was handled here didn't feel like it totally butchered Alice's character, which is extremely rare in my experience. Oh also I love the faces here, very subtly expressive. oh also i like trumpet and gamebird and funni banter about puppetshows and ooooooh gosh it's time for bed

In short, it's like Celeste in the non-gameplay ways-- ha ha you thought i was gonna say omori but jokes on you i havent played it!! the dialogue and character portraits give me celeste vibes and it's like 3 am so thats the only comparison i can think of right now sorryyy