I fell in love with Our Life: Beginnings and Always, the first game with Cove, over and over again every time I played. There were so many reasons for it, but the first was the incredible queer representation. Not only do you get to decide your sexuality in this visual novel, but you get to decide if you want your character to be transgender. BUT, on top of binary transgender representation, you also get the chance to be nonbinary! And the implementation of that in the story is so perfect, as young kids may politely question what that means and you just explain it and they accept it and move on. You also have the opportunity to transition later in life, if you prefer to have a character that doesn't know they're trans as an 8/10 year old. And the characters are all supportive and use your pronouns and preferred titles and terms, and the story also occasionally references that you're queer when it's relevant, which adds so much realism for an entire community of people who are almost never represented in visual novels. And I cannot tell you how excited I was to see that not only included in Our Life: Now and Forever, but that it was IMPROVED. There's even more nonbinary representation and customization, with the option for multiple pronouns (which you can customize the frequency of usage for), assigned sex at birth, gender identity, and you get to choose a nickname and how often characters in the story use it in place of their birth name.
Moving on past the LGBTQ+ stuff, I want to mention the NEURODIVERGENT (ND) REPRESENTATION. This is arguably an even bigger deal (to me, at least.) The language in these games doesn't feel at all like someone picked up a DSM-5 and picked random traits to give characters, they feel like real neurodivergent people that I'd meet and be best friends with. As an autistic person, I related so much to Cove that I was freaking out and telling all of my friends when he was officially diagnosed in the story, and even just seeing Qui in the demo feels so familiar as a person also with ADHD. It's really so important for people with different neurotypes to see not just positive representation, but see that representation in multiple places, and these creators really do that. And that's HUGE for the ND community. It's so beautiful to see a melting pot of neurotypes and personalities, and it's perfect for a game that's all about growing up and becoming your own person, and helping (or preventing) those around to grow alongside you.
Another beautiful thing about this game is the customization of the story. You're given so many choices to choose from almost every time you're presented with a choice, and I feel that the choices in this demo cover an even greater range of personalities than even the last game did. I am an autistic person, so the choices I make in social situations aren't usually options in visual novels; I'm used to getting stuck at choices and having to choose whatever is the closest to what I'd do, which often isn't remotely how I'd respond. However, in this game, I get stuck at choices because there's multiple that appeal to me equally. I truly feel like, in this game, I could create a character that I feel perfectly represents me, and I could play the game with a character that truly feels like I am a part of that world if I wanted to. You can make such incredibly different characters each playthrough and experience the story entirely differently with a drastically different personality. Hell, there's still dialogue I've never seen in the first game because of choices I've never made.
Another thing I love is the change to the relationship dynamic system. In Our Life: Beginnings and Always, you choose how close you feel to Cove and whether it's nervous, relaxed, or direct. In this one, you get a bit more customization over the relationship dynamics. You still choose how close you feel to Qui and Tamarack, but in addition you get to see how they feel about you in 3 categories, which you also get to choose how you feel about them in. The first is leadership; the choices are to, in general, prefer to lead, follow, or compromise. The second is comments you make to other them: you can be teasing, prefer not to comment, or complimentary. The third is how you see the person: do you place them on a pedestal, see them as an equal, or want to look out for and protect them. I think that this dynamic will add a lot more to the gameplay during the next steps than in the previous game, and I'm super excited for what's to come. I'm in love with the characters and the game, I know I loved the last one, and this one just seems better.