Usually I try to write fairly detached and short reviews, but that just feels so wrong to do in this case. This game is a painfully authentic recollection of its creator's traumatic experiences of sex work. The aesthetic elements complement the narrative extremely well and the writing is outstanding - at least to the best of my understanding as someone without any personal experience of sex work.
While this story is in the specific context of the pre-Affordable Care Act USA, I've definitely known people with similar socio-economic situations and trauma in the UK too.This game helped me to better imagine the kinds of things that some of my friends (specifically, transfeminine people who have been sex workers) could have experienced, and how that might affect the rest of their lives.
I certainly will never think about gifts or money the same way ever again after playing this, and I'm grateful that I can now take a more trauma-informed approach to these topics in future.
The narrator takes care to distinguish the specific experiences under discussion as one individual's story, not something to be weaponised against sex work or sex workers in general. It felt like a very carefully considered piece of work all round, but especially in this regard.
There are no visually graphic sexual elements, though there are a few pixel-art representations of a character's upper body changes due to HRT which I suppose counts as mild nudity.
There is, of course, a lot of text covering the core theme of sex work. A substantial share is sexually explicit, but in a way that reinforces the key ideas of the narrative and/or relates the facts of a situation, not in a way intended to sensationalise or titillate.
For example, the inbox full of explicit messages from potential clients and timewasters is optional, but certainly gives those who choose to read it a powerful example of many gratingly dehumanising attitudes toward sex workers. I can attest that when I forced myself to read all of them (in an attempt to mirror the protagonist's experience of having to sift through them all) I could actually feel myself becoming slightly desensitised to the horror of it by the sheer volume of the messages. The fact that I technically could stop reading them, but the protagonist was compelled to by circumstance, made the removal of their agency hit even harder. This was an extremely effective design choice.
Similarly, the portrayal of the protagonist's first meetings with a client was written clearly enough to convey the facts of the situation, with details where they were necessary, but the writing focused mainly on the dissociation needed to get through it and the lingering psychological impact it had. This, in combination with the shifting visual design of the protagonist, did an incredible job of conveying the most relevant elements of the experiences under discussion.
The anguish of never being able to talk with people about these topics (due to the criminalisation of sex work and/or the need to suit a client's desired behaviours) was palpable in various dialogue sections. It made me feel furious about the laws and social attitudes that put the protagonist in such an awful position for their mental health.
I am really grateful that the creator made the decision to develop this game, as I can only try to imagine the number of people in similar situations who might see themselves reflected in it, and the number of poorly-informed people like me out there who can learn so much from it. Whoever you are, if you are capable of playing this game without it causing you harm then I strongly recommend that you do so.