This game's a neat little work of love. Having to "regain your humanity" so to speak, to even have a chance at regaining your lost love is a fine notion. Visuals-wise, was Katsuiro Otomo's Metropolis a source of inspiration? I'm kinda getting a similar vibe.
At any rate and on drier matters, I had some trouble running on Linux. The Itch client fails to launch (here's the error trace); it looks like it might be having trouble reading $SCRIPTPATH as defined in Linux/CyborgSeppuku? But it is defined and called correctly with quotes, it is a single string with whitespace in it. Also ags64 is exactly where it's looking for it, no idea why it can't find it. But tbh I'm not really sure how that script works, since all it supposedly does is define a couple env variables but if you run it by hand it executes AGS and the game somehow (and completely scrambles your randr configuration if launched fullscreen as by default, but details). Might be the problem is just with the Itch client.
Thanks for writing this, it's a great story. The dialogues are lively, the characters are well shaped, the humor is a harsh workout for the abdominal muscles, the drama is powerful, scenes flow naturally and the pacing sits in a comfortable sweet spot so that the narrative feels just as long as it's supposed to be (something unfortunately unusual for most visual novels :p ). I loved how every single line in the story is a Chekhov's gun.
There is one element that felt a bit dissonant to me, though. Some spoilers ahead.
Baldy. It is made pretty clear in the story that Ciarán is an unreliable narrator, and Ziva's comment on schizophrenia and how schizoid personalities tend to warp reality to fit their own mental image is pretty much a full explanation for what's told in OTL (including Claire). So lights go off at the most dramatic moment, Ciarán's sleight of hand likewise fails or succeeds situationally for the best effect and graduation parties turn into airsoft battle royales. All good. But I think Baldy took it a bit too far and his constant, full defiance of common sense made it hard to keep disbelief suspended for me. I could see how this might be done on purpose to give the reader one more clue, but it's the one place where I think it's too much, lampshaded though it is.
Also, but this really is a tiny, obnoxious nitpick, this is a kinetic novel, not a VN :p
But overall, I loved it. Really looking forward to your next work :)
