Beautiful. I binged Sweetest Monster and Refrain today and yesterday. Such an absurdly evil and poetic situation, it feels Nabokovian.
You are becoming a favourite author of mine, Ebi-Hime! Despite how prolific she is as a writer, these stories blend wonderful and dark emotions together so consistently. Looking forward to reading more, I'll have to pick up the Lily remake sometime.
(SPOILER FREE) Wow, hearing the developer notes on the origins of Blythe is genuinely incredibly inspired. It's a kind of horror that is rather untread. Only this direction being able to come off as anything near to the tact it has is a great feat, and comes from the authors experience and skill. Its a message that could have come off as very negative if done wrong.
(SPOILERISH BELOW) I have experienced both positive and negative experience with 'Blythe's Origins' in my life. Positive experiences which have changed my life, and negative experiences that have filled me with so much horror at what was happening to me. 'Blythe's Origins' have been genuinely retraumatising to me and had made me scared to reach out and try getting more support. But at the same time, even a sucess IS bittersweet. You just don't know how anything is going to treat you and your mind. There is that sense of dependence and faith and depersonalisation you have to give. Its a uniquely uncanny feeling captured really well in the game's role reversal where a human is looked after by bunnies, rather than the other way around. To me, Sweet Blythe is the 'Origin' which helped me, and Bitter Blythe is the negative experience.
The art is beautiful, aside from the ending arcade CG where I found that Blythe's looked pretty off-model to their regular sprites.
Thanks for making this game and I look forward to playing more, if Bitter Blythe's routes get added.
