Thank you for your kind words! Glad you got both of the endings. Did you water Chuck though?
And , my health has been very under control for the past few years, thank you for asking!
...but definitely part of the problem is that the "...Is it coming back?" thought never REALLY goes away, which is what formed part of the horror: needing to constantly be vigilant around it, knowing that most people don't have that added psychic weight.
Honestly, I think the 1-bit worked in my favor. Because the art is so low detail, you fill in a lot of other details in your mind. The creepy stuff I left unfilled was filled in by your imagination, and the end result was something better and creepier than I could have made.
Thank you for your kind words! At the end of the day, it's about whatever you think it's about, but I'll tell you a little bit about what I was thinking.
The game is very autobiographical in that I have a lot of health issues and more than a few hospital stays, but the purpose of the second night isn't to give you information about Elly's past: It's to give you information about what's wrong with her through allegory.
The theme of the second night is "You should be able to count on this thing to take care of you, and it can't because there's something wrong with it." - A nasty autoimmune condition like mine is a lifetime of "Can my body resolve this issue on its own? Or do I need to step in with medical intervention?" That anxiety is the basis of the horror in the second night.
I definitely aimed for "busy and rushed" rather than "uncaring", so I appreciate you making the distinction.
You should take away from it what you want, but my intent with the 3rd night was the feeling of a decaying temple requiring arcane incomprehensible rituals to maintain.
I like your take on the final sequence as well. My particular variety of health problems is autoimmune, so the issue of how both you see yourself and how your body sees itself are relevant.
You are absolutely not reading too much into it: it's intentionally incredibly dense. However, I'm a big post modernist, so whatever you want to take away from it is valid.
*spoiler warning*
The one question I will answer definitively is that the thing that comes out of the CT machine is just... also Elly. It's allegorical, but it's an allegory specifically for autoimmune illness, which is my particular flavor of chronic health problems. The exact diagnosis is never made clear (intentionally) but the doctor notes underwater point to autoimmune if you know the medical terminology.
Because something went terribly wrong, something that you *know* to be your own body is being perceived as alien and awful and needing to be destroyed. Elly isn't sick because she has something foreign inside of her, she's sick because she is unable to recognize that thing as just her. To try to destroy the other without acknowledging it as a part of yourself is tantamount to death, and the "correct" choice is to simply... coexist with it.
Thanks for you feedback, and sorry the experience was unexpectedly rough.
Do you feel like there was something I could have done that gave a clearer picture of what you were in for? Want to do everything possible to prevent people from having an experience they regret.
Thank you so much for your feedback! You're right: I've spent a lot of time personally in hospitals and its VERY autobiographical in that sense. If you have questions about what I was attempting, happy to answer them, but I'm encouraging people to create their own takeaways from it.
If you go back, make sure you get both endings! Also, did you water Chuck?
