itch.io

This was lovely!! Amazing!! Throughly enjoyed every second of thiiiissssss <3

So,, onto the actual thoughts

I was really impressed by the amount of custom shenanigans in this. It's obviously still a renpy game but you truly mangled that engine into your own vision. The clickable desktop icons, the chat log, emotes, and general ui/ux feels were unique, and fit the game well.

The general visual style was also lovely. Your art is adorable, and from a production standpoint you're also really efficient with the limited scope and assets to still make this feel fleshed out!

Lastly, your writing. HOLY SHIT dfhgjdfghb I love nova to bits- her teasing and general attitude are so fun and hit all the buttons for me. I was so sad when the demo ended because I want more of this!! so I'm really looking forward to future updates. The games you play with Nova felt unique and meaningful in their variations too, which helped Extort My Heart feel like it's a pliable and squishy thing that actually responds to your input (next to name and pronoun selections). (Like, there's many "choices matter" vns where you still very obviously see the pearlstringing. That didn't happen here!)

A small criticism I have is that the actual extortion never felt that... present?  We get more days with Nova, but the actual forking over of money is never really given presence. Which makes this feel much more lighthearted (maybe intentional, maybe not?)

Overall, thank you for making this :3 Would get extorted by a goth girl that's mean to me again 10/10

Yes, that's one of the endings! Some routes are really long, some are really short- depending on your choices :3

Hi Pheonix! Thank you so much for your comment. The pedigree of "vn with so much aura it gets several paragraphs on vibes alone" is one I am honored to receive from you hehe

As for my other games, When The Sea Received The Sky shares many themes with this one, but is way tamer in presentation and doesn't include blood or gore outside of a bit of text. So I'd probably recommend you that one the most? But please feel free to look around nya, there's many quirky things on my profile hdfbghjdf

based

Very cute!

Thank you for commenting <3 it's cool hearing your thoughts as you're such a talented writer yourself :3

yes yes absolutely no pressure

tho I would be delighted to read something you made hehe :3

What the fucking hell. That is insane and delightful and I am so so sooooo glad and happy to hear the game could resonate with your and your girlfriend so much

(≧∀≦)ゞI feel indescribably honored that my visual novel could be such a personal and resonant journey for you. if I could give you a hug I would

WAIT I JUST SAW YOUR PFP IS NOW A SCREENSHOT OF ONE AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

This is awesome, thank you so much for your comment <3

ty for playing and writing your comment <3<3<3<3

Thank you so so much for your comment, it brings boundless warmth to my heart <3

(also hell yes we love blunt force :3)

cruelty towards dolls fuck yea

The art was outstanding

this was so visceral and disgusting and psychotic

endlessly falling and stumbling and shit

this was so good

aaaaaaaaaaaa <3

may guro bless your every step <3<3<3

tbh I never watched madoka magica until now but this is getting me into it finally sooo consider witness link my first formative magical girl trauma experience x3

this was such a wonderful and genuine and heartfelt depiction of the struggles so many of us (including me) go through

thank you for making this <3

...I need to ask my therapist about SSRIs

Also! From a technical standpoint this was really neat.  The animation / visual style and how you used different UI elements and layouts to frame each scene was lovely. The therapist's question hit like a truck

I'm SO glad I finally got around to playing Witness Link

The writing was just plain good, and your prose has a lovely feeling of internet conversationality that I always enjoy in stories :3

The textual descriptions of the mutilation / amputation scene and the... aftermath (:3) felt like absolute revelry. The self-deprication, the guilt, the viscera, everything feels like one disgusting bloodied and cum-stained slab of meat - in the best way possible <3

Additionally, Dizzy's internal thoughts and thought spirals are literally just... how they feel irl and you managed to capture them beautifully. You're so real for that

Lastly, magical girls goind through trauma is never something I'll get tired of. Very swag

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I also read through your Author Notes at the end and agree with your approach! I'm proud of you for getting something out there, even if you had to sacrifice scope and clean project structure in the process. "Placeholders that stuck" is the correct mindset for finishing stuff in game jams, and I would love to see where you take it from here, if you put more dev work into it. Especially possibly character visuals? Would go crazy,,

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Much love

Holy shit this was great

So painful and visceral <3

sample that

Thank you so much for your kind words, I'm glad it hooked you in hehe

Awww this was adorable!!

This level of visual polish for a game jam is ridiculous!!! Your team has such a sick art direction and style going on :3

Outside of that, I really liked the themes of the story, even if the scene-to-scene writing felt a bit awkward or back and forth sometimes

But yea, overall I really liked it nya

This was so lovely!!

Both the visuals and storytelling created an aura that I haven't seen much in other visual novels- A dreamlike landscape, picturing a lived life and the questions about genuineness and reality and authenticity

I loved this so much :3

Holy shit this is one of the most eloquent comments / reviews I've ever read and I am so so glad it is attached to Growing Up

Thank you so much for your thoughts <3

Lmao these jurors are beyond parody

This is possibly one of the most caricature-like portrayals of the plague of the prison industrial complex and american conservativism I've ever seen and that made it feel cathartic in a way, if highly simplified

I'm honestly not too sure what I think of the ending in its "situational usefulness" of these cretins, and overall the scene dressing was very minimal (but honestly that works in favor of the caricature-like mood)

The visual style certainly was unique and added a lot of charme

Hell yea

This was a pretty good vn! The all lower case text is so cool and evocative

You made some decisions that I don't really like in visual novels, such as having non-choices (like how I can answer "yes / maybe / a few" questions), and during the pick an item section, I was unsure what the point of picking something is, when we won't even use it and it gets overridden by a choice we couldn't make

But, those "pick an item" sections initially appeared as a collag, and the perspective shift to 3d was so cool

I also really liked the dynamic between lilith and eve, and the implied violence and gore that's going on :3

I am writing this comment not immediately after playing Blunt Soul Trauma - that'll be relevant for the rest of the comment.

This will start out with a bit of critique but it will get better in the next paragraph :3 I have to admit that on my initial reading, I wasn't that engaged by the story. I think the biggest gripe I had was that Ferida's agency and tension was fairly low. Textually that is because of her being drugged out of her mind, but then I didn't really learn why it is necessary she be so sedated? Just having trauma happen at a character without larger implications can feel flat, especially if we never get to those delayed consequences. And with the stakes being literal divinity, "it's just less annoying if Ferida is freaking out" seems unsatisfactory - especially when Haydee compensates her for her "cooperation" at the end of the story. I wish we could've gained more insights into Haydee's psyche and why she treats Ferida the way she does. Ferida is so lighthearted about things - comparatively speaking. Quipping about her favorite jacket and taxi money not even 10 minutes after awakening from unconciousness because she was thrown head-first into Alexis' soul. That created tonal dissonance and made it very difficult to place the dynamic on the spectrum of very bad [kidnapping + drugging] and mutually respectful [pleroma payment + Ferida's inner thoughts on having respect to leave Haydee and Alexis alone]

Textually I'd have edited way differently but if that makes you go "actually stfu this is my creative vision and it works because [insert thoughts]" I positively invite you to chat about it because our approaches are so different. (DM me if you want because lmao itch comment section would be fucked) Anyways, that is not the end of the comment

...Blunt Soul Trauma is so fucking cool to talk about. I always tell close friends about visual novels I play and my thoughts on them, sometimes they also play them. And very very few achieve the level of creating conversation about themes like this visual novel. Talking about divinity and doing something for your lover and the questions of how good of a person Haydee actually is is so ddfhgbjjdf

You leave many blanks about Haydee's and Alexis' relationship that in my mind become so fucking horrifying and betraying and that's a visceral feeling to have creep up in the back while we are bound to Ferida as the POV character. The themes that you touch on with Blunt Soul Trauma aren't that widely explored I feel like, especially the emulated divinity aspect?? hello??

So sick

And while I did start out negatively, I also want to commend your writing in places :3

You are really good at worldbuilding. The sheer trauma and violence required for consecration was really powerful. Additionally, I found the absolute horror of the process inside the pod incredibly intriguing and a part of me wishes there was more on that front, but on the other hand it also works incredibly well aready. The quick view at Alexis taking form was easily a standout moment! It was a type of snappy horror that many authors fail at because they linger too long without allowing the reader to have the horror spin away into their own interpretation. There is so much implied body horror going on here that makes me go absolutely feral djfhgjdf

Also, your character design skills are sick. There's so much going on with Haydee that just makes me intrigued how you'll interpret literally any other character in your future work!

So to conclude, I think Blunt Soul Trauma is really cool. The text itself has stylistic choices that I'd have tackled differently. But I have confidence in you being a good writer, so I do genuinely wanna know what inspires your working process. And as a cultural artifact, I am really really that this visual novel exists in my life <3

This was a cute little game! I really liked the visual style and skeuomorphic UI, even if it didn't scale at all, which made it difficult to read.

The UX / UI could have used a bit more polish in terms of information clarity imo, as it was kinda difficult to learn when I was supposed to do what, and what the effects on my stats are

The worldbuilding however was suberb and I really enjoyed it :3

This is exemplary work, both technically and narratively

Using RPGmaker is always something that'll be a challenge because of how restrictive it is compared to other engines but you showed that you truly do know you craft and the strengths of your tools. The only bit I didn't like was the... end? You say on your page that you only go up to day 2 and after the day 3 chapter cover it just kinda weirdly looped, which isn't that graceful of a landing

But aside from that, this is so fucking amazing. The presentation is wonderful, I love the color palette and rough photobashed style of the sprites :3

Narratively speaking this had viscerally impactful moments of trauma and abuse with a weight I have rarely experienced in other games, and easily makes this into one of the Top 10 Gut Punches to read

Lovely work, can't wait to see more :3333

Oh this was beautifully messed up

The vomit scenes was so fucked and the sheer dread from the final scene was so palpable- I really really enjoyed this toxic hurtful mess of a dynamic between Athena and Doll

Especially for a first work, this is insanely good. You can be really really proud of it :3333

Thank you so so much for your thoughts :3 I'm really glad the rawness came across well and that you enjoyed all the emotions!!!

Okay this was really really fucking good

This is the type of VN good enough to make me liveblog screenshots to my friends as I play because it gets my brain active so much.

The UI rules, the SOUND DESIGN is so minimal but SO evocative and punchy, and even without character sprites I had aion and miran and vel all dance around my head and ugh it was so good

My biggest feeling / throughline with together with you until the end of time is the sense of unease and non-satisfaction and frustration at the world and your own place in it. It resonates with me a lot, where you know how you could be a better person, how your life could be improved - but through various circumstances (material, mental health, etc.) - it just becomes impossible to achieve. So many dialogue options were just too restrictive, in a good sense. They made me feel like really inhabiting a struggling pov character and that was so great

Loved the intermissions in between lives, and the subtle worldbuilding going on with how soul fragments even work

And the choices being locked out (based on my prior choices I assume) was soooo fucking cool

This was a really sweet experience. Seeing the dialogue evolve and coalesce into the final story beats was cool, even if some scenes were very repetitive. maybe that was intentional to compell the player to push forward?

From a writing standpoint, I'd advise you to not allude to things that are not there but could be very closely. I picked 2x flexibility first and the doll explicitly says "get upgrades so you don't see something you're not supposed to see." - which of course I'd want to, but I didn't have a choice in the matter.

However! It also serves to tell a different story. The ultimate choicelessness of the story structure conveys the protagonist's inner drive. and the hidden wish to shape the doll in the imagine of his vision of Iris - despite her own determination als Galatea existing contra to that

I'm really glad you created this game, as complex story structures like this are a kind of beast that can be difficult to wrap your head around, and it worked really well for that. All the writing was consistent and that's not always a given - good job :3

I also really liked the doll toying with the plant. That was an adorable touch :3

<3

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA YOU'RE BEAUTIFUL TOO!!!!

<3<3<3

I'm really glad to see this. It perfectly encapsulates what it's like being trans in 2024

So much of this resonated with me, and I think you did a really good job portraying... yeah, everything.

This one is just super solemn and real and that level of poignancy is something that makes you a really good writer :3

(On a personal note, I don't think we need to censor the slurs we reclaim)

Are textual references to sex allowed? Like no erotica writing obv, but just the naming of sexual acts

<3<3

(console makes you feel like you have stupid bappy paws :3)

This is an insane comment and compliment to receive

I am floored that I was able to change your fundamental understanding of art and thank you for your words immensely <3

Thank you for your uncomfort and thoughts, I am glad I could evoke them :3