(Written Dec 25th 2023)

Been a couple years now I've had this game on my to-play list, and I swear it was sometime in the summer this year I'd picked it up in a steam sale, but only now that I finally gave it a try!

It's a decently short point and click 'mystery' game, with the mystery side being very loose. It's not too short where I felt wanting for more, but not too long either where it wore out its welcome.

The animation and character designs are the biggest highlight by far for me. Everything is so expressive and fluid, with absolute tons of variety on display. The art style in general is such an appealing one, and I kind of want to steal a bit of inspiration for some of the shape language to use with one of my own character designs in the future haha!

The writing as well is a huge highlight. I was caught off guard in the best way start to finish from the humor this game had. The twist by the end especially was s e nd in g me.

The only parts that were maybe a bit long in the tooth were some of the minigames (the ouija board and spot the difference ones especially bugged me a little bit), and the secondary goal was a bit on the annoying side to keep track of, with no indicator in game for what spots you'd already looked or not. You just sort of have to guess. So by the time I reached the ending I didn't overstress myself with finding the last few.

Overall it was manageable to play even with the issues I have around mouse fatigue and excessive clicking. Having some sort of native option for controller would've been nice, like I assume the switch version does, but it's not a make or break thing!

If I had anything else specific to critique, the sound balancing could be a bit janky to adjust for my computer. I had to crank both the in game settings, and my external volume mixer for the game, ALL the way down, and it was still pretty loud, with the sfx of some games being especially bad with headphones in. So that's just something to be wary of!

If you want for some gorgeous 2D animation work, great humor, and a light-hearted comedy story to spend a day or two with, this title definitely fits the bill.

Also if you're not quite as keen to play but just curious of the animation work, or simply want an added way to enjoy the title, I was losing my mind over this playthrough in particular by JelloApocalypse. At the very least part one of the bunch his laughter is incredibly contagious. xD