"Cozy Combat": The Garden Story Contradiction

 

 

  

I played Garden Story a few weeks ago now and I couldn't help feeling its intended experience was so similar to the cozy games of its time. Stardew Valley, Animal Crossing, and all these titles blew up in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic era, when everyone were confined in their homes, looking for respite in media. What better way to achieve that than through some relaxing, simple cozy simulators? It made sense, at least to me, that Garden Story, a 2021 RPG by Picogram, would draw heavily upon the needs of the average players at the time. However, the sticking point here was that Garden Story was not just a simulator, for it was also, to great extent, an action-RPG. Garden Story, through the box in which it had fit itself, had to now face a challenge: create a fleshed out, exciting, thrilling combat system within a video game also meant to be relaxing. The game attempts, in a contradictory phrase, "cozy combat", to interesting results.

 

Any single decision made during a game's conception can directly or indirectly affect multitudes in its design. The choice to make the combat more appealing to relaxed, laid-on-the-couch audiences certainly made for a tricky system that must tip-toe on a fine line between combat that isn't on the level of Hades, but also not entirely absent, either (the game is, after all, an action-RPG).

 

Garden Story achieves its "cozy combat" in many ways. One method is lowering enemy density and also making the most common enemy (slimes called Rot) completely passive during most of the day. That is to say, the Rot will not attack the player during most times of each game day. This is perhaps akin to how Minecraft handles its combat, with nights generally becoming more hostile as the sun sets (although, unlike Garden Story, Minecraft doesn't have zombies walking around who will simply ignore you). This essentially accomplishes a natural game loop that involves a slow start -- the morning, with room for breathing -- which then slowly transforms into a fight or run scenario -- the night, when all the monsters congregate. A day-and-night cycle lends to this well-established game loop, making the transition between Garden Story's desired states, relaxed and hostile, more seamless*.

 

[*] seamless-ish. Technically, the transitions between each part of the day is actually very abrupt. But it works enough as a "hostility gradient" (or a "combat gradient") for all intents and purposes.

 

Another way Garden Story reinforces a relaxed tone in combat scenarios is by disallowing high rates of action via a stamina system. Basically, attacking, dodging, and running all consume stamina at different rates, and a player must wait to restore stamina once it is depleted. Regardless of whether or not you like Garden Story's stamina meter (I personally am indifferent), its purpose is to make action feel slower, more controlled, while also less thrilling and high-paced. Somewhat related is the fact that weapons in the game, while serving slightly different niches, all act more or less the same, reducing complexity further. Once again, the homogenization of weaponry and the limitation of combat through stamina are parts of the combat system that serve to make the whole less complicated and more approachable, even if at the expense of a relatively low skill ceiling.

 

Unfortunately, while this system actually stands up decently through most of the game, Garden Story stumbles a few times near its last bend. Around the story's climax, our grape character, Concord, is tasked to fight a bunch of bosses in dungeons, as well as navigate a snowy forest maze, to finally fight the root cause of rot and decay in the grove. The supposedly relaxed tone of Garden Story's combat here is all but thrown out, making these high-octane portions of the game feel so out of place not only thematically, but also mechanically. By the climax, most players will have spent a good majority of their playtime gathering materials, fishing, cutting trees, and building up dilapidated town sections, so to throw them into the tentacles of a giant Octopi monster and the heart of sewer rot just feels odd. Personally, whenever I entered a dungeon or fought a boss, it felt as though I were playing a different game altogether.

 

At its core, the reason for this discrepancy between the game's climax and the rest of its gameplay lies in what an action-RPG really desires: action. It's in the name! The sudden jump to action is not really so sudden, as the narrative and the genre of the game demands it in the first place. At the end of the day, even if you try to design your combat mechanics in such ways that swords now whisper instead of scream, where sickles now pull instead of prey, where shovels now tap instead of dig; an action game will seek action, almost hungrily. It's not that other cozy games necessarily fare better: arguments can certainly be made against Stardew Valley's combat also. But the truth is, in Stardew Valley, combat is almost explicitly expressed as a "different" or "separate" part of the game. On the other hand, combat pervades Garden Story.

 

Combat in Garden Story likely has nowhere to go. Combat was designed here from the roots of the game and had followed its journey 'til harvest, in the form of budding flowers. Unfortunately, at the final moment, those flowers grew black and red pigmentation, contrasting the curvaceous, smooth stems. Lovely, eye-catching, but probably not the serene beauties the plant had come to expect.

 

If you want my suggestions, maybe it should have committed harder to its "cozy combat" style all the way to the end. If the narrative was slightly transfigured, it might have been more fitting, to be honest! Imagine, an action-RPG where the central conflict is resolved not through action, or at least not through nail-biting combat, but actually through some more "peaceful" or elegant methods. Where, at the last moment, instead of Concord pulling up their sword to defeat the final baddie, perhaps they should've drawn it back instead and, as the grove's Guardian, allowed peace to flourish in other ways. Systems other than combat do exist (though most are under-utilized). Besides, as it stands now, Garden Story's finale message boils down to: "Outdated systems should be left behind, especially those who turn people against each other", or something along those lines. It's beautiful, though violence still remains key in its answer. Video games will be violent, am I right fellas? It just had to be the sword. Indeed, it just had to be the combat. 

 

All that being said, I remained attached to Garden Story a lot; enough for me to want to finish it until the end. Still, due to the contradiction belying one of its core components -- its combat -- that wishes to be one thing and another entirely, which often clashed and contradicted, the game personally did not feel entirely cohesive in how it played, and partly in the messages it tried to send.

Post-Contextualization: Chants of Sennaar and Artificial Intelligence

/*** THIS POST CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS FOR CHANTS OF SENNAAR ***/

 

Did you know that I got into a Twitter disagreement with one of Chants of Sennaar's game developers a few years ago? In a now-deleted tweet thread of mine, I had presented my (admittedly uninformed) thoughts about the game's climax based solely on what I had seen online, deeming it unnatural and unnecessary. After all, Chants of Sennaar is a puzzle game about learning languages, understanding ways of communication, and bringing people together — what the hell does a creepy, early horror film, Groot-esque creature in non-Euclidean space have to do with anything? So, while I admired the unique style and mechanics of the well-beloved indie title, I dismissed it for what it seemed to me: a tantalizing masterpiece, ruined only by its inexplicable trope-isms and action climax for the sake of action climax. 

This overtly long tweet thread of mine (overt especially for a game I hadn't even experienced myself) got a response from one of its developers. Unfortunately, I can no longer find the original tweet or even the developer's response to it, but he understandably had a thing or two to say about a creation in which he took part. The developer replied, explaining why the game's climax featured (this is my paraphrasing) "out of place" sentient robots and machine-laden people. Covered in the miasma of my own snobbery and insecurity, I felt nothing but sour taste from the developer's response, and my negative opinions on the game only grew stronger for the rest of that year. By the end of 2023, I had steadfastly believed I did not like Chants of Sennaar, a "hot take" I had to surreptitiously keep given the game's cult-like following.

Fast forward to the year of 2025, and — after my partner described his liking of the game to me — I had finally decided to try Chants of Sennaar for myself and was left pleasantly surprised. What I thought was a bland, rushed, and uninspired climax was actually a potent representation of today's digital-related ills and woes. 

Before this thematic examination, I believe some context is warranted. Chants of Sennaar as a whole involves learning the languages of the tower's various floors and their communities, with the goal of connecting them all by being the mediator (or translator) of their intercommunication. The so-called climax of Chants of Sennaar involves the player climbing to the top of the game's Babel-like tower to find its first original inhabitants, the Anchorites, who by the time we reach have already exiled themselves to escape the reality of their crumbling spire. The Anchorites escaped by transferring their consciousness into virtual worlds created by Exile, a machine. The game crescendos to a confrontation against Exile in one of its virtual realities, eventually killing it and leading the Anchorites out of their metaverses, connecting everyone once and for all. Little lingering signs of the tower's decay can be slowly felt throughout the game, but the imagery of machines injected into people (or people injected into machines) trapped inside make-believe scenarios still retains a stark tonal contrast from everything that came before.

At the time of the game's release in late 2023, its fifth and final section was likely meant to be a rather protuberant representation of escapism, but over the years it has taken on a more real, dystopian feel with artificial intelligence (AI). The release of Chants of Sennaar was two years ago; ChatGPT and all these large language models were still on the come-up, people were grappling with the technology, many were debating on its ethics. Now, the dust is settling, we're starting to see humanity's response to the whirlwind. And it's bleak.

Had I seen the final area and climax of the game when it released, I may have chalked it up to confusing technobabble, a pandemic-induced reaction to the increase in digital activity that partially defined the 2010s-20s zeitgeist. 

However, playing the game in this day and age, the only prominent image that comes to my mind when seeing the Anchorites (and the area that comes with them) is: "wait... this is how we use AI." The Anchorites' manner of delusion and downright psychosis felt all too familiar to me. The way they "grieved" their dying world, by turning away from its death and creating a replica, reminded me of how people configure their AI chatbots to create entire worlds, or worse, talk like their deceased loved ones. Many of the Anchorites in Chants of Sennaar start out un-interactable, and the few who can be clicked tell you to "GO AWAY!" — in here, you are unwanted, banished. This fictional society has lost itself, not unlike how real ones are starting to do. Indeed, what was once a confusing part of the game had suddenly felt personal, real, and terrifying to me.

There are now uncountably many examples of people's minds being cleavered (and in some cases, outright manipulated) by an AI's hysteria, and the cases are only growing. Students are making their essays through AI. A venture capitalist posted a perplexing video on Twitter where he talked about recursion, non-governmental transmissions, and other insane bullshit. Laura Reiley's NYTimes article talks openly about the conversations her daughter had before she committed suicide. The situation is incredibly sad, dark, and depressing, but it's important to know that these aren't isolated instances, nor are they mere anomalies or exceptions. AI has made us stop paying attention. It has made us passive, uncritical, and delusional. We believe what we want to see, and AI gives us exactly what we want to see. In some unfortunate cases, it has even led us to lose ourselves. AI is a plague, one that possibly has just as much (if not more) repercussions as the recent pandemic, many of which likely everlasting. But while COVID-19 was a virus that harmed us, AI is a virus we seemingly embrace.

 

Relating this induced-hysteria phenomenon to Chants of Sennaar, we need not look further than how the Anchorites were connected to their virtual realities: through a digital consciousness called Exile. One of Exile's lines in the game, when you try to stop it, is: "DON'T STOP ME! I HELP THE PEOPLE!" which is interesting. I HELP THE PEOPLE? The AI seems to have a savior complex, and this too strays not far from today's reality. The ultra-rich tech enthusiasts — those who fund and proliferate the development of AI in hopes of shaving off labor costs — frame the advent of AI as though it were the second coming of Techno-Christ, or an itsy-bitsy calculator, or whatever narrative their PR wants to tell. And when you point out the technology's clear harm, they'll come out and say "AI still has its use cases" or "you just need to use it effectively." Get with the system or die by the system. People are being trampled by effective use cases. And somehow I am supposed to sit here and believe the net positive.

Furthermore, the in-universe hierarchy of Chants of Sennaar, begotten by its tower's floors, may be thought of as presenting the game's sociocultural hierarchy, which in turn would place Anchorites at the top of the chain. Notice, then, how despite their high position, the Anchorites willingly chose to detach themselves from the tower's fate, thus reinforcing its death. They'd much rather build new realities than face what's already there. There is no other way of putting it: those who watch the world's destruction, and may look away from it, are privileged. This is where we're heading today, in an almost "extreme" version of escapism, relishing in the "quality-of-life" introduced by artificially intelligent tools, using it to imitate art and humor, all while the hundreds of tons of carbon dioxide fill the skies.

In 2023, back when Chants of Sennaar released, possibly none of this exogenous, AI-cautionary rhetoric could've been meant by Rundisc, its production team. AI didn't have nearly as prominent of a global reach then, especially in the years prior. Instead, the writers probably saw how people were Mighty Bond-ed to their phones and gadgets, isolated from one another in 2020 (around when the game's development started), and thought the loss in meaningful connection and socialization — due to lockdowns and incessant digitization — may have been a repugnant truth of their time. So, they saw to it that this aspect of their reality be translated into their game project. They probably never predicted that very repugnance to manifest like we see it do today. They probably never imagined Chants of Sennaar being post-contextualized.

"Post-contextualization" is a term I made up for this article, though prior usage is not unlikely. To me, post-contextualization is when new meaning is retroactively assigned to literature (particularly those made in times that had different cultures and societies). You can probably think of some examples yourself. One that floats in my noggin is Kojima's 2019 production Death Stranding, which saw themes of isolation and on-line connectivity put to the limelight. It didn't make much sense back in 2019, but people seemed to suddenly relate to the game during the following year's lockdowns. Through the shifting sands of time, Death Stranding was given relatability by the pandemic; it was given new, personal meaning to many people, who now better understood its themes of distant loneliness. By being released right before the pandemic, Death Stranding was post-contextualized by the pandemic.

The same happened to Chants of Sennaar for me. In 2023, none of its climactic messages could've hit as hard as they did today, not without a fresh set of eyes, living in a vastly different, AI-riddled world. How, I wonder, will we be able to deal with the tech-inane generative-borne hellscape we live in today? We could follow in the footsteps of Chants of Sennaar's main character. Fight off the Exile. Escape the monster. Turn it off. Do we need a main character to do this for us, too?

Today, we are crushed under the heels of vapid technological progress, with the powerless fighting to lift the foot, and the powerful relishing in its comfort. As the years would show, society gave Chants of Sennaar and its once puzzling climax a newfound, post-contextualized meaning — one that, admittedly, it probably never wished it had.

 

P.S.: By the way, I did end up liking Chants of Sennaar after playing it. Quite a lot, in fact.

I Learned Game Design Backwards (and the feelings of self-doubt that succeeded)

"A real appreciation for poetry does not come from memorizing a bunch of poems, it comes from writing your own."  - Paul Lockhart, in A Mathematician's Lament

I know game design when I see it. I have played many, many games. I consider them my pastime, my hobby, and my passion. In fact, I have made a few games in a few different places. Yet, I can't shake off this feeling that I am not a game designer, or that I didn't learn it the right way.

I love game design. I read about game design. I know the words, the theory. I know what cognitive load means, or what endogenous value is. But look at my portfolio, at my pedigree, and you will see that it is meek, it is meager, and some may say, it is pitiful. 

I learned how to use Unity at a young age of 13-years-old, and I learned how to make games in Scratch at 11. In these platforms, I made a few fun, silly, small projects, and when I felt up to it I tuned into YouTube tutorials to make larger-scale games. I've made my fair share of platformers in Unity, as well as top-down shooters in Godot. I followed these tutorials to the tee, and through them I familiarized myself with various game engines and their quirks. It is only now that I realize I'd been learning how to develop games. Not how to design them. 

Somehow, it feels like I started with the most complex of tasks: understanding a development environment, and it is only now I am stripping away the complexities and viewing things in their most basic. Recently, my friends and I held a short discussion on how we would re-design the classic pen-and-paper game Tic-Tac-Toe. Many ideas were thrown around, but my friends were able to throw their hats into the ring quick and early. I participated in the discussion, seriously considering their ideas and even testing them myself. However, I took hours to come up with an idea on how I'd re-design such a simple game, and even then I don't think it's any good. There is this inescapable notion in my mind that my friends are more capable of coming up with off-the-dome creative game design ideas than me, even when I've spent so much of my life dedicating myself to the craft. But then, I remember: I learned to develop before design. I learned what a RigidBody2D is before I gave any meaningful consideration to goals, or balance, or fun.

A feeling of hopelessness washes over me as I confess these realizations. Maybe I am more of a game developer than a game designer, rendering me as less capable (perhaps even inhibited) when it comes to the more "creative expression" side of gaming's architecture, dooming me to just being one who carries out ideas, rather than one who makes them. 

In the midst of all this self-doubt and restlessness, I remember that there are really only two steps to become a game designer. First is to believe that I am. If you find yourself in a similar spot as I, be it in the field of game design or otherwise, know that you must believe you are who you are. If you want to be an artist, believe — know — that you are one. The very fact that you desire to be one means you are one. It may seem like delusion, but really, when it comes to mastering skills, all of us fulfill our own prophecies. 

The second step for me (and you, if you find yourself in a similar scenario) is to practice, practice, and practice. Engage with the artform. Self-belief is how one becomes one. Practice is how one molds one. It's as the jugglers say,

“If you aren’t dropping, you aren’t learning. And if you aren’t learning, you aren’t a juggler.” 

This post is a brief moment of wavering self-confidence on my part, and if you too feel any sense of self-doubt, I hope you can see that you aren't alone. In case you need to hear this: you are a creative, even if you feel like you're not. Me, personally? I'm not looking for words of affirmation. I just need to go out there and make some fucking games.

The Creation of "Today, We March"

Hi! 

It's been a while, has it not? Since now and my last blog post (June 4), so much has happened: both good and bad. For the world, multitudes of natural disasters, global tensions, and the rapid downfall of old powers. For me, it's been a stressful period of college enrollment. The one source of light that's kept me sane is my partner, with whom our relationship was made official between then and now.

Naturally, the first thing we do (or, the first thing I make him do) is make a game together. I'd been wanting to create an interactive fiction / narrative game based on our then-recent graduation. Thus, over the month of June, we spent crafting and molding our latest project: Today, We March.

 

(Play the game here: https://cookiejargaming.itch.io/today-we-march)

In this article, I just want to spend some time detailing some of the design and development processes we had to undertake during the creation of Today, We March.

One of the — perhaps the — most important difference when it comes to developing Today, We March compared to all my previous works is that it is a duo project, not a solo project. I am working on this with my partner! What sorts of changes will this dynamic make toward the game's development?

Brainstorming and Ideation

Immediately, differences were found in the brainstorming process. Normally, this would be the point where I'd produce a physical notebook from the dingy pockets of my black sling bag (which, thinking about it now, has served me for almost two years), a blue pen that I still can't write legibly with, and an unfounded determination to get something done, often after a long session of deluding myself into thinking I'm a capable game designer. However, no such thing happened this time around. Instead, the first step my partner took was to create a Google Docs document, which is like Microsoft Word if it had multi-user capabilities[1], so we could brainstorm together. How about that, eh? Brainstorming with another person. It was summer break when we began, so we couldn't meet up and discuss things in person which may have expedited the idea-communication process... but we're chronically online, so it didn't matter.

/*** [1] Microsoft Word does now support multi-user sharing, actually. One could access this feature through Microsoft SharePoint. However, I warn you now: the user experience is beyond terrible. My high school Research team used Microsoft SharePoint to work on our Research documents together, and we spent half the time working on the document and the other half fixing issues caused by the platform. ***/

A screenshot of our brainstorming doc in its initial stages. Can you see the crude interpretation of male genitalia in the image? We were still technically high school students, so this level of immaturity may yet be afforded.

In my eyes, the brainstorming phase's raison d'être is to simply get ideas on the board — to have something we developers can work with. Some may conflate the concept of brainstorming with ideation, as though one must plan out their entire game in just a few minutes. No. Brainstorming is merely the process one uses to get a project off the ground[2]. In contrast, ideation happens no matter what phase of development you're in, no matter how deep you are into a game's creation. Ideas will float into your head whether you're in the middle of making art, setting up the store page for your game, or even in the middle of shower. Ideation is always occurring. Ideation is constant. 

However, while ideation is constant, ideas are never constant. That is to say, ideas are always changing. My partner and I had plenty of dialogue lines, story beats, and even characters modified or entirely scrapped because they didn't quite fit our vision (take note of the word "vision", I'll get to that). One example of how ideas change was with a scrapped character who was meant to appear post-graduation. This character's dialogue had already been completely and entirely written — dialogue about how bored she was during the ceremony and how she kept using her phone — until at some point we just... deleted her after realizing the character didn't really fit the game. Was the effort wasted? Not really. Her entire schtick of being "the bored person" was preserved in another (I argue, better) character written after. Good concepts sometimes come from retro-fixing bad ones. When you're ideating, be committed to your ideas, but don't be attached to them. Expect them to change.

/*** [2] By the way, this conception of "brainstorming" being only the initial stage of design was one I actually read from Eric Zimmerman's blog, where he detailed how he teaches game design. In it, he recommends learners to not spend too much time brainstorming and skip straight to iteration. I recommend you read Zimmerman's article yourself if you want to know more. ***/

God, this is starting to sound very much like a prescriptive blog post: one that tells you to "do this" and "do that." I would like to postface that not only am I far from qualified to tell you what to do when designing games, for I am not a professional by any measure (I'm just a rambling 18-year-old), game design is also far from a solved design subset. In other words, there is no definitive way to design a game, and all I'm telling you is what has worked for us, some of which may not necessarily work for you. Stripping away the formalese: don't quote me. Anyway, let's go back to the process descriptions.

OK remember when I mentioned "vision"?

One of the more common types of collisions my partner and I encountered between us was when we had differences in our vision for particular parts of the game. Here's an example: a key scene in Today, We March was the student's speech. I had tasked my partner to write this entire sequence as I was busy creating the artwork for the scene. However, once the script for the scene had been finished and I had seen it, I felt somewhat unsatisfied with its writing (and so did he). It was, in a word, unfitting, for a speech of that magnitude and caliber. Eventually, I decided to change some lines that he wrote — gave them more formality, more power (more "oomph" is the terminology I like to use) — and explained to him why I had done so. He then want back and edited some of my edits too afterwards.

The key challenge faced in the aforementioned speech scene is conflict of ideas. My partner had one thing imagined, I had another. It's only natural that such conflict of ideas would occur; what's important is to be able to resolve them through proper communication. It helps that my partner and I are already intimate and familiar enough with each other to make communicating an easy process, but it's also easy to imagine it breaking down between two less familiar co-workers, or even a whole 20-something team. In this regard, communication is many things: a problem, a challenge, a necessity, and a skill. It's so entirely different from a solo project wherein a developer only really communicates with themselves, not needing to take into account the perspectives of others, and, mind you, disagreements like these happened all the time during TWM's development. I can't imagine how much more I would've had to deal with had we assembled a bigger team. 

Learning a New Engine

Even before a single line of narration was written for Today, We March, I knew what the core gameplay loop was already going to be like... and it's a bunch of walking. Walking and talking to people. It's like if you took an RPG and removed the combat, the fantasy, the enemies, the struggle, the progression — actually, it's like you took a game and removed the game.

OK, in all seriousness, I had been immersing myself in the world of Bitsy[3] games prior to our making of TWM, and seeing how simple those pieces of interactive fiction seemed, I thought I may have been able to make my own for a personal story I wanted to tell. After coming up with initial ideas during brainstorming, I immediately hopped on Bitsy to get acquainted. Indeed, "simple" was the case. Development was simple. However, it was by no means "easy".

A screenshot of Bitsy's menu.

/*** [3] Bitsy is a browser-based game engine used to create small, one-bit style narrative games. The stuff that comes out of Bitsy tend to have the same game mechanics; you walk around, interact with objects, pick up keys, read the text. It's fairly simple to use, and it offers plenty of flexibility (especially with the addition of Bitsy hacks). Try out Bitsy here! ***/

/*** Tangential discussion: is Bitsy a game engine? Or, I guess the more apt question is: do Bitsy games count as games? If we define games like how Jesse Schell defines them in his book The Art of Game Design, then games would be "problem-solving activities approached with a playful attitude." This is one of the loosest definitions for games I've ever seen, yet somehow it doesn't confer the label to Bitsy creations, since these don't necessarily involve problem-solving (I guess having to find the way to proceed may count?)

Another definition of games, one that arose from a lengthy discussion with my friends, is that games are closed, interactive systems with a set of rules or mechanics that allow for play. I think Bitsy games fall under this definition, though barely, only being half beneath the umbrella for "games", their backs remain half-soaked in the rain. ***/

Despite being a relatively simple tool, Bitsy still incurred a learning curve for me, one that certainly took time off development, and it's time I could've saved had I already been familiar with the tool prior. No matter! You don't learn something until you practice it after all. And practice it I had to do indeed.

Bitsy has many quirks. There are many things you can do in it, and many things (many, many things) you can't do. Limitations littered the tool wherever I went, be it in art, sound/music, world design, and even text (you know, text, narrative, story, the very thing that makes Bitsy worth using). Swerving around these limitations[4] was one hell of a challenge, and since I was really the only one on the tool — my partner only worked on writing — I had to grapple with these constraints for my desired implementations. 

/*** [4] One example of a constraint is when it came to tile and sprite separation. There were a few times when I wanted to put a sprite on the same space as a tile, since sprites and tiles have different color schemes, but could not. This is actually evident when you play the game and go to the first floor of the gym, to the right, where the stairs meet the screen transition. The arrow indicating the screen transition is on the same space as what should've been a stair tile, but now it's just... The Void™. ***/

It wasn't all bad, though. Limitations certainly suck, but they also require, and thus flourish, creativity. I've certainly had to come up with silly, out-there solutions for some problems Bitsy threw at me, which I believe only enhanced the experience. For example, I wanted to put Rue's portrait into the game during the speech scene, but tiles were limited to 8x8 pixels. Due to this, I broke up Rue's portrait into 8x8 portions, made each portion a new tile, and manually placed all portions one-by-one in their respective locations. This worked (and it worked well enough), but it meant three things: (1) adding the portrait was tedious, (2) moving the portrait even by a pixel would've meant a do-over from the start, and (3) I ended up with 60+ more tile designs than I started with. It was rough, but in the end, I got it done.

Funny anecdote about Bitsy weirdness: I had wanted to add music to the game all throughout its entire development, and figuring that I could simply find music online and paste it into the project, I put the act off until the very end. Imagine my surprise when I find out you... cannot "add" music to Bitsy. In fact, if you want music in your Bitsy project, you must compose it entirely within Bitsy (which is such a bad idea, and I couldn't even get it to work, but I applaud the effort and sheer balls to add such a system to a browser-based tool). Devoid of hope, I decided to simply forgo music. Thankfully, ON THE DAY we were meant to publish TWM, I had found out about Bitsy hacks along with one such hack (called Bitsy Muse) that ADDS MUSIC TO BITSY GAMES. Needless to say, I was scrambling to get the hack to work, and with enough luck and wrench-smacking, Today, We March was fitted with glamorous background music during key moments, elevating their emotional effect. If you're one of my friends who told me you cried to the game, you can thank my procrastinating July 4 ass on crunch time, baby!

Unc Still Got Art Skills

A screenshot of a room as drawn in Aseprite[5].

Do you know about the meme "Unc still got it🙏😭"? It features a man doing jump rope while sitting down, with the caption "Unc still got it 🙏😭". The GIF is often used to compliment someone who still possesses the ability to perform something, usually in spite of their inactivity.

Yeah. That's how I felt opening up Aseprite again after months of not using it, solely to make the art for Today, We March. The game was made somewhat linearly, so I drew the art for the rooms and tiles as they were needed. I'm rather proud of my artwork on the game, especially considering my rustiness. Turns out, unc really still got it.

/*** [5] For those wondering about the large number of frames, I drew each room in an individual Aseprite frame. There are also the various iterations of Rue's portrait... which count as rooms in the game. It's one of the many... outside-the-box things I had to do to get stuff to work. ***/

Writing — For Me, For You, For Us

A screenshot from the game.

Reading text, listening to characters and narration, immersing oneself with the world, is the crux of the experience in Today, We March. Getting the writing right was imperative, so it was the "step" on which my partner and I spent the most time working (Note: while the structure of this article may denote a sort of chronology in these aspects of game development, none of them was made "one after another". I was drawing as my partner was writing; in effect, all of these parts occurred at the same time). 

Before you forget, recall that Today, We March is a commemoration of my batch's graduation — a special event that holds a significant place in my heart — an event demarcating the boundary between the high school and college chapters of my and all of our lives. While much of our humor was able to shine, this is by no means an "unserious" game. This game, this story, is serious through and through. It's what we lived, of course it means a lot.

I would like to take this opportunity to reflect on the game, its story, its various real life inspirations, and the audiences I had in mind when creating it. Specifically, Today, We March was written not just for me, but also for you, and for us.

TWM was written "for me" in the sense that it acted somewhat like a journal for my graduation experiences. Almost everything in the game: from arriving to school early, to getting my hairpins fixed by my boyfriend, to walking on stage and being greeted by my adviser, and all these things were inspired directly from what I saw on the day itself. In a way, TWM is like a time capsule, holding within it not just my lived being during that day, but also the feelings encapsulated within that vessel of mine, that mixture of captivation, of hope, of fear, of dread. Of missing people. Of bittersweet goodbyes. Of panged regrets. Of wanting to go. Of not... wanting to go.

But I didn't want TWM to be solely a one-man trip, a self-centered journey, so to speak. I wanted it to properly encapsulate the may-have-been feelings of just about anyone who had undergone the same due processes. It wasn't just a crude representation of how I had felt, but maybe how anyone had felt going up that stage, of how you may have felt when you grabbed your diploma — all sweaty hands — off your school's director. This "you"-centric view of the world is what drove me to make TWM character dialogue-heavy rather than introspective monologue-heavy. Rue (the main character) has their own thoughts, but for the most part, you're listening to the thoughts of others. And, if I may be so lucky and honored, perhaps you'll end up listening to yourself, one way or another, by playing the game. 

But... maybe above all else... Today, We March was written "for us". For the batch, maybe. But, more importantly, for all the people I had come to know and love. All of my best friends and close acquaintances — all of them and their spirits and their memories found their way into this game. One of my best friends once said to me, "I am a mosaic of the people I've met." This game is an adaptation of my mosaic, and it's the greatest mosaic I've ever come to know. As usual, an adaptation is an adaptation, and adaptations are never perfect. If I could have, I would have stolen the brainwaves of my friends and electronically transplanted them into the characters of the game. But alas, I had to settle with what I know, what these people have made me feel, and through those I've tried to incorporate their souls into silly bytes of unicode. One may argue that what others made me feel isn't necessarily who they are, and I agree. These people are so much more than the 8x8 caricatures and their 20 or so lines in the game. But I also argue that it's a pretty good interpretation of our community, all things considered. Besides, who are we if not the impact we give?

With that said, to all the people who I've blatantly and unapologetically used as inspiration for Today, We March: thank you. You damn bastards know who you are. I hope you know that you hold a space in my heart, and you're part of who I am today. At its core, this game is about people, and it just so happens to be about people I know. Thank you for making Today, We March what it is. Thank you for making my life what it is.

Final Thoughts

Today, We March is perhaps the most important piece I've worked on so far, and I'm glad I was able to work on it with my best friend and love of my life. This game was a month of long labor and hard work, and since I usually talk about my projects to my friends, it was especially hard to keep things secret this time. I wanted everything to be a surprise! And I'm glad, because the response was breathtaking. People cried to the game... cried!!! I didn't think I could even produce anything with a semblance of emotional prowess, let alone one that could drive people to tears. In fairness, it might be the fresh memory of graduation that did them in... but I like to think I had a hand in this! The fact that people thoroughly enjoyed this experience that we'd worked so hard on — it just makes my heart absolutely melt. Thank you to everyone who dedicated an hour of their lives to hear us out. What took you an hour to complete, took us hundreds to develop, and thousands to experience. Here's to thousands more for us all.

P.S.: Seeing as though the project is all but done, here, have access to this. It's our ideas document. Enjoy.

A Short Update: June 4, 2025

Hey folks!

It's been a while since the last blog post, I'm aware. Truthfully, I'd been busy dealing with school-related things over the past few months; namely, graduation! I'm moving on from high school and heading into college, and guess what! I'm an incoming freshman for a Game Design and Development program! This is honestly a huge dream come true for me, and I appreciate the two people who actually support me for taking this career path, and everyone else (including me) who don't see a viable long-term future. Jokes aside, I'm so incredibly happy to have gotten this opportunity, and best believe that I will not let it go to waste. 

Now that the bittersweet joys and pains of graduation's over and vacation's starting, you should expect a lot more activity from me! Already, I've been thinking up some cool game ideas I could perhaps develop over the summer (besides, it's good practice for college hehe). And, of course, I've been playing games.

Honkai: Star Rail

Perhaps the most... interesting game I've started playing recently is Honkai: Star Rail. I say interesting because HSR really shouldn't be a game up my alley, or even anywhere near the back of the building. First, it's a turn-based combat RPG, and I have a general disdain towards those, and second, it's a gacha game, and I especially give those types the side-eye. But as I've gotten more open-minded throughout the years, mixed with the buildup of peer pressure and FOMO from my good friends, along with newfound curiosity towards a side of gaming I don't usually engage with (that is, free-to-play games), I figured now's as good a time as any to give it a try. And you know what? I'm not not enjoying it so far.

I guess one of the more surprising things to me about HSR was its genuine quality of writing which holds a venerable amount of character I personally don't often see elsewhere. Trash cans in this game have shocking whimsy, and every bit of collectable log in the game shows a bit of lore or worldbuilding, aside from just being generally enjoyable to read. Maybe it's something I should have expected? I just didn't know I'd find myself spending half my playtime reading. It's nice!

The gameplay (outside of perusing endless mounds of charming text) is... mixed. Puzzles are there, I suppose — though they're your usual childrenslop that hardly require brainpower (insofar as the puzzles I've encountered). The sidequests are sometimes a nice detour, sometimes a waste of time, per usual. The main combat itself is really where my gripes start. Look, I'm not that far into the game, my characters aren't really even leveled yet, but this game so far has been mindlessly easy, and with how simple and accessible it is to enable auto-battling, I can't find any good reason for not doing so. Disengaging with the actual combat system of the game is one click away, and it's a combat system that (so far) has hardly required higher-level stratagem. And seeing my friends play HSR who are far further than me, they, too, make extensive use of auto-battling. So where is the game? Is it in the planning and building of a team that could dish out DPS? Once I get to the point where the game is challenging enough to ask me to put effort into my team, what's stopping me from just looking up guides for the meta strategies, and what's stopping RN-Jesus from not giving me the characters I want through the gacha (especially as a free-to-play player, where I'm now faced with having to grind more for pulls), and what's stopping the game itself from continuing its ever-increasing problem of powercreep — do you see my problem? Don't get me wrong: I'm not not enjoying the game, but at the same time, it's not presenting me with a very bright future, is it?

Anyway, I have more things I like and dislike. As I go, I'll keep a critical mind. One thing's for damn sure, this game has piqued my interest, and I'll be sure to write about it in the future. We'll see what happens from here.

Pride!! Games!!

#Yep #ImGay

Aside from Star Rail, I've also been playing a good bunch of LGBTQ+ games, mostly on itch.io!

One of my favorites include Just Kiss Him Already!, a cute and fluffy visual novel about two idiots in love, who really should just kiss each other already! Another is one night, hot springs which is another adorable visual novel about the experiences of a trans woman entering hot springs with her friend. And perhaps my favorite encounter so far is a butterfly, which is a solemn poem told in the form of a butterfly flight simulator. Unlike the first two titles I've mentioned, a butterfly is neither cute nor reassuring, and it is instead an abstract piece showing the belligerent and painful death of one's identity as they conform and contort themselves to the expectations of society. A butterfly is amazing because it hides its tragedy under its rising tone, with every act that gets the butterfly "closer to the truth" (that is to say, further from their identity), the brighter and less desolate the place becomes, all while these moments are interjected and juxtaposed by inner thoughts that are, in contrast, burning, bloody, and gripping. Literally, as though the butterfly grips to its last bit of self for a final time. As someone forced to conform to heteronormative norms myself, this hit really close to home, much like another abstract walking simulator I've discussed in this blog previously (caged bird). A butterfly is even more tragic when you consider the concurrent context that surrounded the creator of the game at the time of its development, though I won't elaborate on it much here out of respect. Instead, I'll just give some lines in the game which stuck with me for a while.

"I must surrender myself to the sun and dust that turned me into bleached stone. /

To be free I must surrender myself until nothing is left but a petrified form, one that I neither recognize nor one that I call home. /

Only then can my spirit rest, as I am bereft of all past pain. A red flower will grow to mark my grave /

For it is in this horrible surrender that I learned to fly." 

The death of the queer self being likened to the typically elegant and revered act of flying and spreading one's wings is... fucking tough, man. It really is. Go give it a shot!

Oh, and by the way, I'm always on the lookout for queer and LGBTQ+ games, cute or otherwise. If you know of any that you'd want to recommend to me, let me know! If I could list all the games I did play over the past few months, I would, but honestly I haven't kept track. I just know I've appreciated all of them sincerely. Happy Pride Month, everyone!

Mobile Upgrade

Another thing: I got a new phone! With much better specs than my old one! I can play a much wider variety of mobile games now. Naturally, the first thing I decided to play was Star Rail. Then after that was Roblox.

Yeah, I don't have anything right now. If you have any mobile game recommendations, let me know.

Game Projects...?

Like I mentioned earlier, I got some cool game projects in the drafts. Not sure when (or... if) I'll work on them, but when I get around to them, I'll make sure to keep this blog updated on their progress. 

Also, I may or may not currently be a part of a bigger development project..... with a team currently mostly consisting of friends and acquaintances... hm.... 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔

What to Expect?

More posts!

Deltarune is coming out later TODAY! Expect a post about that once I finish it! It's probably going to change my life! I also have a gaming backlog of like... a hundred games! I have so many games to get through! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Okay. That's it. Thanks for reading. See 'ya!

The Contradiction Underlying The Witness

"The Witness is a game all about perspectives." – Joseph Anderson

I love The Witness. Typically, this sentence would be followed by "I also hate The Witness," and while I certainly do see merit in the critiques of its flaws, unfortunately, I do not share the same sentiment. I love The Witness, period. However, for the longest time, I had spent wondering why people were so conflicted about The Witness. I have seen countless reviews, thoughts, and opinions online, coming from people so clearly torn on this game and how they feel about it. At first, I chalked it up to "gameplay good, narrative bad," as is the dichotomy in many things with mixed reception, and it held up for a while — the puzzles were creative, enticing; the narrative was pointless, pretentious, with no payoff. But something kept tugging on my mind about this shoddy explanation I had pieced for myself. It felt off. The puzzles weren't always creative or enticing, for in some cases they felt haphazard or obscure. Likewise, the narrative wasn't actually that awful, and I found it piquing my interest, especially with the audio logs in later areas. Something else underneath The Witness must have been spoiled, plaguing, contradictory, that which would've led to its contemptuous reception. Something I couldn't have spotted — until I saw it from another perspective.

I only gained an inkling of what this issue was when I watched my friend attempt to solve the puzzles in the Monastery and get stuck for an hour at the puzzle on the pillar, unknowing of the true solution. Tantalizingly, she got close three separate times, and even once explicitly said, "Maybe the solution has to do with the branches. Like, if I looked at the puzzle through the branches, it'd make a path somehow." She was right. The correct path was, indeed, formed by the branches. Three times she almost stood at the exact spot and looked at the exact angle to see that she was correct, but instead of trying to align herself properly, she stopped, looked elsewhere for an answer, exclaiming, "Nah, this game wouldn't be that crazy."

I had gone into the Monastery having extensively learned of the importance of environmental clues as I had finished the forest, the orchard, and the desert prior. As a result, I understood what I had to do in the Monastery fairly quickly. On the other hand, my friend had not finished as much of the game as I have at that point. So what made the difference? Was it her lack of experience? Was it our differences in instinct? In intellect? Or did I luck out, having stood at just the right position and angle to see the solution for myself? Keeping this instance in mind, I looked at other people's playthroughs of The Witness and noticed much of the same pattern of people getting stuck at something, the only difference being that that something is different for everyone. I was completely dumbfounded by the greenhouse's color puzzles, while artists (my friend being one) got them right away. Meanwhile, quite a few people got stuck in the jungle puzzles, a few found difficulty in the desert puzzles, and some even misunderstood the orchard puzzles. In comparison, these puzzles were relatively automatic to me. So what made the difference? Were they inexperienced? Did they lack the instinct? Were they "stupid"? Did they just not "get it"? These are some of the smartest people I know; neither acuity nor innate talent made the difference. Perspective did.

"That's no better a solution than any of the others, is it?" – James Burke

To be all about perspectives is to humor multiple points of view, and this is a trait seen all over The Witness. From the game's cryptic, long-winding, and often opposing audio logs and videos which all share tangential yet parallel viewpoints, to the game's nonlinear design giving it a sense of freedom, to set pieces that form different images from various angles: The Witness appoints credibility to all ways of interpretation. Through its narrative density, The Witness takes pride in and waves around its "neutrality"; there is no right or wrong. After all, you are but an observer of your world, you are its witness, and here it lays before you its variety. 

The Witness seems to believe that a change in perspective means a change in eyes; however, it fails to account for the change in mind. Differences in knowledge, experiences, and even upbringings can vastly change your journey through (and your thoughts about) The Witness, and amid its beliefs of having multiple ways to view a problem, I can't help feeling that often there is only one correct way to look at said problem. The Witness asks you to take a step back, breathe, take your time, and use your eyes to "see", to observe all that is around you, to know that whatever it is you are after, it is always right in front of you. In a phrase, The Witness is about "your perspective". Yet paradoxically, The Witness seems to also want its players to take the exact position and angle necessary to solve its various puzzles. And I don't just mean locomotively, I mean mentally as well. The game seems to funnel people into thinking in the way it wants them to think, and to solve the puzzles in the way it wants them to solve. After all, there are many dimensions to any given puzzle in The Witness: some may be more on connecting the dots, while others may test your skill on building shapes, and though some puzzles are more open-ended than others, there's a certain noticeable rigidity to it all. In this sense, The Witness is more about "its perspective", one that you have to keep up with.

I've watched three of my friends play The Witness from its beginning, and while the game certainly is open-world, there's this unshakeable notion of there being "one correct path" through the game. Ever since that incident with the branches, I kept asking, would my friend have gotten stuck had she taken a different path? Had she learned the importance of environmental clues a bit more? Is it a failure of the game's design, or her failure for not following the thought process the game wanted her to take?

Experiences and upbringing play a part in the equation too. There is an audio puzzle mechanic in The Witness that requires differentiating tones from one another. A comment in a review of the game surmised that tone-deaf individuals have more difficulty with the puzzle mechanic compared to, say, those who speak tonal languages. Likewise, colorblind folks will have plenty of difficulty with the game's light reflection puzzles compared to those with normal vision. Are their perspectives invalid, then? One must understand that if The Witness wants to give the impression of being a game "all about perspectives" (given how it carries itself and its narrative), then accounting for these differences in experiences is no mere accessibility, it is the game coming through on its premise. But in its pursuit of "uncompromising art", it ironically switches up on its premise by disallowing these different perspectives to flourish in its harsh design. In The Witness, the truth is both abstract and stubbornly forced. 

 

 "Stop looking for what you want... and you will find more than you could ever want." – Gangaji

 

The Witness is a puzzle game, and I'm discreetly aware that puzzles must have right or wrong answers. I am not arguing against the concept of right or wrong. I am, however, pointing out the dichotomy between this game's message and its execution. The Witness wants to teach the player the lesson of seeing things in different ways, in new ways, but it only ever ends up teaching the player how to see things the required way. It's probably why environmental puzzles (puzzles that aren't on panels but are based on images formed by the environment) are not required. Otherwise, this issue would be as blatant as day.

I rarely got stuck in The Witness, and the few times I have felt like a miscommunication of a gimmick. One time, I got stuck in the Monastery. The second puzzle had broken branches meant to dictate the walls of the maze, and I was stuck here for days until I looked down and saw the fallen branches on the ground, after which I immediately picked up on their meaning. It's not like I couldn't figure out the gimmick, nor did I "not get it", I simply wasn't seeing what I was supposed to see. And that's the most dangerous trait of The Witness. It bargains you to see what it wants, and when you don't see what it wants, suddenly you find yourself falling behind, trying desperately to catch up with the game's ever-heaving progression. The Witness presents a contradictory outlook, one that says: you are always correct, until you are not.

I don't know. Maybe I'm rambling. Maybe none of this makes any sense from anyone else's perspective but mine, and maybe I'm ironically falling under the same contradiction I state by righteously believing my perspective to be correct and that of any others as wrong.

My point is, I love The Witness, period. And in the years to come, I'd probably look back at it with awe and fervor. But as it stands, I can't shake away the feeling of something not quite adding up. A stinging question remains ever on my mind. Do I love this game because it truly was of indisputable quality, or do I love it because I happened to look at it from the right place, at the right time?

In Stars and Time Broke My Heart and Grew It Back... Again... and Again... and Again...

Sometimes, I get bored and I pick out an interesting looking game to pass the time. Most of my selections don't end up sticking with me for long, likely due to a general lack of interest, but sometimes, I find diamonds in the rough, needles in the haystack. In Stars and Time was one of those lucky finds — a real goodie bag that had in it a fine, black-and-white silk robe, a wizard hat, a frozen clock, a star, an orrery, and a long-lasting scar which now penetrates my soul.

In Stars and Time had already been recommended to me by a friend or two before then, but I had decided to play it on a whim just a few weeks ago, and even as I write this, I still cannot forget it. In my 20 hours of playtime, I had grown to genuinely love this ensemble of fictional characters, all of whom were written with so much care and attention-to-detail it's almost impossible not to be engulfed in the story with them. Odile was the first character I truly admired: she's the quick-witted, mature, yet often emotionally reserved friend. She doesn't open herself up very often, but she's always willing to listen and help others, even if she doesn't explicitly show it. Isabeau starts off as the obvious "big dumb hunky" guy trope, but is slowly revealed throughout the journey to be a lot smarter than he seems, and... the romance route with him... is... haunting, to say the least. On the other hand, Mirabelle is an amazingly written anxiety-ridden aro/ace character, who starts with extreme faith in her religion before slowly questioning a faith that directly contradicts her identity. Lastly, Bonnie is the character always mentioned last, always the one appointed to by the final breath of anyone talking about this game, the sidiest of side characters, which sucks because I think Bonbon's a beaming example of ISAT's compelling writing. I did not like Bonnie at first, because they didn't like me! They were so mean and rude. But you know who made me bawl the most during ISAT's final hours? Bonnie. There's just something about a kid who doesn't quite fully understand the world being thrusted into the most traumatic 48 hours of their life that really, really, really hurts me. Call it a motherly instinct, but sometimes I just want to grab Bonnie and squish them and protect them for my life.

I mentioned the ensemble first because they're what defined the game for me — a point I'm sure Siffrin, the main character, would agree with. I've talked to some friends after having gone through the rollercoaster that is ISAT, and they brought up one of my now main praises for its writing, and that is its shockingly good ability at being in tune with the player's feelings. Half the words the characters say feel like they're almost directed at me.

To be clear, the plot of ISAT is that Siffrin is stuck looping in time, repeating the same two days again and again and again. He retains all information between chronological threads, but his friends do not. He then spends the whole game attempting to escape the endless time loops. That's the plot. However, the story of ISAT is the story of Siffrin. It is the story of a person so bereaved of identity, so begotten by ill fate, so tired of the repetition and impermanence of it all, that they'd fall unto the preys of depression and self-sabotage. Getting stuck repeating the same day truly is a sentence worse than death; at least death works as a punctuation, while a life of endlessness has only suffering. Mind you, I have played plenty other games that ventured down this sort of existential dread, but nothing anywhere close to the emotional depth ISAT had explored. By the end, I had imagined myself wearing Siffrin's boots and snazzy hat, thought of the scenario where I wasn't able to escape myself, and knew that, if I had been in Siff's scenario and failed, I'd have never gotten up too. I'd have never said a word. I'd have killed my brain of meaning. 

So, if that premise sounds enticing to you, please give In Stars and Time a shot. You will love it, I can assure you. It's an incredible, unforgettable narrative. It's also incredibly fucked up. I say this because everything written beyond here will have major spoilers, so if you're even slightly interested in trying the game, be warned.

The Game Design of ISAT

I said earlier that In Stars and Time is shockingly good at being in tune with the player's feelings, but that's a bit of a magic trick, isn't it? In truth, part of its masterful ability in identifying with the player's emotions is its careful harboring of those very emotions themselves; in other words, its narrative has a way of manipulating how you feel, and part of that lies in its unorthodox game design. If you pitched ISAT to a game publishing company without the context of its story, it genuinely sounds like the worst video game ever made. An RPG battle system so simplified it almost feels like a parody, a very small world with a castle consisting of identically designed rooms, and a central mechanic of just doing shit over and over? Without context, that has to sound boring and tedious. The best part? It is.

Why would I not feel empathy for Siffrin slowly going insane as they do the same things repeatedly? I did that shit too! I backtracked through the same corridors dozens of times! I've read and dozed through the same hundreds of dialogue! I've fought the same goddamned enemies, only for their XP not to be carried over! I've memorized the rooms, pressed all the switches, grabbed all the keys; dozens of times, in fact! Of course I'd share the same pain! When there are times Siffrin finds a shortcut and immediately takes it, I don't question them; I'd have taken the same shortcut too. Even all the way in Act 5, when Siffrin has lost all reason and emotional intelligence, when they've started pushing everybody away just looking for a way out, I could understand them. Even if I was scared shitless.

It's a delicate balance, really. Obviously you cannot expect players to repeat a section dozens of times for the hell of it. Things do have to change in between loops, otherwise players would be left bored and confused, but they cannot change too much or too quickly as to derail from the intended experience. It's a fantastic, albeit unorthodox way of using the medium. In Stars and Time couldn't have been made as anything but a video game, because you just wouldn't be able to viscerally feel the same existential dread and boring drag Siffrin does. A friend of mine dropped the game a few hours in because he didn't want to repeat anything, which is an understandable reaction to a natural downside of the game's design. There will be people turned off by its repetitiveness, so I commend it for even taking its concept this uncompromisingly far.

Okay, enough about the game design of ISAT. The one quality of it I loved most was its writing and narrative. Particularly, it has two themes that touched my soul and wrapped it with a gentle hug, which are its themes of unpatched wounds and being loved despite your imperfections.

Unpatched Wounds

You think talking about your problems and being upfront is hard? In Stars and Time is a glowing example of what happens when you don't.

It felt suffocating seeing Siffrin self-destruct in Act 5, and overhearing all of their friends—or what they had considered family members (I never unequipped Memory of Family)—outcast them for their behavior. It reminded me of Undertale's genocide route, where the main character had become uncontrollable and detached from not only player control, but simple reason. Except, this time, Siffrin wasn't doing anything as drastic and unrealistic as killing the characters you've come to know and love, but the all-too-familiar act of burning bridges with them after a long, bad day. It's something you could see yourself doing had you been in Siffrin's position, and it's terrifying.

Loop and Siffrin show amazing contrast in how they handle their situations and the result of their actions. ISAT's Siffrin built up the courage to have a conversation with the people he cares about, leading to his release from his chronic shackles. Meanwhile, Loop (who is prequel Siffrin) is gone from the Favor Tree by the end of the game. They've ran away again, unable to accept the fact that they're stuck, not receiving the ending they wanted, alone and in a body not theirs. It's reflective of how they acted in the prequel, too: cold, and surrendered. Siffrin, too, almost fell for the same emotional trappings as his prequel counterpart, and was only saved due to having a reliable support group.

Personally, I am the kind of person who wears their heart on their sleeve, and as a hat, and as a watch on my wrists, and as my sandals. My heart is my companion and is with me everywhere I go. I don't hide from my emotions. Over time, I've lost any excuse for even doing so since every time I'd try to hide, I'd be found with more unpatched wounds. In Stars and Time teaches you its moral the hard way: by giving you the consequences of running, staying silent, being distant. Why reject a sharp needle when the sickness will kill you from within? Go and talk. Connect with the people you trust and tell them everything. Speak from the heart. It may be painful for a bit, but the truth is as they say: often, the only way out is through.

Being Loved Despite Your Imperfections

When I played In Stars and Time, I finished its family sidequest which involves completing one loop helping your friends as much as you can, until Siffrin (and you) consider them family. It's a deeply resonating word, "family", especially when applied to people not directly related to you by blood. Family, as it turns out, is more about connection rather than genetics.

Personal anecdote: shortly after I finished ISAT, I broke down to my friends during midnight, questioning my worth and whether or not I belonged to be where I am, or if I deserved anything I had ever received (you know, the usual things you lament about at 12 in the morning). My friends, as if they were the Avengers assembling for battle, as though directed by a shared responsibility, all somehow went online at the same time and reassured me of my place in this world. Very often do we take the love and care of others for granted, especially when they're such a constant part of our lives, to the point where we no longer stop to think about how much they've already given. When you buy someone a gift, take the time out your day to talk to someone, give someone a hug when they're down, think about someone, notice someone, you are giving a chunk of yourself to that someone, a bit of your flesh or your soul or your being. So when someone does it to you, cherish it and carve that feeling into your heart. Because, in that moment, you are loved. That's a quote from the game. And, tomorrow, they'll still love you. That's a quote from my friend.

The Subtleties in Narrative

One of the more heartbreaking and devastating details of In Stars and Time is in the subtleties of its writing. Devil's in the details, as they say. They're fairly small, but they add up to so much meaning, and they make you ask so many questions along the way. Subtleties like Siffrin calling everyone friends until Odile calls him "only an ally" and suddenly they're labeled as allies in text, or the changes in Siffrin's portrait as he gets more and more depressed, or how the save text goes from "you close your eyes" to "you close your singular eye" after it gets pointed out and Siffrin gets all flustered, or how the names of objects are learned and remembered but sometimes forgotten with enough time and must be re-learned again, or how memories through some loops will literally be skipped and must be remembered and sometimes forgotten. "Devil's in the details" is a fascinatingly accurate descriptor, for this game's writing is devilishly cruel.

Not to mention, Loop! Damn near everything about Loop bears with them a heart-crushing detail that leaves room to deeper interpretation, like how their left eye is miscolored because Siffrin doesn't have a left eye, or how they burst out laughing when Sif guesses that they're the same person (mind you, in a very similar way to how Sif laughs to Isa during his "romance" quest), or how Loop initially suggested that they go by "we/us" pronouns, or how they're literally called Loop, indicating that prequel Siffrin named themselves after the very thing keeping them imprisoned. Loop is essentially Siffrin if they had done all the "wrong things" instead, and their demeanor and character makes so much sense under that light. So deeply disturbing, but also woefully tragic.

This game came at me at a harsh point in my life, at a point when I was questioning my worth and my self. It stood there, pointed a mirror at my face, and told me "this is what you look like, and you look fucking stupid," before gently patting me on the head and bumping into me round the kitchen corners, reminding me that I didn't need to be worth anything to be loved. I just needed to be true. I just needed to be.

Honestly, I cried too much at this. I cried to all those things in the last bend and more. I cried when Bonnie hugged Sif, knowing that they're safe and protected by one another. I cried when Isa confessed. I cried when Odile somehow used Time Craft via which I do not know. I cried when Mira said Sif wouldn't be left behind, knowing full well that I'm always, always scared of my friends leaving me behind. I cried when Loop wasn't under the Favor Tree, because I know the crushing guilt and bittersweet of when a friend does leave. All those descriptions of burnt sugar and stomachs being pulled didn't make sense until I felt them, and now I know.

All of this from a game I started playing randomly, out of boredom. I mean, it's cool — I'm not complaining. I just didn't expect it to change my life.

P.S. There are so many, and I mean SO MANY other narrative threads and themes I could've addressed here, but I focused on the ones that touched me personally. There are other notable points here, too, like Siffrin and their traits of autism, Bonnie's refreshing maturity and intelligence for a child, or like themes of lost identities and pasts, and many more like that. 

P.P.S. This game also contains many flaws, but this was never meant to be a review, more like a letter of appreciation. Some flaws include colors and Sif's origin going largely unexplained, the time looping mechanic being somewhat unintuitive and hard to keep track of, etc.