if i was a kinnie we would all be fucked

** spoilers possibly! **

i can only live through other people vicariously now after playing this game because there is no replaying in stars and time in my opinion!!! it feels like it should be experienced once and then thought about for years!!!!!



i am still adjusting to writing my feelings about things out, but this game's mechanics carry the themes so hard. it's an rpgmaker game which does give it some limitations also, but i think it uses those limitations to help kind of build the narrative the same way that silent hill used fog only because of the playstation's limitations at the time. it adds something to it still and i love seeing systems and limitations of developer tools be used to make a game even better.



it is a grindy and repetitive game which can be a turn-off for some, but i love a game where the mechanics lend themselves to a story!! you are in a timeloop living through the same day over and over. you maintain your levels, so you can crush enemies, but that doesn't really stop them from coming all the same. you have to see the same events play out and are required by the narrative to say the same lines to play to a "script" where every social interaction where you make everybody happy and love you the very most.

it is designed to irritate you and make you want to skip really sweet dialogue, take shortcuts, and find the path least resistance. new and novel stuff keeps your attention until you have to see it like, 5 more times. but then you really start to crave the new and novel things as a signifier of progress!!! you are like, skinner box-ing your brain! it's diagetic because i think it really ends up making the player feel exactly what siffrin feels.

a really good example, i think, is in the beginning of the loop when entering the castle. mirabelle is nervous about fighting, so this interaction starts the tutorial. the tutorial (~strategy~) makes her feel more comfortable, and when i was playing, i was so sure i would play through the whole game and do the tutorial every time to make her feel comfortable.


but as siffrin (and the player) have to keep living through this day, doing one more thing to slow you from making potentially significant progress becomes like, the last thing you want to do. you can skip the tutorial, which mechanically does nothing to mirabelle, but you do see her nervous reaction afterwards. and there's all sorts of things like that in the game. skipping things that are meaningful to your friends, who are experiencing this day for the first time every time.

with each loop, there's all these opportunities to skip social cues for siffrin that make the party worry about them like crazy. he's not acting like himself etc etc etc. some of this is scripted in, of course, but a lot of it is because of the player's natural tendency to WANT to skip superfluous filler bits after they've seen it the first few times. siffrin's inner dialogue even represents that when you make the same jokes with your fighter over and over. it's a good scene, it still feels good, and seeing isabeau and siffrin have interactions is always great. skipping it means missing that connecting moment with isabeau, even though it's 100% not needed to make any significant progress. but your party doesn't know that!!

isat is really good at honing in on those gamer instincts and using them to further the narrative. siffrin's thoughts are really good at reflecting the average player's behavioral patterns when looking at other games. the way it's designed to make these already fictional characters seem flat to YOU over time along with siffrin is *chef's kiss*. homie's over here pulling back some curtain that protagonists are supposed to ignore, pretty much, but it's just framed in a theater lens instead. it's really good and has such wonderful narrative beats, characters that are so easy to connect to (which makes it hurt even more when the player also starts to see them the way siffrin does in the loop), and really good art. you should play it ok? ok

kthxbai