[h2]A story about a mentally ill ghost[/h2]
This game has it's issues, but it's overall enjoyable, I wanna get my gripes out of the way first and then I'll get to the good.
The vignette is incredibly annoying, sure it tries to add atmosphere but it feels pointless and excessive, it's too strong for what it is.
There's an outdoor area where things look so washed out, like a TV with it's gamma set too high, and going from the dark indoor to the bright outdoor kind of hurts your eyes.
The puzzles feel harder more out of a lack of adequate direction rather than genuine difficulty, the player has to do a little mental gymnastics to come to certain conclusions, and some necessary areas are easy to miss because of the vignette, or them looking like just a jagged part of the map.
The end has a sort of forenote awkwardly shoved in there, trying to explain some things, attempting poorly to recontextualise parts of the story, or flat out just saying "yeah idk man, you figure it out", which makes the story and writing suddenly feel a lot more amateurish, there's something to be said for leaving things unanswered, not everything obviously, but a bit of ambiguity here and there doesn't hurt, I hate the whole "split personality" bit just shoved in there unnecessarily.
Now the good:
The sprites are generally pretty good, Lilan's sprite especially stood out to me as some really effective sprite-work, and I like the style it's got going on, although the shoulders do feel a little too broad on a couple sprites at least for my taste, I think they might be from some sprite asset pack though, so I don't know how much credit I should give for that.
The music is alright, there are a couple stand out tracks, it's not gonna be winning any massive awards, but it services the story well.
The gameplay can be a bit iffy, I played on easy because I recently played "Jimmy and the pulsating mass" and I just did not want to go through another "easy is actually normal" situation, so I don't think I can criticise the game for being too easy, but easy did make everything feel perhaps a bit too lax for me, so for the average player, normal is probably what you're gonna want to go for.
The puzzle side of the gameplay is rough, there's not really enough direction for the average player I don't think, which could result in a lot of frustration, but with how obtuse it can be, I was kind of shocked to not really need a guide for the majority of it, I used a guide for some of the achievements when 100%ing but that was about it, maybe persistence pays off, maybe I was just lucky, maybe I'm giving the game too much flack for not giving a ton of direction in the puzzles, but if you find yourself getting frustrated or banging your head against the wall trying to figure out what could possibly be the code, just look up a guide, there's no shame in it, I promise you'll have a better experience if you know your limits and aren't to proud to give in.
The story is reminiscent of corpse party, but a bit less edgy and trope filled (no hate towards corpse party, loved that game), I'm sure if you examined it too closely it may start to fall apart, but it's serviceable for what it is, I'd say towards the end of rebirth is where it kind of started to feel a bit too convenient, like they weren't quite sure how to wrap things up and were maybe written into a bit of a corner, I probably wouldn't have done the ending how they did, I don't think it ruins the game or the story at all though.
The main thing I keep thinking about this game is it's alright, just alright, it's not bad, it's just very middle of the road in terms of RPG maker, which isn't terrible, there's so many broken and terrible RPG maker games out there, if you're big into RPG maker games this is still worth playing because it's not one of those, but it's not like it's the cream of the crop, it's no Omori, or oneshot, or LISA, but it's far from bad, I'd probably put it in a similar ballpark to the witch's house, although whether it's above it or below it I can go back and forth on.
For the average gamer, this is kind of a 50/50 whether you'll enjoy it, but if you generally like things in this vein, and especially if you enjoy 100%ing games, this is at least a decent experience and probably worth it for you.
