You know that feeling when you're scrolling through a hundred VNs and they all blur together? Same faces, same "oh stepbro what are you doing" bullshit. Then this one opens with the protagonist having a full on panic attack in his childhood bedroom while a cat judges him. A cat. And I'm sitting there like yeah, same energy.

The setup is he's 35, washed up from Silicon Valley, lost everything including some woman named Chloe who you just know is going to show up later because these games always do that. Moves in with his stepsister. Her name's... fuck, I forgot already. But she's got that whole "I work too hard and need someone to notice" thing going on, which is basically catnip for these stories. The two stepnieces are where it gets interesting though. One's this gothy little shit who communicates in eye rolls, the other is way too sweet and it's making me suspicious. Like, nobody's that nice without something underneath. The first real scene that got me was a late night kitchen encounter with the stepsister. She's in one of those robes that's technically clothing but isn't really, and the dialogue choices range from "be a normal human" to "compliment her in a way that's definitely not stepbrotherly." I picked the compliment. The tension was thick enough to spread on toast. The 3DCG isn't winning awards but it does this thing where the eyes actually look at you, not through you like some dead fish render. Small mercies.

The humor catches you off guard. There's a bit about a grumpy cat that had me snorting, and the protagonist's internal monologue is refreshingly self aware for a guy who's about to make terrible decisions. I wish the mobile version didn't heat up my phone like a goddamn toaster but here we are. The crossovers from Powers That Be mean nothing to me since I never played it, and honestly the game acts like I should know who these random people are. Whatever. The masturbation scenes are... look, they're fine. Functional. But the real heat is in the almost moments, the choices where you can feel the whole family dynamic about to crack open like an egg. That's the good stuff.