Another Morning Owe to You

This game only have one flaw that I can see thus far: I fails to make you feel connected to the dead boyfriend BEFORE introducing someone else.

I LOVE the neighbor boy.
I have NO CLUE what the boyfriend was like.

Considering the premise of this game, I would have expected an intro part where you showed memories of the dead boyfriend (maybe through unpacking stuff) wrapped in a romantic glow, all the wonderful things that made you fall in love with him --making the reader fall in love with him.

Only AFTER you can feel the love she felt can you truly understand her enough to play the game as it's meant to be played.

When you don't do that, then you fall in love with the love interest and discard the barely mentioned bf that -should- be on your mind.
And it makes the actions and thoughts of the mc seem....detached... from yourself.

It's impossible to empathize with her loss, because you (the reader) never lost anything, because there was never a character there to loose, or miss.

I've seen a similar game before, where the mc created an android to replace her husband, and that game works because she remembers her husband so vividly that you fall in love with him, and so can either project it onto the android, or reject it as 'the real one'.

THAT is what this game needs.

(I'd say the neighbor boy is a bit too quick, and the mc a bit overly quick to invite him too.... but I suspect there's something going on that's the reason for that. At the very least he comes off as a bit yandere-esque, so -his- personality makes sense.
Even if letting a stranger sleeps on your couch seems illogical to me.
Maybe if you already knew him....)

I DO love the choices in the game.
Especially that you can choose the things that end it early.
Although I also wish you HAD the choice to simply refuse to move on, ended up moving back into the home you and your dead bf used to share, and become a recluse living in the past.
(Or delusional projecting him onto the robot --making it stop calling you 'master' for one thing.)

There is something bittersweet or rejecting both life and death, and hold on to an everlasting love that rips you apart every single day, and yet you keep going on, no matter how painful it is.
Whether you fear death, or simply accept pain because it binds you to love, it would be a nice end to have.

The neighbor is VERY romantic tho.
In a "his favorite song is likely Join Me in Death by HIM" kinda way.
Perhaps not ideal in a real relationship, but very beautiful in fiction.

The (darker) ending if you try and reject him is sweet.
I still think it would work better if the game was longer tho.
You simply do not know him well enough to allow him in as much as you do.
If normal people are THIS stupidly careless and helpful, I pity humanity. >_>

I LOVE how Callus says "Sssh, don't worry about that," xD

Seriously tho.... If you tweak this game just a little bit, you could probably have submitted it to a yandere jam too. ^_^

You have zero choices in love interest in this game after you meet him.
He may not (or maybe he does) stalk you, but his obsession is very much on the yandere edge.

(It's rare to see a yandere who turns the destructive tendencies on himself, but it's not unheard of. Especially with the more manipulative types, such as the one in the Hydrangea game. (the one with lots of purple, there's more by that name.)

The way he phrases things, the way he does things... he's clearly manipulative as it is.

(Even the amusement park as a date choice is brilliant, if you think tactically, and are familiar with the "suspension bridge effect" in psychology.)

And he's defiantly adorable and sweet.
He's very calming, and I think if he was your boyfriend, he'd be very sweet... but also manipulative and playing on your fear of loosing him to get you to stay with him and only him forever.
(Text messages on missing you if you left to the story, calls saying he's so lonely when you see friends, calls like that of Marla Singer (Fight Club) after a fight, saying he's taken a whole box of sleeping-pills because he can't live without you and force you to come running back....
And praising how amazing you are to him when you do what he wants, and it's just the two of you in your
own little world. And bad ends with him killing both of you if you try to leave. )

Or: I can easily see that happening. If you decided to take a more yandere path with him.

....after a little more gameplay, I am not sure you need to even tweak him for this at all. lol

His manipulation skills are very impressive. ^_^

He's very...pushy... as well. But he manage to not -seem- like he is.
There's sadly no choice to try and reject some of the things he asks of you, so I can't say if he's let you say no if you tried, but I can imagine he'd pretend it was okay only to stay out long enough for you to worry, and come back with some (self-inflicted) injury and use it to guilt you into accepting next time.

If he wasn't so clearly manipulative, I'd say he's too blunt and open about his 'condition'.
But when you view it as a method of emotional extortion, it actually makes sense. (Unlike if he had been literally any other person.)

But the admission of the amusement park tickets after that IS too blunt.
THAT is bad writing.
Even if the rest is not.

I...am unsure if you are really bad at writing good conversations, or if you're actually good at it but is writing a character that's really bad at conversations. o_O

I DO think it would be better to be given a choice about the kiss tho.

(I can also see him say sadly that he gets it if you say no, and then push himself backwards off the roof, so you either have to grab him back and be stuck in a relationship out of fear he'll die if you don't, or let him die.)

Actually, now that I think about it.... This game is half-way to be a REALLY good game about being in a manipulative relationship.

Whether intentional or not, he is VERY good at it.
AND he's so sweet and adorable and sad that most readers would even be blinded to how unhealthy it is, at least in the beginning --which is ideal, because that's how it works in real life.
Few people would choose to stay if they realized it that fast after all.

The ending is a bit abrupt tho.
Not even a screen saying something like "Romantic Ending" or a brief epilogue how you save each-other, or whatnot.

Are you planning to write more on this game?

I really hope you are, because this game is extremely sweet. ^_^
(Even the bad endings are sweet. In their own way.)

And the colors and artwork just adds to that melancholic feeling that permeates the whole game.

It's beautiful.