#zephyo

I got the “hope” ending on my second play-through (I think you are kinda meant to fail the first attempt). It all hit so hard and brought me to tears. The illustrations are gorgeous and expressive. I love the choice of music. It gave the whole game such a fresh feel.

I decided agains trying to get the other endings. In my second attempt I already felt the gamer mindset settle in, when picking speech options. But the options provided where still immersive, even after this small immersion break happend. As they aligned with what I think I would have done/said, if I was in the protagonist’s place. I was reminded of conversations I had, where I felt a needed to balance leaving space, talking around the topic, and being direct. I also love how directly those two jsut say nice things to each other. I think I’m still learning this. Because sometimes saying something like “you’re a good friend” seems like I need to add so many asterisks. But I’m starting to learning that this is not true. The asterisks don’t need to be spelled out everytime. And just being positive to each other is so much more fulfilling than following every critical hunch I might have.

In recent years I find it more and more difficult to play games. I might play 1–2 hours per week, but there are also a lot of weeks where I don’t play anything at all. Commiting to a game on those days seems like too big a hurdle. So, I’m really happy I took the time to play this game this evening—I was planning to do so almost all week (Where did all the time go?).