A cute game, a wholesome game. Not the "reddit gold wholesome chungus" kind, just something pure.
A very kind game, very optimistic, very honest, very friendly.

Honestly this whole game is just a vibe.

I absolutely adore how every character has a uniquely predictable routine that they closely stick to throughout the weeks, giving you many opportunities to witness them believably living their lives. It's so uniquely exciting to expect to see a character at a given place, only to spot them sneaking elsewhere to do something else and catch them in the act. As a result, you'll naturally come across many situations and interactions through pure happenstance by virtue of you being in the right place at the right time. Some stuff will require proactive, thought-out planning, but most things can be found or learned-about by randomly timed exploration - very neat.

The artstyle is cute, the music is vast (as you'll discover through the many unlockable MD tracks) and the characters are a delight. Very rarely was I not having a good time!

Unfortunately my only concern with the game stems from the core gameplay loop - as the game goes on, you'll spend more and more time idling to pass time just so you can do something particular at a particular time, repeatedly. It wasn't uncommon to find myself walking away from my computer and keeping myself occupied as time passed in-game just so I could intercept an interaction. There are ways to find hints to minimise the need for aimless waiting, but you'll still find yourself waiting a LOT. I'm patient, but sometimes it can be exhausting.

That small issue aside, this is a very precious game. Highly recommended if you can stomach being self-driven enough to explore and learn the whole game without a guide (you'll probably still need one).

I might trigger some fans here, but I found it to be super confusing and jank with an unintuitive bad interface. I love Onion Games and this game is supposed to be groundbreakingly significant and different for its time (Undertale for one was partly inspired by this I believe), but I couldn't get into this.

There's a lot of story (okay good) and then you walk around and try some things. Suddenly you're dead and you have to restart. Hardly anything is ever explained, but supposedly you have to get back to bed after some arbitrary invisible time or action limit? Any progress you made is then lost, too, because you just have to reload your last save. This feels like the game repeatedly resets your progress in ways that feel arbitrary, turning exploration into repetition instead of discovery.

I mean it's a game from 1997, I think the re-release could have really benefitted from some QoL updates.