Hypnophobia is an hour and a half visual novel that broaches loneliness, heartbreak, depressive spirals, and blank slates.

The art style is sharp and lines carve the characters out like indentations on sea shells. Deep fried saturated mixed-media backgrounds set a dreary cold scene which is just light enough to leave a tiny portion of hope on the table.
While it's a little on the nose at times, the wintry atmospheric music fits the mental space our protagonist lives in.
The writing is so-so in that while each sentence carries the story forward some emotions or thoughts are lacking some substance or elaboration.

I would recommend for the art alone.

Remember the silly cow.

A very specific kind of story that will alienate most people but if you hit a certain kind of person, it hits a certain spot. Its spiraling and its repetitive but in a very intentional way because it rings true to the real life cycles. The summary says it all, so if that interests you, its free to read.

a deeply personal (and often unsettling) piece of vent art detailing the exponential deterioration of ones mental state when dealing with unmedicated depression, along with the physical deterioration when paired with insomnia and sleep deprivation.
though it may be short, it is not without reason. the small dev team puts a lot of love and personality in this game through its presentation which does so much more to help the player familiarize themselves with the character and better understand the severity of what they're going through. the disparity between the main characters art style and the background signifies her dissociative tendencies and the soundtrack, though mainly being gloomy and melancholic, often changes abruptly during intense emotions or mental breakdowns into these very unnerving repeated melodies which really personalize what Iris is going through at every step of the story.

the story is very vulnerable and personal, which might make it come off as a bit cringe to some but i wouldn't consider it to be a flaw personally. I think some of the mental breakdown scenes could have been written a bit better as they tended to be more carried by the drawings in terms of displaying Iris' emotions. Additionally I think more scenes with Sylvie would have been very helpful to the story as well. I was anticipating to see if anything would be done with the intro scene where she was holding Iris' hand and was a little disappointed when there wasn't seeing as she would reminisce about Sylvie so often.

Overall this game is great is serves as well needed representation for people such as myself who struggle with depression, since going through it all alone like Iris did is an everyday battle on its own. I hope this story continues to find the right people like it did for me and teaches them the importance of learning to love yourself before loving someone else.