An underrated gem of a VN. So much love and care has gone into every single facet of this, from the writing to the art to the general presentation. The UI is slick and smooth, the characters are expressive and they all have multiple poses, the backgrounds look great, and the music is very evocative.

This is a really nice, short story that should tug on your heartstrings. It packs a lot of plot and a lot of emotions into a relatively short run-time, which makes it a nice and compact to read to go through in one sitting.

Though it's on the shorter side, it's so polished it's amazing it isn't a commercial VN. I'd have gladly paid $5 or so for the experience; the dev team deserve it for the sheer amount of work that went into it.

This is well worth a read; please consider checking it out if you haven't already!

Although slow in the start, the story really picks up in the second half. Really liked the art in this and they really made the art pop when it mattered most, same when it came to the voice lines. Short and bittersweet :)

Worth the 2.5 hours of playtime bc some of the later scenes got me very emotional. Great recommendation for a short visual novel. I even plan on playing the other one too, just to see how the story goes!

as someone who was ostracized by the american education system for being on the spectrum, this story hit incredibly hard. i will continue to protect pavel with my life.

you've heard of "cushion :)" now get ready for "pavel :("

i'm so bad at writing reviews after playing, so i'm keeping notes as i play to post as a steam review afterwards hehe (so this is probably going to be Very jumbled). going to assume i'm dropping spoilers either accidentally or intentionally, just because i'm kind of mentally comparing between the original release and this release:

first impression playing the definitive edition after playing OG protoviolence: SO much more polished!! the original was good, but this release is a lot more smooth and everything flows much better. there are a fair amount of things that stood out that i don't remember if they were in the original or if they're changes that were made for the definitive edition specifically, but overall it feels much cleaner!

i could just be misremembering what was in the original, but i loved the addition (?) of deidre's inner monologue when she was first talking to pavel and shriya; i feel like the lightness of "oh man i don't know how to interact with kids" is very sweet but also serves to amplify the later horror of the situation..... like yes, they're kids, and they're being put through this horrible thing. like she doesn't know how to interact with them at first, but they don't really know how to be kids themselves (and those that do are punished for it).

i know a big part of this release was to flesh out certain characters more, and i feel like that was accomplished with flying colors!! in particular the interview with shriya was a fantastic addition (and made perfect sense with the in-game timeline). i was intrigued to learn more about her and i think the interview did a great job of showing more of her personality and her own struggles within the YTDI. with the way protoviolence ends, i'm not sure if we'll ever see more of her, but it'd be neat if she made another appearance someday.

there are SO many things that hurt my heart about pavel's story but in particular the anecdote about him playing scraddle wrong and standing up for himself in that regard really hits home for me. really resonates with my own childhood experiences in a lot of ways that make me both sad and incredibly sympathetic. i mean obviously he goes through much worse lol BUT something about this particular piece of information/glimpse into his past has always stood out to me.

in short/spoiler free lol:

just a fantastic VN altogether. i feel like (for anyone interested in playing) it would be beneficial to play malviolence first; obviously with them being directly connected the order doesn't matter TOO much, but i think the impact of playing this after malviolence would be greater, though if you're not a fan of puzzles this is definitely the better place to start because it's a more typical VN.

i also think it's very much worth playing through again even if you played the original release, because the quality difference is night and day (not to imply the original wasn't great too, but this one has that extra coat of polish that makes it so much better). the soundtrack is great, the story is heart-wrenching, and the ending sequence is incredibly dynamic after the intentionally sterile feeling of the rest of the VN. another fantastic release from the malviolence team :)

Grape Sticker

played this tonight. from the art direction to the writing to the music and design and feel of the project i fell in love with these characters and the story even more than i already did playing malviolence. this was a wonderful story to experience, thank you for making it.

SUPERB VN. Hadn't played (or even heard of) the game it's a prequel for - you don't need to - but I'll definitely be checking it out.

If you are neurodivergent this will probably hit hard.

I grew up with undiagnosed ADD. Like Pavel, I doodled in class. I feel like I had to give up parts of myself in order to adapt - something I feel was metaphorically represented with the amputations and implants Pavel was put through. Despite (or because?) of that trauma, I find myself back in the public school system... as a teacher, trying not to perpetuate the cycle, trying to work within a broken system. In that way, I identify with Dee, as well.

Overall very powerful narrative, great art direction, I really cannot recommend it enough, and for a free game you have no reason NOT to play it. ;)

ALSO pretty sure Pavel is an "egg" and glancing at MalViolence seems to confirm this, soooo add that in as another element that feels spot-on for my own childhood.

Beautiful game that works as a self-contained short story. It's a prequel to malViolence, but playing malViolence shouldn't be necessary to appreciate this. Hurt me right in the heart and also in my memories of being an autistic kid in school

This was a very well written visual novel, i have yet to play malViolence since i wanted to play this first but i am without a doubt going to play it soon.
Hope the Escape Rooms are Fun!