Poignant story about the nature of ways of living... and not... and the apprehensions of attachment to either and how those affect others. Plays like a semi-interactive moving comic panel but visually appears like a low res 3D set. The thing that really sold me on the tone and immersion was the music. I'm not sure how Kevin and Jeremy did it but this soundtrack really shows off some of the best of both of them. I knew Jeremy from GDC years ago but we haven't kept in touch, so don't let that cloud your judgment of the review. I could hear aspects of what I remember of the style Kevin showed in Made in Abyss occasionally present themselves in various parts of the soundtrack but was surprised just how well they translated from serene terror to quiet professional/informal apprehension in tone. The pairing of Kevin's style with Jeremy's here really does the story justice and keeps me immersed. It helps more that the struggles of the characters presented were made to feel so genuine. Props to the writers for that and to those responsible for designing the framing of each scene, really helped to sell the feeling of each moment.

I think I've commented enough on that so I wanted to talk about the game aspects next. Mechanics-wise, the only thing that you really have to work for is finding all the memories. Not all of the objects you need to look for are immediately apparent but you'll find them easily enough if you keep looking. After getting all the way through not all of them were memorable enough (the objects, not the stories) to not forget which one's I'd checked before but there's not that many of them and not too large a place to search so its not too bad. I appreciated the attention to detail on timing relative to changes to environment thru the story. There is a sort of sub-game/experience where you can draw on the robots. It helps that the art doesn't show up on robots in certain scenes as it helps me better understand where we were in the timeline (although given what you learn later, it isn't totally clear if it can really be interpreted that way so maybe I give that aspect too much credit). Some of the side story events / memories were hard to place right away or left me with questions still about when they came to pass. Perhaps I will never know some. Maybe that's partly the point.

Per comments I heard about this being a different kind of approach to visual novels, I'd say it retains the inflexible rigid progression of any kinetic VN but it adds to that a freedom to explore the setting, nonlinear exploration of the setting's history (which makes a player feel more like they're in a library and wandering around reading books except they're all about the library and its patrons), and a sense of presence in the environment (hard to place exactly how but the reason is not simple enough for me to give a single sentence about it). VNs don't always include a component of showing where characters are in an environment but I appreciated that this one does since it makes context and aspects of nonverbal communication easier to pick up on (and I appreciated their attention to detail on those). The ability to probe further on important words also lent the game a sense of depth you could choose to ignore or choose to take interest in and I think that made the world feel more flexible in how you could experience it's story. UI wise, it was very clean (although I imagine non-developers would find the scene editing tool unwieldy - it seemed the kind of thing a game dev or art team's tools developer builds to make the game and maybe that's how this game was made). Transitions very smooth and nothing felt like it took too long. The times there was loading it never overstayed its welcome. If there was a transition that maybe felt out of place it was probably that jump cuts in some scenes felt a bit contrasting to the themes presented in those scenes but I don't think it took that much from the experience.

If you are a reader and enjoy studying worldbuilding and side characters and the like, this kinetic-VN style experience probably understands you more than most of its ilk... maybe enough to hit your heart just in the right ways.

Just don't go into it expecting to play for glory, or to win, or what have you. Go into it and allow yourself to experience the story as it happens. Don't rush through it, take your time. Rewind if you need to (that's a thing you can do - left arrow). Try not to jump into main story progression right away and allow yourself a moment to wander and ponder the thoughts that have crossed your mind as you do. The characters aren't the only ones wandering the cafe in a state of inbetween. Maybe then it will cease to look to you like another kinetic VN and begin to look a bit like itself.