BAD END THEATER

Wonderful! An exploration of storytelling itself, with simple but evocative characters in a familiar but subversion-ready setting, with lots of tragedy but a slow build towards overcoming it. Short and sweet and lovely. (Plus, I wish *every* branching-path visual novel had a flowchart showing which paths I haven't taken yet.)

This game is cute and I admire its deeply personal side that's revealed by the secret ending, but it's still lacking. Its attempts at subverting cliches are, ironically, committed to so often it has become cliche in of itself which makes this game's attempts at subversion hold little weight. The variety of bad ends are also too grounded, you can never make radical changes to the plot and the means to get the true ending is a lame deus ex machina. It's charming enough but nothing impressive.