It starts out looking like a cheerful club where you write poems and chat with friendly classmates, and it is best to keep it that way in your head before playing. The story takes an unexpected sharp turn partway through that changes what kind of game this actually is. Go in without reading spoilers, since the surprise is the entire point.
Gameplay video
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Screenshots & review notes
Why it lands
What starts as a cute dating sim pastiche turns into something much darker, and the whiplash is entirely the point. It's a clever, unsettling piece of interactive fiction.
How it plays
There's minimal traditional gameplay here beyond dialogue choices and poetry minigames, which keeps the focus squarely on narrative and mood rather than mechanics.
Style and score
The bright, cheerful anime art style becomes deeply unsettling once the story shifts, and that visual contrast does a lot of quiet horror work.
Who it's for
Best experienced completely blind, with no spoilers beforehand. Recommended for horror fans more than dating sim fans, despite its packaging.
Frames captured from the gameplay video above; notes are our own take on the game.
What it's like to play
It opens looking exactly like a cheerful dating sim about joining your school's literature club, where you write poems by picking words from a list to appeal to whichever club member you like best, and spend afternoons chatting with a small cast of friendly characters. That cheerful setup is deliberate, and without spoiling how, the game eventually starts doing things with its own save files and interface that most games never touch, turning into something much stranger than it first appears. This Plus edition adds extra side chapters that flesh out each character further, along with a music player and art gallery once you finish.
Your goal at first seems to simply be building friendships and eventually a relationship with a club member, but the actual point of the experience becomes something you will need to discover for yourself rather than have explained upfront. A full playthrough including the new side content runs around six hours. Clear content warnings are shown before certain sections, covering themes like depression and self-harm that the writing handles directly rather than lightly.
Those content warnings matter, since some scenes genuinely deal with difficult mental health topics and can be upsetting for some players. If you already know the general twist going in, a lot of the impact is lessened, so going in with as little outside knowledge as possible is worthwhile. It is a good fit for players interested in horror-adjacent storytelling who are prepared for heavier themes than the cute art style suggests.