A half-true game about half-truths. You play as a semi-fictional version of me, on a night that changed my life forever. Choose your (my?) words wisely. Every character will remember everything you say - or don't say - as you figure out how to approach my (your?) hyper-conservative Asian parents. And if all that seems confusing or awkward... well, that's the gist of coming out as queer, isn't it? [Author's annotation]
as an asian and being part of a friend group all exploring their own sexual identities but unfortunately unable to tell their parents, i genuinely loved this realistic portrayal of coming out to your parents. the gameplay was simple, yet interesting enough to intrigue me.
i also loved that the creator injected his own personality in this, and it gives me faith and hope that in spite of the ignorance of the people around us, we CAN survive.
I'm going to be honest with this. First the good. The presentation is good. Clean design. The writing, believable, but mostly only when it was coming from you. You yourself said the game is full of half-truths, etc, so I don't know how much of this could be taken as legitimate. I know you wrote it as a very personal game, so I don't want to bash you or anything. I don't really know what happened, but I believe you even said that your father in real life had left before that. I'm sorry about that, by the way. As I get more personal with this review, I want you to know that I sincerely hope you could patch things up with your family. I would agree that treatment like that would be unfair, but I actually felt the experience was hindered because you explained that this is a lot of what-if from your perspective. I think it's an interesting idea, but I felt it was hard to sympathize in real way, only fictional. Maybe that was what you intended, so if so, I think it still delivered the feelings of being unfairly treated. It has to be hard, and if that's what you intended, I think the writing did that. Sorry for the rambling, I am not a professional writer. Anyway, it doesn't matter where I stand on the topic of LGBT, etc., but I do think that it could be a better (or at least practical) experience if maybe you did a more general version that represented the feelings of both sides. As someone noted, without the context of the culture or background of the parents, (Asian culture is too general in my opinion, but that was the only thing really noted about their background) it hurts being able to see things from the perspective of others on the other side and thus makes it harder to know how to discuss this topic. I don't know if your parents were just exaggerated or what, but I do agree that even if there is disagreement, showing a good example of how these things could be talked out properly without either side having to "win" (or relinquish personal values necessarily) and prioritizing the relationship, could be quite beneficial to helping people talk about these things in real life. There isn't an easy answer, but glad you exist and are trying to help people. Assume the best in people, that's all I could say.
I am a lesbian woman who knows from experience that coming out doesn't always go well. My cousin was disowned for being gay, and when I tried to come out, my mother laughed at me and gave me a long list of reasons why it would be impossible for me to be into women. I never tried coming out to family again. I only knocked off a star because I had to skim through some of the text due to the speed when I wanted to focus on the story.