2-4 '94

so it's about baseball. and you realise it's not about baseball anymore. and you realise it's everything to do inbetween and also baseball and more. and you realise that things are going to shit because of baseball. but it was never about baseball? but you think it was / and you think it is / and it gets worse.

what a fucking masterclass in storytelling. if i had a fucking dime for every time i was floored by your writing wrt the indomitable american/canadian dream i'd have two dimes. which is crazy. the environment in which this takes place in is sublime and there's always such a heavy, heavy weight to your writing that compels me in ways few other works can compare up to. and again, the way baseball is used to illustrate ys and yamos and everything else. it's so insane. it's so genius. nobody does it like you and pilot and i will keep looking forward to more of the stuff you make. WHAT THE FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!

This is incredible. Beautiful work, start to finish. Amazed at how dense this was able to be in so few words, relatively speaking. 

Wow. There is so much here. I'll be coming back to this. Everything works together flawlessly. I'm obviously floored by the presentation, the visuals and music. And the writing... I recognise parts of myself in Ys. In Yamos, too. They're written with such empathy that I am able to love them. No one does it like you guys

Really liked this! Your VNs are always amazing at giving off this very strong and unique sense of place and time that I don't see very often. The presentation is gorgeous, and there's a lot of attention to detail. Love the slow dripfeeding of how messed up Ys is. 

I'm not sure how you feel about UI feedback, but would it be possible to increase the contrast between the 'talking' and 'non-talking' sprites? At times, it can be tricky to determine who's talking. 

a game for children | those horrible times | Henry Chadwick | family law

no descriptor can really capture the appreciation and awe and respect i have for things like how an actual baseball got used for the assets. how conversations into interjections into recital feels completely seamless. how impressively clever this was created from the ground up- (do i spot you putting the NVL length -wait, you're counting out the dang entries MANUALLY? i should have thought of that...)

ys is tough to love.. yamos is lovely but tough...... explode.

like many others, this is a new personal fav especially from the kailot pair, but this truly feels like a real showcase, culmination, and celebration of everything you've both done in the last year- i was right to be scared of those danmaku subs. its all baseball

"She laughed at me and said 'I'd rather spend that time with you,' and I replied, annoyed, 'having the full count would help me remember what you were like in that exact moment."

ugh. UGH. y'all are good at this. 

this game brought me back to the intoxicating online friendships i had as a teenager - years of conversations & time & attention poured into shared interests, always talking around tension, resolving bitter blow-out fights by Going Back To Normal, never scratching the surface of meaningful connection. 

the narratives the girls impress upon one another felt so realistic and awful. the way yamos positions ys as the arbiter of her adulthood is particularly interesting.

your VNs are remarkably confident. they take full advantage of the medium's unique aspects, while also maintaining a literary & theatrical quality that is totally distinct among the games i've played. refreshingly unpoisoned by pop games writing. you guys fucking read books, is what i'm getting at, i guess, and i'm grateful for it.

also, some of the most tasteful and impactful use of {nw} i've seen yet. i gasped within the first ten minutes. 

This was stunning!!!! Everything, everything from the music to the backdrops to the art and prose and... I don't know, it was perfect. I think it'd be really beautiful to be able to recall how I felt about it all in perfect clarity, but I find myself taken in by the feeling of it all. 

I need Ys more than I need blood in my veins. 

just played through this in one sitting…wow wow wow. I feel like I need to sit with and digest and replay it to really understand what just happened to me but I know I’m Different Now. wonderful, wonderful work.

if i had a nickel for every visual novel about lesbians and baseball

Another incredible VN from this team! They do an incredible job mirroring the failing relationship and the goings-on of the backdrop of baseball, similar to what they did for Ten-Metre Tide , and hits just as hard (if not harder). The mixed media backgrounds and art is really really lovely, and gives the whole thing a very grounded and real feeling.

if Ys ever wants a girl to keep while she's at her lowest i'm free

Actual masterclass, this might be my favorite kailot game yet.

The muted tones of the color palette, the sketches in the margins filling up any blank space on the screen, the loose, flowy poses of two women curled up by the phone, discussing baseball and baseball and more baseball. This feels like your stylish narration and stunning GUI and art cranked up to the max. Ys is such an interesting character to read, especially seeing the way she treats her social life and her girlfriend almost reflected in the simplicity of her scorecards. Yamo too, with her maximalist approach to tracking baseball games, and how that tidal wave of information comes forth in her scorekeeping. I feel like i'm gonna be gushing about this game for months to come, y'all truly outdid yourselves with this one.

I'd been trying to read things in submission order, but I knew that once this released I'd want to drop everything else and check this. I was not disappointed. I also did not expect a disastrous trip to visit one's girlfriend in Boston wherein she worked most of the time and very little romantic or physical interaction actually occurred that so closely mirrored my own such experience. Lmfao.

And of course this is not simply an audiovisual delight (which I found very soothing, which is good because I needed soothing), but scripted and delivered brilliantly.

[minor spoilers below the cut]

What really stands out to me on a first read is the deft layering of circumstances and perspectives to enable each of them to kind of speak about and reflect off one another. Like, the strike of '94 and scorekeeping and Boston + Montreal and the AIDS crisis and of course Ys and Yamos are not set dressing, but people and phenomena and contexts that have meaningful things to reveal about one another and about things at large. I will be studying this.

as always, the mixed media bgs and the writing style variants in this match perfectly -- the poetic list of names at the start, the highlighted k's, the pacing for the phone calls, every little detail to number and obsession and distraction, simply delicious i slurped it all up i love numberssssssssssss i love itemized obsession and it paralleled their relationship and gulf of history so well. yummy

first!!!

edit with my real comment now: yall COOKED. oh my GOD. this is my favorite of ur games, i adore the presentation. the layers are used so well in some parts it feels like im turning up the slider on a 3ds screen in thee best way. and i love that the sprites are a bit non-traditional and uniquely posed for each scene. BUT THE STORY? i really like this take on the trauma aspect of the jam's theme, Ys definitely does some shit that pisses me off but shes presented in also an empathetic way. and i love a good homophobic homosexual character. overall the dynamic of these two girls together feels like it was always fated to end in disaster but its really fun to see where it goes and i think it was especially fun to see where it started. and the scorecard stuff was cool, i like the details about the differences in how they track things... and yamos' adhd maxxing is tooooo real, though i find it funny she does all that and then cant handle the city noise. really good personality moment. GOOD JOB YALL I LOVED SEEING THE PREVIEWS FOR THIS WOWOWOWOW MY FRIENDS R SO TALENTED YIPPEE