God, I remember talking about this game when it first came out. Here were my initial thoughts when I first played it:

It’s definitely biased to keep someone stuck in a never ending loop of low productivity and despair. I’m playing through now, but I’m actually at a point where my ‘character’ is getting therapy and reaching out slowly to people about what’s going on.

I've had depression for over a decade, and there are days where I legitimately just… can’t do anything. I feel numb, anxious, and completely worthless to everything, including myself. I have panic attacks constantly. I have to force myself to do daily tasks like go to class, go to work, interact with people, and take care of myself. There are days where I can hardly get out of bed, and I just have to push on through. I feel miserable and lonely, and the only person I can blame it on is me.

But since going to therapy, and reaching out to a few people (game imitates life, I guess), I’m slowly getting better, I think. I’m trying to restructure my thinking, and how to approach people - and myself.

And I think that’s part of the point of the game, too - you have to be willing to take the first couple of steps to get help, otherwise you will be trapped in this never ending cycle of bullshit. You’ll constantly be doing the same things over and over again, because you see no way out, and you’re not willing to look beyond the pointlessness of it all.

I still agree with most of what I said back then; that said, there's still some issues with it. It's easy to click on things that seem like the right choices, for instance. Friends of mine who don't have depression have 'beaten' the game and walked away with either no understanding of depression still, or thinking "oh, that was easy, why are you complaining about depression?", for example. The game attempts to provide a variety of options that vary from 'correct' to 'very damaging', but - and this could be due to the mechanics and limitations of the engine, or the time constraints on offering choices and agency - it's all too easy to dismiss the 'wrong' choices and focus solely on the ones that are positive, or positive enough. This doesn't do much in the way of connecting with people who can't comprehend what it's like living with depression.

It can also be a bit wordy at times. It was fine for me, to be honest, but a bit overwhelming for others I've shared the game with.

As far as gameplay goes, it's practically standard visual novel fare of making choices to progress the story; if you like that sort of thing (which I do!), you'll dig it.

All in all, it's a great attempt at what it tries to do, and I have to applaud the efforts made. I would love to see a 2.0 version with additional branches or options, but that's probably a pipe dream. :)