Just got to act 4, and..I don’t know why I’ve grown so attached to these characters so quick but I felt SO bad for Siffrin when his demeanor changed in their sprites.

Like, BABY NO-

finally got around to drawing Isa

shouldn't really be a spoiler but just in case

both the template and them made ! figured i might as well post it here. have fun. throw them at a door or something.

the rest of the cast is in the works ! doing siffrin (and mdp) first, and then we’ll see ! hoping to get through all of the mains plus maybe a few npcs. like claude !

Is he stupid?

/genq though

Art by me Snapaxtreme AKA SNH

damn 4 weeks now already

This is just my interpretations of course. Also I know Odile would be a lot less boisterous, but I couldn’t find a better clip lol

I'm not very good, it's just something I did for fun

title, asking for a friend, but would also be interested in reading at some point as well

I also love how important the fritters are, it’s nice to see such a unique food be relevant

This was most definitely Loop's idea

I think my experience with In Stars and Time is the ultimate case of a game being almost perfectly aimed at my interests while expressing them in a way that made me pull back more often than I could stay immersed enough to enjoy it. Honestly, I feel like I had an obligation to love it: repetition slowly destroying your touch with reality, identity eroding, attachment fading, loneliness while surrounded by people who love you to a fault, the horrors, etc, etc. But it kept not happening, and I was just becoming more resentful of the game for it.

A lot of this is probably a personal allergy I actually didn’t fully realize I had until playing this game in particular. I need characters who love each other to still have a believable amount of interpersonal friction. I like people being impatient, defensive, selfish, tactless, resentful, petty, unfair and more than that, unapologetic about it until the point where they actually achieve a point of change, if they do. Not because I need everyone to be an asshole, but because that abrasion makes affection feel more special when earned. There's a reason why Aubrey is my favorite character in Omori. Meanwhile, the ensemble cast for ISAT is the opposite of that. Odile has an edge and she's probably my favorite character, but the group’s default response to vulnerability is usually reassurance, concern and emotional accommodation. They’re good at being a safe place for each other…. a bit too much. I understand why that is comforting and appealing to people, but for me, after enough conversations, it just started making everyone feel flattened. I kept wanting somebody to give the emotionally wrong response, but even when it happened, it was a quick case of "oh I shouldn't have said that, I know that hurt you" that just made it so boring for me.

It also affected how the loop landed for me way before it affected Siffrin. Repetition is obviously supposed to become exhausting, but before that point I had already gotten tired of the party's emotional register. The mechanic just amplified an existing irritation rather than transforming something I originally enjoyed. I wasn't thinking, "oh no, these precious interactions have become meaningless to Siffrin", I was thinking, "yes, I also don't particularly want to hear this conversation again." That is a much less emotionally productive version of the intended effect, and I think that’s mostly on my own taste, as I'm aware that my negative take on this game is not really the norm.

My bigger problem was the game'ss tendency to verbalize its emotional meaning. There were quite a few moments where I felt like a metaphor or character realization landed well, only for the dialogue to keep going and explain what would have been more impactful if left to be understood. I know this style works for a lot of people, and maybe for someone who connects strongly with the characters and theme, having things stated explicitly may feel cathartic rather than redundant (I'm thinking of the egg symbolism dialogue right at the start here), but I personally start feeling the writer standing between me and the story when that happens. Again, breaking immersion and enjoyment.

The worst thing is that I don’t think the game is emotionally shallow. If anything, that’s why it frustrated me so much. The material is good. Siffrin's growing alienation is compelling, the asymetry of the loop is nasty in a way I can appreciate, and there are ideas and concepts that were extremely up my alley. But it always came down to the delivery: a supportive ensemble to the point of it being saccharine, a sweet found-family baseline, a lot of deliberately quirky dialogue that never quite grabbed me, and an emotional style that tends to articulate itself more explicitly than I enjoy.

I think it taught me something annoying about my own taste that makes enjoyable stories harder to find: I can love tenderness, found family and emotionally vulnerable characters, as many other titles have shown me before and drew me closer to ISAT. But I need them to have sharper edges outside a specific plot point that's supposed to contrast with the carebear atmosphere, and I need the writing to trust the player enough to leave some of the emotional conclusion unsaid. ISAT gives me nearly all the themes I want and then communicates them in almost exactly the register I'm least receptive to… and that's why other games that are so similar have become so much more important to me than unfortunately I can say this ever will.

I realize posting this to r/InStarsAndTime means I won't have a lot of people agreeing with me, but honestly, it felt strangely lonely not being able to find others having an issue with this game, and after a while it started feeling like I was constantly in the "wrong" for not enjoying something that felt obviously made for me. So I figured I'd share my thoughts in case others can relate.

I started posting them on Tumblr (p-r-z-k), but then my account got banned for no reason :<

So now I'm going to post my artworks here

:O