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Damn it! I'm uncertain now(and even while cooking up this review while in gameplay) just how much covertness I'd have to use to praise this game while comparing it to others I love dearly(and not spoiling the work of this dev or theirs, works which are renowned to be hard sells and risky recommendations despite their brilliance). Well. Cloak and dagger in hand. If you are very well familiar with Pathologic(and/or Hbomberguy`s video essay on it), The Silver Case/The 25th Ward, relax and go on reading my review, it`s fine. You then probably know what I'm going to talk about and the elements I'm gonna make comparisons to. But play the game first, ffs, it's free, fun, well and passionately made and will take one hour of your life at most. If not, drop this review and maybe come back later if you're curious enough(?) Anyway(you've been warned), It really surprised me while the dev and I, the player, were having our final conversation to both have my thoughts confirmed about the elements that inspired the micro and macrocosm of it but not have the works I mentioned before involving metafiction too being spoken about, only Italo Calvino's 'If on a Winter's Night a Traveler'. The direct confrontations with Plapla, both while embodying Sookie and myself felt like a mixture of getting to the bottom of the Polyhedron and talking to the Powers That Be AND the Theatre to speak to the devs. Then came Oz and made me feel doubly so. Metafiction is what made this visual novel not only "cool" but great(and is making me type out a lot of words right now...haha...um). I want more. If it depended only on me the jury wouldn't be out anymore about this being a good work or not. It is. Objectively. I decided. Jk, but kudos to the dev: hope to talk to future you again when you cook up something new. side note: In Pathologic, the game explored the reaction of the players to the """unsatisfying""" revelations it presented on its endings and dared to question WHY the players felt like so, since it was always supposed to be fiction anyway. I found it really smart that through the Debug Tools section you gave the option to the player to be like "Yeah, this is all make believe, I'm aware, the dev is aware that I'm aware, and even the characters are aware of that awareness, but just for the sake of a pseudo-peace of mind, let me have a hand at fixing their "fake" universe anyway". Technically this game goes beyond Pathologic with regards to the power you can have upon the narrative while the narrative is aware of you too and damn if this doesn't feel good. Kudos again!