This isn't a game. "The Psychiatric Evaluation Record of Gaku Umidori" is a digital e-book/visual novel masquerading as a game on Steam. There isn't any actual gameplay here, just clicking through some of the worst writing to insult the concept of literature. This is the kind of writing that would never be accepted by a real book publisher, leading to this being dumped onto Steam Direct for $100 as if it was a game... it is not.
This e-book is a Japanese high school anime club dropout fan-fiction that tries to be edgy and covers a fairly normal horror trope... the psychiatric patient isn't actually crazy (sort of) and the monsters are real. I was just relieved to see this wasn't a fan-fiction about the authors imaginary girlfriend, which is the subject of almost every garbage e-book published as a game on Steam.
This is a Choose Your Own Adventure format, but that doesn't make it a game. It's still just a book. Nobody finishes the pain of reading a cringey CYOA fan-fiction and thinks it was a video game.
Because this was put together with the Ren'Py construction kit, it didn't require any actual coding or development. It's a tool for failed authors to push their garbage high school anime club dropout fanfictions as games. Just like there's no professional writing here, there isn't any professional software development either.
Visual novels/e-books are the worst way to try read a book (and they're always written far worse than real books too). Imagine reading your favorite book, be that War and Peace or The Davinci Code (are you ok??), but you have to click the mouse for every single sentence that appears. You'd hate it. It's a garbage way to try read a book... and even if it wasn't, this still isn't a game.
Now take that annoying clicking and add utterly cringey high-school anime club dropout writing to it. Real authors are published in print and found on bookshelves. This garbage only ended up on Steam because they paid $100 to self-publish, because let's face it, professional publishers would not only reject this garbage they saw it, they'd take out restraining orders.
There's no reason for this to be on Steam when it could just be a webpage... e-books are just a bunch of cringe text and (usually character generator created) static 2D imagery. You don't buy an expensive gaming PC to use it for something your web browser can do for free.
Despite having no cost, this failed to appeal to gamers. SteamDB shows this peaked at just a dozen or so concurrent readers, and now there's basically nobody using it. This was a dismal public reception. It's easy to see why gamers rejected it.
While this e-book's free, you can get better quality books and comics for free online or from public libraries. Steam is for PC games. Your gaming rig is not a Kindle or a mobile phone e-book reader. It's impossible for me to recommend things to PC gamers that aren't really games.
