The mock award for Best Use of a Broken Dream goes to this one, hands down. Chloe’s a blonde cheerleader, uniform still clinging to her like a second skin, but the whole pom-pom fantasy got curb-stomped somewhere off-screen. Now she’s just... adrift. And you, the invisible puppet master, get to decide if she spirals into a gutter of bad choices or something worse. The whole thing runs on a choice system that feels like flipping a coin into a sewer grate, you never know what filth you’ll hit. I spent an embarrassing amount of time fixated on the money mechanic. You start with exactly two dollars. Two. And if you waltz into school with that exact amount, the game just breaks, lunch becomes an eternal purgatory. The fix? Buy a ramen first. Not for eating, no, just to zero out your cash so the code doesn’t have a stroke. That’s not a bug, that’s a personality trait.

The scenes. God, the scenes. There are thirteen big ones, most with multiple animations that loop in a way that’s hypnotic and a little sad. Chloe’s face doesn’t change much, this blank slate of desperation, but the things she does. One moment she’s in a classroom, the next she’s bent over a desk while the camera just... lingers. The uniform gets used. A lot. Buttons pop, fabric stretches, and the whole thing has this unpolished, raw edge. The animations aren’t smooth, they hitch and stutter, which somehow makes it more visceral, like watching a corrupted memory of a bad night. There’s a scene with a guy from the, wait, I forgot what his deal was. Doesn’t matter. His hands are all over the cheerleader skirt and Chloe’s eyes are just dead.

It’s still in development, they say, but already has more content than finished games I’ve played. Achievements pop up, little dopamine dings for watching someone’s life implode. The story is there, thin as a worn thong, but the choices. One path had her in a locker room, the smell of sweat and old perfume practically seeping through the screen, and I clicked a dialogue option that made her say something so degrading I actually laughed out loud. Then the next scene she was all innocent again, like nothing happened. No consistency. Love it. The art isn’t pretty, it’s functional filth, and the whole thing feels like finding a sticky magazine in a ditch. The blonde hair is just a yellow blob half the time. Perfection.