HEATWAVE

Horrifying. Gorgeous. Sickening. Delicious. Being forced to inhabit the perspectives of the broken and those who do the breaking (as though some ppl ever have a choice but to do the latter). some of the most scintillating, poetic wordcraft i've ever seen in the medium, all to bring terror and pain and violation to life.

SPOILERS

ironically the more visceral scenes at the end weren't as terrifying as simply the earlier moments of building dread and simply inhabiting Angel's fragmented, bleeding mental landscape. I can't say I've even come close to experiencing the breadth of trauma that Angel has, but the depictions of dissociation, marinating in anxiety, neurodivergent overstimulation, shame, fawning, impaired communication and disordered thinking  and the sheer scrutiny of existing as a visibly vulnerable mentally ill entity proved to be claustrophobic and overwhelming and relateable in the bestworst possible ways. the implicit violence coming into fruition almost felt like cathartic relief by comparison. Emotional claustrophobia like a trash compacter.

Incredible story. Eager to inflict it on others.

i feel physically ill (complimentary)

This isn't a game; it's a throbbing, aching hot mess of quivering raw nerves of bloated layers of alienations of inviolable microaggressions cross-dressing as pixels, as brutal pixelated abstraction.

Impossibly flesh and bones.

The glaring vividness—not just oppressively fetishistic lurid but exquisitely scorching—of it's prose made me feel like some brain snotting of decomposing whales (whale-falls) unspooled in a whirlpool of vertiginous precision; moments of esoteric cringing being homoerotically dissected like frog on a cold slab.

It hadn't simply told me a story—it pressed itself into my skin, rubbing into the coy crevices of a Gaping I don't remember getting. Effluvia hot. Sticky wet.

(It’s hot, sticky, and wet in ways that transcend physicality. The heat is emotional; the wetness, psychological.)

It’s as if someone built an almost-home: (like an uncertain sense of newskin) in some single semi-accessible point in my[?] Bodysomewhere and then set it on fire.

Ah, but then there were othertimes too where it feels like screen just bleeds and bleeds clumsy with almost-endearing unwieldy meanings: (with barely-sensations tucked just beneath the feebly skin of biopsychosocial sensations, impossible to scratch). And I'm just there to mop it up. Somehow both disarmingly intimate and violently impersonal.

It doesn’t want to entertain you—it wants to strip you bare and leave you gasping.

I'd say wtf, but also well done.

nhhnhnhg/10

@abu-se-ken2852

This was an absolute delight to go through. The tension that racked my body throughout the read had me hooked the whole time. Seeing myself in visual novels like these makes me feel better. Like for a little bit I too can be stupid. Be stupid and give in. Thank goodness for visual novels for girlthings with something wrong with them. It's nice to be seen. 

I let this game consume pretty much all of my non-work hours today, and that could be the whole comment, but it'd be less than this deserves so I'll add some more.

This is the type of narrative that could only exist as a visual novel, and there's something, I think a really good mix between the tools of the medium that you use to great effect and the tools of narrative that you forego not because they don't suit what you wanted to make, but because you knew you could do without and deliver the intended experience even better that way. It's a case of knowing the box so well that you can craft a narrative outside of it no problem. It's great.

The use of the heatwave as a concept very similar to the horrible euphoria of some of the scenes with Angel is clear and striking with no need for over-explaining, and the presentation, sound design and visual design work extremely well together.

This is the type of game I browse itch.io and participate in game jams to eventually find. Heatwave will stay with me inside my mind for a while, and I'll take my time chewing on it. 

played through this as if pulled magnetic through a searing haze. only put it down when i had to. some of my favorite writing to exist ("wait until its shrapnel thoughts caltrop picasso" is such delicious timbre, to name one example). i was so shocked when it finished because i thought "there's no way that was 20,000 words", but i suppose that's the magic of a captivating experience. going to be rhapsodizing about this to friends when possible. roadside picnic continues to inspire some of my favorite things out there, and i'll be thinking about this one on late nights for some time. thanks for it all. rooting both for and against angel and del.
-fleur

was reclawmmended this game by a furriend- im a little too stupid to understand all the fancy writing and implications behind things, but i really liked this vn anyways! it feels like a work of art, and i oddly relate to angel- i want to give it(? she? them? im not sure what to use???) a biiiig hug and make angel feel safe and happy

edit: furgot to add, but i really like the "lore" behind heatwaves?? it reminds me of a mix of made in abyss and kagerou daze and im morbidly fascinated with them nyaow

I started playing this game and within five minutes was recommending it to a lot of my friends (i finished it. it’s really good. i’m in love with all the presentation and prose choices you made)

I was recommended this game, and it was a really great recommendation as well. This hit me on many levels, and I felt a strong connection. I can't say that every part was as major of an impact, but I definitely felt something from this writing, and I loved it. The concepts of dehumanization were especially impactful for me. While I could go on and on about this game I'll sum it up by just saying that I think others should play this. This resonated with me like few other stories have. I would easily play this again. 

To anyone looking to get a feel for this experience, take the content warnings seriously, this game is not fucking around about them.

The experience was similar to watching a rabid animal slowly starving to death, a certainty about what's about to happen, disempowered to do anything about it.

I don't know if I've ever read something with such a visceral and focused use of language. It made me uncomfortable and uneasy with a control that felt cohesive, precise, and unyielding. They way narration changed to reflect how the POV character thinks is not something I've ever seen done with such complete encapsulation. You learn almost as much about the characters from the way that they think as you do the things they think. You learn that these characters are broken, this world is bleak, and it will point to a hollowness inside of us, by way of its characters, and will leave you to sit with that emptiness.

The pacing is flawless. It marches forward in a way that makes you wish it would both slow down so you could recover and process it and hurry up so you can get it over with. You will be denied both. Scenes are given as much room as is needed for what the author wants from it. I was particularly enamored with the title cards between scenes, they break up the action in engaging ways that both expand upon the setting and world while contributing to the overall tone and aesthetic sensibility of the piece as a whole.

This is an experience where every facet of it's being is honed in and pointed in one direction. It is a blade that dares you to stab yourself, to face a darkness that lies beneath the surface of humanity, and stare unblinkingly.

I'm not sure if I liked the experience, but in a way, I loved it? It churned something unhappy and unpleasant from deep within me, and yet I was hooked onto it from the intro. From the moment it started I stared undistracted at the story woven before me for 2-3ish hours, only to reach the end, like I had awoken from a stupor, no sense of the passage of time or my existence outside of the experience.

I'm thankful that stuff like this exists, that it can exist. It's not just fun, joy, and wish fulfillment that games get to deliver on. Futility, grimacing, anguish, these are all very real human experiences, experiences games like this can deliver on. I get a feeling this is going to eat away at my mind for a little while.

It's phenomenal, and yet I have no idea if you should experience it or not. But I suppose that's not a huge surprise,

It's art.

SO GOOD!!! interesting setting, and very attention grabbing style of writing. i enjoyed every second. the speed at which i reccomended this VN to everyone i know that has something even remotely wrong with them cannot be understated. i hope every character involved in this story explodes.

GRRR
MORE I NEED MORE THIS IS TOO GOOD

This was lovely! Your writing style is really intriguing and poignant and evokes the sensation of tracing gnarled wood with your thoughts. Like quick little jabs to the canium :3

Angel and Del were so fun and wonderfully toxic and all of the worldbuilding and implied fuckery was really cool.

Also the last scene was so incredibly hot;

HEATWAVE is a good vn :3

ahhh now THIS is a vn for girlthings with something wrong with them..

the wonderful presentation starts before we even get to the main menu, and continues all teh way to the end. as much as my vocabulary wasnt up to par with the prose, embracing hte ambiguity for the intro had me fully caught up and invested faster than i expected. it didnt take me long to just catch your vision and have no further struggles because the story was put together in such a nice and clean way

this is one of those stories you gotta sit for a while and stare at the ceiling after completing it. and that bieng said,  more spoilery things are happenign below this line of text

the setting is terrifying. not just for hte 'heatwaves' but obviously all this bureocratic nonsense and the disparity pushed to the extremes. whats there to do when life isnt fair and you are a second class citizen, or i guess not even that, item.. ah angel is a painfully relatable being. theres something so utterly depressing seeing it having to lean into the abuse and lack of worth. drifting between people trying to find a place to call a home. but if i were to mirror it to my own experiences & values and how i often wish to relinquish all control for someone else to handle it.. well. maybe thats just one of the many reasons why im reading a story like this in the first place and finding it so incredibly compelling and erotic

i dont even know if to call angel 'it' or not. i think angel deserves to be called a good girl. and give her a good beating but like in a loving way. this is toxic yuri at its finest.

two hours well spent im going to be thinking about this for a long time and that isnt even accounting for me scavenging for all these insane renpy visual effects you have managed to pull off. well done and thanks for making this

I'm really picky about both yuri and VN, so I was pleasantly indulged by "Heatwave". The characters are interesting, and the text has a way of gripping you and keeping you captivated the whole way through.

10/10 would recommend toxic yuri