This game was recommended to me by a fellow girlie on Matrix…and holy shit did I underestimate it 😭

This game takes place in 1999. You play as a teenage trans girl, Alex, who has yet to realize herself. The story mostly progresses through “DM-style” chats with 4 (really 5) other characters.

I must say…this game surprised me in the most pleasant way. For 4$ on Steam, I wasn’t expecting that much…oh boy was I wrong 😆

The story is simply amazing. The journey of self-discovery on the early internet…imo, it was extremely well done.
I really liked the visuals too. The game takes place in a fictional operating system, SanctuaryOS. And I must say…even though I haven’t experienced that side of the early internet (I was born in 2006), I felt nostalgic myself. The whole game’s vibe just seemed strangely fitting to me…

This game hit me right in the feels (it’ll probably do the same to you 😆). It made me cry…multiple times, in a good way lol. I recommend this game so freaking much, omgg.
It’s not too long either, about 4 hours, and for the price…I’m thinking of buying it again on Itch.io, just to support the developer. She did an outstanding job! ❤️

Seriously, if you didn’t know about this game before (it is a bit niche…), go check it out! I can’t recommend it enough.
Steam link

Thank you, Victoria Dominowski, for making such a masterpiece of a game 💜

And to all of you girlies, everyone who’s questioning, searching for or has already found themselves…don’t worry. You’ll figure it out. Because you’re all amazing 🩷

Gameplay spoilers

God, the terminal section was difficult tho! I feel so stupid now that I know what to do…I totally knew the password, just screwed up the case-sensitivity 😭

Also, the file on my desktop…that took me a while to find. That really doesn’t reflect well on my problem-solving skills 😂

Was still really fun tho. Enjoyed every moment 🩷

  • MystValkyrie ( MystValkyrie@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) English
    9·
    27 days ago

    Secret Little Haven has been sitting in my library unplayed for way too long. It kind of reminds me of Emily Is Away. I totally get what you mean about feeling nostalgic toward '90s and Y2K stuff despite never having lived it. I was technically born in the '90s, just way too late to remember most things.

    The Speak From the Abyss is another trans-themed game that I’ve been looking forward to, but it’s been in development for a few years now and I really hope it actually comes out, because it’s extremely up my alley.

  • Lily ( Shirow@lemmy.zip ) English
    4·
    27 days ago

    Now I have to check his out :3

    I am technically still a millennial (barely) so that will be nostalgic. I mostly lived with second hand game/consoles so… Yeah.

    Emily is away was a going back in time a little. I remember MSN, MySpace even though I never bothered. Blogs when that was a thing. I had internet access really late in 2005.

    Sometimes I wish I knew sooner that I was trans but at the same time what would have been the outcome before… because of the bigger struggle / transphobia and health specialist would probably even worse and would still label this as a mental illness.

  • Cass ( Cass@piefed.blahaj.zone ) English
    1·
    27 days ago

    This feels like a funny way for my Steam friends to find out I’m trans 😁 (not a huuge concern tbh). Seems like it could be right up my alley though, thanks!

  • Linda R ( Lehmuusa@nord.pub ) English
    1·
    27 days ago

    Looks like a nice game. Definitely gotta give it a try someday. Thanks!

    (Why does the chat program look that much like something from after 2010, though? It should look more like ICQ! No speech bubbles, no user icons. Just line after line, with a serif font. And each line beginning with the nickname of the person who wrote it. Plus, each person gets their lines written in a different colour. MSN Messenger and AIM both looked about that way as well!)

      • Linda R ( Lehmuusa@nord.pub ) English
        2·
        26 days ago

        Don’t worry :)

        Anyway, in case you’re curious how instant messaging looked like back in 1999… While I did find screenshots of later versions of ICQ, I could not find a good screenshot of how ICQ looked when it was the instant messaging program, back then (or at least around 1996), but AIM had much of its looks copied from ICQ and therefore looked similar. So, here goes AIM from around 1999 or so:

        I find it funny that they always had that much space reserved for writing the text, although screen resolutions were only a third or a quarter of what they are these days!

        EDIT: Oh, here’s an ICQ chat window from around year 2000. Looks similar to how I remember it from some five years before that. So:

        image

        EDIT2: Damn how stupid that UI design is, seriously! They are wasting huge amounts of screen space for some completely irrelevant stuff. “Enter message”?! It’s an IM app. What the hell would the text field be there for if not for entering the message? Also, the modern idea of putting the “send” button in the right side of the textbox is a really good one. Et cetera. But, back then nobody had really experienced anything better, so they didn’t really know to demand quality. But, looking from the present day, that design is just absolutely moronic. It’s interesting what you can be blind to when you don’t know of anything better!

        EDIT3: And of course: “ICQ” is short for “I seek you”. The program was made with a rather rosy idea that the Internet will now bring all people together in harmony and that a communication medium for that was needed. Therefore, it had an internal “telephone catalogue” where you could find all other ICQ users and chat with them. I was living as male back then but had a name ending with the letter “a”, resulting in a constant barrage of “Hey girl, would you like to chat?” messages because people would just look for assumed females and hope to marry someone from the west.