I just finished this one a few minutes ago. It was… interesting.
I’m very new to these types of games/stories. This one appealed to me because it seemed very slice-of-life – no speculative fiction, takes place in the real world, focused on relationships, etc. Not that spec-fic, etc., is bad, but this one offers a nice variety against the rest of the options out there. I honestly got it because I thought it might be a good one to play at night, assuming that if I fell asleep and forgot bits, I wouldn’t be too out of the loop next time I picked it up. Call it “Choice of Ambien” 
But, as it turned out, I started reading it during the day quite a bit – when I was fully awake, no less! – so it must’ve been pretty engaging to me.
First off, it’s a love letter to the city of Boulder. You’ll get to know places, sights, scents, foods… there are sooooo many restaurant names. After a while, this gets a little overwhelming and doesn’t necessarily help me with the narrative. But the author definitely knows their stuff, and the Boulder Chamber of Commerce should hire them to do tourism brochures!
Even beyond just the heavy level of detail about the city, there’s an odd level of minutiae that doesn’t always seem to have much game impact. Several times, when you are at one of these (awesome-sounding) Boulder restaurants, you’re given 6+ choices of what to eat. Other times, when you’re at home, you’re given 6+ choices of what to wear. And frequently, with the clothing choices, they were all kind of “out there” – very distinct choices you’d wear to make a specific impression. There were relatively few “I’ll just dress normal” options. This felt a little off.
The game was super-ambitious. A 325,000-word interactive-fiction game that’s essentially “slice of life”? Very ambitious indeed! The way the ROs were handled helped with this feeling of ambitiousness. You had three choices (plus maybe your ex back home?), and you could date them in any order, and even date more than one of them at once from what I could tell. You could decide to break up with them, to keep the relationship focused on sex, etc. Though I only played through once, I made some assumptions that I could have made very different choices and had the structure play out very differently. I went from dating one RO to breaking up with them and having a sex-only relationship with a second RO and then kind of flirting with a third RO. It seems at least possible I could’ve made choices to be dating all three ROs at once. The structure alone to accomplish this level of variance seems impressive to me – though I’m very new to these types of games.
The flip side of that, though, is that there were some inconsistencies. Frequently, I’d think my relationship was fine, and the game would seem to indicate my relationship was fine… only to tell me a page later that it wasn’t fine. The game kept telling me it was perfectly fine to have a sex-only relationship, but then it would tell me I was worried about my relationship and why wasn’t I trying to advance it more? Similarly, near the end, out of the blue, the game kept telling me that I didn’t think I was fitting in well in the city of Boulder – which was news to me! I thought I was doing great, especially since the MC’s relationship with Boulder is arguably the most important relationship in the game (moreso than any of the ROs).
One drawback in a “slice of life” game is that we all have different slices in our lives, and you can only cover so many in one game. This game presumes your character is interested in fitness, new-age healing and social justice – those are not bad things to be interested in, but your character doesn’t really have a choice, and at times, the narration even comes off a little preachy. Like, “These are the three reasons you came to Boulder!” I realize that it’s not that different from a spec-fic game saying “These are the three reasons you must slay the vampire!” or “These are the three reasons you must join Starfleet!” But when you’re dealing with such real-world motivations, the lack of other real-world motivation options becomes more obvious.
There were also a few weird mysteries that did not get resolved. Not sure if this is just because of the choices I made or if they never get resolved in any playthrough. I’m thinking specifically of the person who keeps watching you in the opening chapters and the person who dumps recycling on your front door. Who are these people? Are they they same person? I have no idea!
I know that’s a lot of critiques I’m offering, but I was overall impressed with this from a structural/technical perspective. And the story itself, though it got too bogged down in the details sometimes, was fun and quirky and seems a nice balance to the heavy, sci-fi/fantasy/horror options out there.
