What a horrible thing to say. Mental health as is, especially depression, is already very demonized and misunderstood. People making a million bad games about negative streotypes about depression will only harm, not help and make it significally harder for them to get any sort of help. People who have these ideations and make these games about their own experiences usually do it in a respectful and carthodic way that does not harm anyone and these games barely get enough attention as is, so you pushing this mentality on other people and displaying it proudly on a creators page is actually very gross. You are pushing a very harmful viewpoint and if you cared about other peoples experiences and other fellow "mental healthers" you would not be saying this as it benefits no one but rather pushes them back into regressive and stigmatized corner. Shame on you. 

??? Why does it say your comment was posted 6 days ago, yet it's near the top?

To the point, people can write whatever they want, however they want. To a not so insigificant number of people, however, this game's use and representation of suicide, alongside the other oddities (namely the review thing), was especially nauseating to experience. I could see if there had only been one or two people in the comments claiming it wasn't written well, but people both suicidal themselves and those who have lost friends/loved ones to suicide have all largely espoused the same concerns and criticisms. Whatever her intentions, the author DID hurt people by not putting more thought, care, and even warnings into the game.

Topics like suicide, especially when the majority of your fanbase is so very obviously young, should absolutely be treated with care and respect. Mental health struggles are stigmatized and misunderstood too much as is to let writers utilize it however their awful plots please. There's not an "incorrect way to be suicidal" but the wrong application in any writing can be both incredibly insulting and upsetting to those who have actually suffered through it as well as furthering people's warped view of what they are going through.

Okay so, I had to literally physically go away and think before I came up with an answer because the leap in logic here is insane. 

Yes, actually. There is right and wrong ways to potray mental illness. Shocking, I know. This comment comes off as very tone deaf for someone who seemed to struggle with ideations for a long time. I'm not saying you don't feel that way, I just find it weird that your implying we should let people demonize and streotype stuff we've been trying to get away from for a long time and its actually especially harmful and damaging for you to say that and excuse shitty writing for a game. This is like saying Split is an accurate representation of DID and yes guys! we should let a person with no experience with DID and doesn't have it demonize said illness and actually misconstrude it and use it for shock value, this isn't harmful at ALL to people with DID and letting them get help! you see the issue? Use this with any mental illness and this is actually a very harmful mentality to have. Her behavior only proves this point because all shes done with the suicide and murder endings is laugh at her audience and mock them for being unable to save him. "Better give me 5k reviews or poor, sweet Zilas is gone forever." and use suicide and murder as shock value and a thing to hold over someones head rather then to educate and show how suicide effects people which she fails at miserably. What your failing to realize is that, yes, while this may be entirely possible this happens irl, fiction does not equal reality and fiction is its entirely own thing and implying that it has to represent irl issues you experienced is harmful. Not everyone has the same experience as you and saying this is a realistic potrayal to you boogles my mind.

In conclusion, its actually a lot more harmful to spearhead the idea that mental illness can't be done wrong and let poor writing through the cracks is a very fucking awful thought process as it perpetuates the idea that we shouldn't hold writers accountable for doing poor research and let them get away with continuing to do streotypes we've been trying to get away from for years. While you may not take offense to it, other people do and we can actually differeniate fiction from reality. Not even sure why I'm arguing with a pfpless person on itch tho, you guys never have good points and are probably just Jenny on an alt and will never respond to my counterpoint. Very sad.

actually it's because people on her comment show how problematic her and her game is

here proof btw https://x.com/cyberp0mme/status/1783290686831313345?s=46

Hello! i've read through your comment and i would just like to respond to clarify some things you might have misunderstood! (please correct me if im wrong though!)

1. the story 

yes, the story is a bit rushed since unlike other games this is a short visual novel game. it only takes 1 hour to complete all the endings unlike other visual novels that take days. i can understand your point of few with the mc talking in a way you dislike since some of the dialogue the mc says are quite forward, but lets not forget that this is a visual novel where the demographic (for this game at least) are interested in these sort of things. (if the dialogue seems too booktok then the demographic is probably for booktok)

i understand that at times it seems like we're a controlling partner but lets not forget that in the beginning of the game it's zilas that asks you for help, it's him who asks you to guide him to 1 million followers. and of course as the mc who's a more popular streamer, they're the ones who has the most knowledge with streaming (which is why in some dialogues the mc talks in depth about streaming). as for banning the mod its an understandable thing since it's not okay for a mod to say inapropriate things in streams even if you're close or not (as a mod its your job to monitor the chat and prevent anything that could make the streamer uncomfortable or to create an environment where the streamer will be uncomfortable. in the game the original mod often asks for zilas bra size which could create an environment where it would be normal for the fan base to sexualize him. and in game the only time we see the original mod actually ban someone is because the mc told them to) and mc explains this to zilas, why having a mod like this isn't okay in the long run whether or not zilas is fine with it.



2.the endings

the suicide ending is a shocker yet understanding like you said you like DDLC (me too!) but in the game you know whats going to happen because you've been warned of it. you've become aware of what sayori will do since she tells you she takes pills. but in reality people with depression or suicidal thoughts dont often warn people or tell people that they do, and often times you don't even know if someone is suicidal or not because they act "normal" there are all kinds of people in the world and they dont all act the same, like all people who have depression or suicidal tendencies they dont have the same problems or same backgrounds, everyone is different so just because zilas didnt act like he was "feeling bad" doesn't mean he wasn't it was a shocking ending because it was supposed to be.

for the reason of why he died its stupid yes but doesn't it just represent cancel culture? how he was cancelled for something taken out of context, for something that meant no harm. cancel culture often does this with cancelling people for unserious reasons out of context. and zilas was just unfortunately a victim of it, he tried to explain the truth yet despite that he still received massive amounts of hate, which can cause someone to go to the lengths zilas went. as for the homicide ending its been shown that it had something deeper going on, the mc didn't kill him with their own volition its been hinted that its because of something else thats been going on.(though i agree that they could've written a bit more detail about zilas inner thoughts and feelings to make the suicide ending not very random and a bit problematic).

as for the 5 K ratings its an unusual way to ask for ratings but this isn't the first time creators have made things like this (some mobile visual novel games also do these in exchange for good endings, although this doesn't necessarily count as manipulation, but i can see where you're getting it from!) this is most likely fraud (since the reviews wouldn't really be genuine since they only started rating the game for the good ending).if they asked for good ratings then it would count as manipulation, but they only asked for ratings in general. so whether or not the ratings are good or bad or just anything if it still hit the goal of 5k then we would still get an ending, manipulation is if someone controlled your emotional and mental state to achieve their own goals. which understandably seems like what this game dev is doing but what would the game dev achieve from 5 K mixed reviews? it would only confuse people who've looked at the reviews, they could gain popularity sure, but with the culture of visual novels doing similar things this isn't manipulation. if the game dev actively made you feel guilty for not giving the game a good rating for their benefit then that would be manipulation. and lets not forget, this is a fictional game, you've been warned that there will be suicide, homicide, flashing lights, jump scares, and animal gore.

"when do you think it's ok? You are using his death and his suicide as a way to get reviews and you think it's normal?"

hes fictional, he doesnt exist, its a controversial way to ask for ratings but you're making it seem like hes an actual human being. if the creator actually was advertising their game using someones death then that would be a completely different story. 

3.her fans and her 

the comments of her "mocking" her fans to me just seem like friendly banter, though i do understand your points of manipulation with the anonymity of the internet despite a game dev displaying their games to be 18+ minors can still infiltrate those places simply by adding an 18+ into their bio or other means so i do agree that it does count as manipulation if her fan base truly are minors. i dont think the game dev intended to make her fans look like fools it just seems like friendly banter to me (please correct me if im wrong here though!) her encouraging her fan base to rate the game to achieve a good ending is a thing some visual novel game devs do which isn't necessarily manipulation but again i can see your point of view. as for the unusual tweets she posts i don't see a problem in most of them, theyre just silly tweets showcasing her sense of humor, its not weird to joke about her own oc's and make silly little illustrations of them. now for the ED joke i think this one is heavily out of context, if this was a joke it would share the same humor as her "weird" posts, and to be frank that post just doesn't make any sense at all no matter how many times i read it. something is out of context and i dont think she meant it to be an ED joke (this is just speculation) 

"Let's talk about her fans cause they are also CRAZY. They encourage the hypersexualization of her characters, create fake accounts to make more reviews (which get obviously deleted) and are also encouraged by Jenny. They are also a bunch of creeps in general on itch.io or the discord server"

you can't exactly hate on the creator for their fans's actions, the creator cannot do anything about what anyone does. and i dont understand why you're upset about the hypersexualization of her characters, i understand that it can be negative but in your "1. the story in general" you wrote down how you viewed the mc banning the mod as "controlling" when the reason they were banned in the first place was because they were sexualizing zilas themselves. so im sorry but it seems like you're contradicting yourself here (again please do correct me if I misunderstood this part!) 

as for the creeps part, there are creeps everywhere and we can't really do anything about it but block them. whatever the fan does, does not reflect on the creator since they have no control over it.

(if there are any things i got wrong please correct me! i do not want to seem as someone spreading misinformation but after playing the game and reading this comment it just seemed like some misunderstandings happened here!!)