fairy chess.

This was very lovely, but I feel as though I was not smart enough to understand this...I'll have to eat some 'fairy fruit' and then replay it

This was such an interesting game! I really agree with both everyone I've seen online and what it says in the devlog about this feeling like a movie! I think Algie and Panz's designs play off of Katurian's really well, and all of the designs are just slightly off putting enough to give them a very eerie feeling (even the fairies). I love all the different media used, and I'm a huge sucker for second person POVs, so I loved that! Really excellent use of scale and sound, and that ending was terrifying! Thank you for sharing - truly, a unique experience of a visual novel!

felt a primal need to relisten to the rite of spring after this. a while ago a friend showed me a recording by the Minnesota Orchestra, conducted by Antal Doráti. it's the fastest version i've ever heard, i'd recommend it heartily.
anyways, good stuff! was fun thinking through the rules, realizing fair play would require a third party adjudicating, realizing what could be done in the absence of such an adjudicator, seeing it coming. nice work

easily my favorite so far. i hope you freaking win.

the gruesome flowery writing in the chess got me good, every elaborate prose choice was building something. actually pulled me in more than the stuff before.

you dug into the gorror ideas really thoroughly, rly good how we felt fairy's living reaction to things. yummy yummy sense of her intense sensations nonstop. the surreal way big things look to her, awesome.

cheering at the team-up... cathartic...

ending kinda missed for me. does all that stuff rly happen? not sure it feels satisfying if it does... but it feels more like a desperate hope before she gets splattered...

I really enjoyed reading this! Panz's chess piece design is absolutely bonkers... honestly the art design works so well. I love reading Katurian and Algie's dynamic. The mounting horror is so interesting because whenever you get a little, there's a little more waiting to sucker punch you just after. The whole fairy research setup is really interesting as a backdrop, it lends Katurian reality that I think would have been easy to jump over. Basically, really good job!

Holy shit that ending got me good. Another comment already mentioned it but this didn't feel like a VN but rather an intense film. The art is absolutely stunning Bluzo you fucking killed it. The UI is gorgeous as well, and to compliment the programming I feel that the scene transitions, or pacing(?), enhances the feeling of Fairy Chess being a movie. 

The prose was intense and complicated. Despite my love of reading and big words, even I had to open up the Dictionary for some of the story lol. I'm not well-versed in chess (outside of like, Fire Emblem if that counts), but the way Algie's & Panz's emotions were described, as well as the stakes the game had for them both made the whole scene feel incredibly tense. 

(Spoilers)

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I love the sense of catharsis in that despite how much Katurian infantilizes the fairies, her underestimating Algie's resolve is what did her in.

 Again, I said it at the start but the ending hit like a punch. I was genuinely shocked. This was amazing to read, I loved it.

Fairy Chess will make you feel like you're a specimen being prodded and observed. The medical diagram style art and research paper opening perfectly sets up the disconnect between the game's two characters, and it only gets more intense from there. The prose is flowery and complex in a way that made me feel disoriented, or like I wasn't smart enough for this game, only to realize I was feeling exactly like its protagonist: playing a game where I didn't fully understand the rules because I needed to know what would happen at the end. And that end was one of the most wild and incredible scenes I've ever seen depicted in a game.

Difficult to find words to say on this one that haven't already been said but in a word: Electric. The beginning where it was mostly just imbalanced back and forth was gripping on the sheer sense of.. affective scale? Something I feel like not a lot of fairy stories play with enough is the sheer sensory experience of being That Small and how that amplifies the fear at play here, which I think this handled very deftly. 

Then of course there's the game. 

I'm not that good a chess player and the way that this game unfolds is.. a live wire. I found myself compelled to do 'the gamer lean' almost purely by the prose itself coming alive on the page. The mechanics of the rules and the amount of data expansion in the shift from what feels like Side A and Side B of this project is something else. That aforementioned energy of a more physical sensory experience is fully converted and supercharged into a cerebral one, perfectly honed in on the observing, processing and deciding all at once. A kind of shell-shock even starts to set in. The palpable overwhelm, the deeper understanding of what's at stake-- Pure, raw information expressed on page and experienced by a character voice that has never had to think this hard in her tiny life. I had to remind myself to breathe by the time the ending arrived, as though I were docking into the station at the end of a roller coaster.

On the note of that metaphor, my one sadness is how the ending just kind of drops down and grabs you. I almost feel like it needed just a little more time to fully set up? Of course that could just be a desire for more of the thrill or letting myself get so caught up in the whiplash of the ride that I couldn't see the end arriving. Either way, thank you for this! 

genuinely incredible. the visual presentation for the intro, the games, and the final lines blew me away, and the writing in general is fantastic. i can't stop thinking about the chess game.

oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh. oh wow. i don't think i can properly find words for this one. i cried tears of relief at the end.

tried to describe this one to my husband a few days after playing it now, effortlessly came out as 

1. it was cool medical eroguro taxidermy shit
2. it was scrummy

i had fun thank you also here is my drwaing again for you

holy moly 

very good, very intense 

Oh this is an all timer. Excruciatingly gorgeous in every detail. The prose is completely unhinged (restrained limpidity who now?) but often to great effect in its expression of a dazzling, ornate, but myopic fairy mind. And Katurian...god I love my horrible deranged sadistic giant mom and she deserves whatever she gets.

gorgeous game that keeps surprising you!! thank you so much, i had an amazing time with fairy chess <3

(a bit of a SPOILER BELOW)

loved the nifty way of labeling dialogue lines/choices with chess pieces to add Character: childish and submissive pawnspeak, insightful bishopspeak, blunt rookspeak, etc. mwah 🤌

I adore the visual style here, but I really admire your writing! Your prose is seriously amazing. Great dialogue too, Katurian has so many good lines. Loved the ending too, startled me a bit! 

instant classic. the 1-2-3 combo of unconventional narrative device, chess puzzles, and butterflies fairies could have fooled me into believing this was pulled from some unknown corner of the nabokov archives, and what a stellar execution of the visuals and music to match. 

katurian is just incredible ("to make me look scaaaaary!") and algie was the perfect intermediary to bring my actual reactions into the story (the scene where she first sees panz felt like it was pulled straight from the lizard part of my brain at the exact moment i experienced it). 

cinema cinema cinema. as someone who likes chess and loves scary mad scientist types this was immensely enjoyable. from the first moments of its academic collage (really well done worldbuilding) and animation introduction to its unforgettable ending the presentation was masterfully gorgeous such playful and elegant creativity. thrilled i got to experience such a unique story through such unique expression of what the vn medium can do thank you

WOW!!!!!!!!! WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! going into it i knew it would be good, just because the team is stacked and the previews are stunning. but WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i was blown away!!! i am blown away!!!!!!! 

it hardly felt like playing a vn but rather watching and participating in a film, from the changing expressions and overlapping of images, the movement of the chess pieces and the commands you click, this is what the ren faire is SUPPOSED to feel like!!!!!! world building, discovery, exhilaration, horror, yes!!!!!!!!!!! so beautiful to read and to look at, the ending screen just oozes with style and will be haunting me for a long time. 

id like to come back to make a more useful and thoughtful comment but at this point im just high on getting to play it uninterrupted. i hope you are all deeply proud of making such an absolute banger.

now THAT'S what I call gaming

yeah, this was really fucking phenomenal. i had high expectations for you three and this still blew me away. 

prose and audio-visual aesthetics come together so incredibly well - i cant really talk about say the fascinating academic writing in the intro without mentioning the pictures you curated alongside it, for instance. it's all masterfully interwoven. love the worldbuilding here too, at that.

the prose is beautiful as it is challenging, the latter fact being a big draw for me. i cant remember the last time i needed to use an english dictionary while reading a vn, if ever lol and it was a blast to look terms up as i read (or try to piece them together from my year of latin in freshman year of college lol). the art complements the writing incredibly well and conveys emotions such as humor, fear, or Wow Katurian Sure Is Hot with not just style but also great use of perspective and paneling.

banger.

i really enjoyed the way this was presented. at times it felt almost like flipping through an actual book, i can't say i've ever seen anything else evoke that feeling. :> the little textures were all so fun to look at, i'm especially obsessed with the book scans at the start

i reallllyyy adored katurian and thought her relationship with algie was just so great, cute in a terrible way...

this was so FUCKING scrumptious...its impossible for yall to miss i think! everything about this was truly so good idk what else to say rn but 10/10 truly

-that is an INTRO. what a hook!! the visuals married with everything is stunning

-i love the push / pull throughout the whole piece while still having a very obvious power imbalance. such fun and playful banter!! and the chess to give the illusion of being on more equal footing… so cool

-i can taste all the words in my mouth in the chess part. really yummy prose and the music felt like it had just as much bravado.

i'll be thinking about this one for a long time, really inspiring to get weirder w/ renpy

holy fuck????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

10/10 no notes

so incredibly tasteful and different and literary while staying indulgent and campy!!

SPOILERS

the prose completely blew me away, it carried me through the chess sequence on vibes alone, though I’m sure I’d enjoy it even more if I knew chess better. the way the bond between Panz and Algie developed in parallel with Algie’s awareness of reality is beautiful, I loved how play and interpersonal connection are presented as something so intertwined and growth-inducing and simply satisfying. I think it represents the game’s balance of indulgence and intelligence very well. Katurian seeks this indulgence-intelligence too but in the opposite way, a chessboard mirror way.

it was all so cinematic and dynamic and unpredictable and fun. fun the way seeing your first movie is fun when you’re a child. the soundtrack choice is perfect and creates a very unique and immersive atmosphere along with all the collages and inventive (and very aesthetically pleasing) UI. the ending………… it felt absolute, a total declaration, a victory of bringing your mind back from the forced dumbness, an innocence lost, an agency gained. so gorgeous, the text appearing, the composition, the art, the sound. it felt like seeing someone eating the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and then saying a huge fuck you to god and taking revenge on them by making them go through all the mortal suffering. it also felt more “fairy” than any other modern piece of fairy-related art I’ve seen in a while.

also…. all the powerplay was, indeed, hot 😭

thank you for such a great game!

I’m not sure what to even say except the infantilizing dynamic is so fascinating, the way the game introduces itself through a collage of materials on fairy is clever, and the chess variant(?) is an interesting way to tell the story. Great art and writing. I really loved it.

love love LOVE the art. both of their character designs are just so neat... and i love baby fairy's dialogue. really a baby who's trying to understand this big unknowable giant! i dont know much about chess so the chess sequence went a little over my head but thats on me for not being a chesshead. very enjoyable experience, thank you!!!!!!!

I really enjoyed this work.

SPOILERS

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The earlier parts of the game are darkly hilarious (I love the dynamic between Katurian and our fairy protag), and the presentation is top-notch. Gonna be taking notes from this one for my own reference, especially that ending, wow. (And also... a happy ending for a VN in this jam?! That did throw me for a loop, in a good way.)

Since you asked for honest critique, I think the one thing that made me feel less connected to the visual novel was the chess scene. I'm sure chessheads would get a kick out of it, but for me (someone who isn't), I couldn't really navigate what was going on, the significance of the moves being played, et cetera, et cetera. That said, the presentation of that segment was my favorite in the game (seeing the characters emotions through the board was awesome), and I loved watching the two fairies work together... Really good stuff. 

Anyways. Me when I approach my cats:

Absolutely delightful! Really, my only complaint is that there wasn't more!

there are times where im enjoying a game so much i wish it were in 500 other mediums to consume it all over again and then i remember to be grateful to consume it once. and that definitely happened to me during this read. i ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT. i am not sure if i am supposed to want to be this womans little baby fairy after this, but i do love that big lady (baddie alert!!), and i kind of would like to be her fairy! really love all the thoughtful details on how big of a size difference there is between these two. and god. THAT CHESS GAME. THAT WAS AMAZING. honestly all of this was amazing. i loved every bit of it. one of my favorite things i think ive ever played. soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo soooooooooooooooooo soooooooooooooo good 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000000/10

omfg this game just oozes with style. visually stunning. from the presentation alone, i knew i was in for a treat.

every aspect of this game's UI, CGs, screen effects, etc are in harmony. i love that the building complexity of the UI mirrors our protagonist's developing mind. it also kept me on my toes - at no point in this story did i have any idea what i would see or read next. it was awesome.

i was surprised by how often i laughed with the script! the first half is such campy, horrific fun, it really felt like a sister game to honeydew complex. the build-up to genuine horror was very deserved, and the ending had me cheering out loud. 

katurian was a consistent delight. when i got the first full-body cg of her outfit i was like girl, what the hell is that, i love you.

i'm going to remember this game for a very, very long time. you folks ought to be proud of yourselves. fantastic work!!!

god i just want to cry. everything about this -- presentation, story, sound, is so potent. i felt like i was playing pretend in my grandmother's garden, in the gauzy timelessness of childhood, and then slowly, forcibly, growing up. 

the fairy's physical helplessness felt so perfectly emphasized, too small and clumsy to escape, even with wings. it's so easy for a person to kill a bug. it felt like it would be just as easy for Katurian to fulfill her promise to squeeze the fairy "until she popped".  as a reader i was never not aware of the fairy's complete vulnerability. 

i really, really loved the end, because (evil reasons), but also because it felt so unexpected yet still so completely earned. the visuals sell it just as much as the prose. fuck the rules, there are other ways to win.

I FREAKING LOVE LOBOTOMY FAIRY CHESS YURI!!!! 

I'm genuinely super impressed by this, I played with my partner and we both gasped multiple times throughout. The writing was so raw (positive) and the visuals were executed in such a unique and thematically perfect way. Also the fairy's expressions and booboo eyes were so endearing kyaa love her ><

Holy COW. This is such an original story, told in an incredibly polished, cinematic, and gripping way. 

Every single scene is so full of cool visuals (the paper in the beginning... the photobashing...the beginning comic-like scenes...the chess sequence...the ENDING...) and the music and sfx did a really good job pulling me into the story. Also I love the designs of all the fairies and katurian's scary face

Lastly, I REALLY like the prose. It felt rich and poetic and rewarding to untangle 

I have never read a story like this and I am so glad it exists :^) 

another ebicon banger. 

presentationally as remarkable and effective as always. the power dynamic was fascinating, and it really put me behind the wings of the protagonist. the chess game as a metaphor for this sort of lop-sided relationship -- limited knowledge, only finding out through mistakes and memorization, trauma and pain, addicted to the game, win or lose, like navigating a minefield -- works superbly well, I thought.

perhaps a tad overwrought at times? particularly considering the pov of a newborn fairy. in its more straightforward moment was when i felt the most connected.

would love to see a continuation or expansion, as the ending felt a tad sudden! but that's me being a greedy little thing. overall, how cool, how thrilling, it is to see things like this. 

a great short ero/gore/horror story wrapped up in some incredible presentation. very "cinematography" forward for a gamejam VN, to the point that it made me rethink some of my preconceived notions of what renpy is capable of doing. some of those visuals (that opening! that final screen! the framing on the just-limited-enough sprites!) will stick with me for a while.

the writing did err on opaque at times; it felt like some of the conversations between the baby fairy and panz could have been filled in a little more. the ending, for as much as i liked it, did come and go in a hurry and left me with a "...aw, it's over already?" feeling. but, i suppose i'd much rather that my intelligence be respected to "figure it out" or "fill in the blanks" than to read something overexplained. maybe i'm just no smarter than a fairy...

i could read a lot more of it, is what i'm saying! a great experience.

haunting and beautiful, will be thinking about this for days to come