Secret Little Haven

sailor moon is aw;esome please give me access to hrt

Few games have made me go from adoration, to panic, to fear, to hopefulness as strongly as this. I think this is a game that will only work for you if you are transfeminine or a trans woman though, otherwise the emotional impact will not be nearly as strong, and you'll kind of... miss the point.
I still have the "John's Password" .txt on my desktop as a reminder to keep going, and it will get better.

This is such a convincing depiction of confused teens & young adults trying to figure themselves out that it feels... viscerally real at times. Sitting there, biting your nails waiting for them to finish typing. Holding two conversations simultaneously, waiting for the drama from the first conversation to spill over into the second conversation. Trying to convince your parents that yes, the people you've met online are genuine friends and no, you're not giving out the family address. I've never been too involved in fandom spaces and have never written fanfic in my life, but I held my breath as Alex was waiting for feedback on hers.

Admittedly, a large part of this is presentation - the dialogue choices are mostly there to give you your choice of emote flair on a preset message and thus aren't really significant choices, save for a few occasions. The narrative can be a little clunky and for people who didn't spend time on the internet pre-2008 I imagine the writing could come off as too "quirky", but it's such an emotionally honest game that I'm willing to forgive an occasional plot contrivance. I may be lucky enough to feel like I was assigned the right gender when I was born, but it doesn't mean that this story is at all unfamiliar - my friends and I too caught up in our own heads, fucking up in our efforts to be there for a friend while wanting to vent our own thoughts. And it's because I remember the experience that the presentation does so much to sell the story here - when I was this age I was also staring at some austere chat client, trying to figure out how to respond to a dear friend when literally all I can come up with is a crude translation of my teenage brain just fucking screaming.

Recommended for anyone who spent their formative years on Yahoo Messenger.