this is really something special~ so sweet, and so sad. made me think of growin up in a small town, the ways we just existed, all sad and queer and neurodivergent and struggling, just being comfortably uncomfortable with one another in a world made so hostile. dreaming, seeing the beauty in the muck and the death and the nothingness, at least when we could see outside the nothingness. refusing to be sucked into the mire but not knowing how to get out of the swamp.

there's a certain rawness, a violence, underneath the sweetness of these two lovers and their story. it's ugly, and its unforgiving, and it seems so real.

while i don't appreciate the cpl instances of ableist slurs and whorephobic observations (edit: of the characters), the intensity of this story feels honest. even the ways the two perceive and relate to each other, with all its highly problematic elements, just seems so real to me in a way that was refreshing and painful to experience.

this game gives you a lot of space to sit in the feelings, to be soothed by the music and lean into the discomfort, to sway with the dance of acceptance & rejection of the grime and the broken dreams and the ways in which we are ourselves, and the ways in which we are each other, and the moments that can exist if we just breathe with them.

This is a visual novel that is going to appeal to a very specific person and I am that specific sort of person. The prose is really beautiful and surreal. But it is also constantly switching tenses in a way that's quite jarring and makes the writing feel unpolished. Which in turn makes it hard for me to fully fall in love with the story as I was pretty frustrated over the constant tense switching since it doesn't really feel intentional to me, it just feels unedited. Also, I wish the text outline was thicker, as it was pretty hard to read sometimes against the backgrounds. Sort of feel like the ending came out of nowhere too.

But it's free and short and worth checking out if you like kinetic novels and stories about growing up in dead-end suburbia, loneliness, love in loneliness, the drippy sort of anesthetic bleakness that that kind of life offers you, and meat. The music is really nice too.

Me ha sorprendido un montón. Vi una reseña del juego por esta página y me sorprendió su francamente apabullante recepción positiva aun siendo una obra tan pequeña. Tras probarlo, realmente entiendo cómo esta obra es capaz de tocar TAN profundo.

Hacía tiempo que no veía una obra con un estilo visual y un tono tan personal que me conseguía atrapar de esta manera. No soy necesariamente el público objetivo de esta obra, pero la calidad de la prosa es innegable y su excelente apartado visual consigue que todos los momentos por los que pasan Fitcher y Finch golpeen aún más fuerte.

Chirk es una obra sobre el primer amor. Es un romance sereno entre adolescentes que se sienten extraviadas. Cada una en sus propias condiciones problemáticas, pero poco a poco conociendo más de cada una de ellas. Es un romance extraño pero sincero. Los pensamientos internos de nuestra protagonista nos abren una ventana ante una persona que no consigue conectar con el mundo de una manera que francamente me atrapa. A pesar de carecer de este ancla para la vida, consigue encontrar una razón de ser.

Quizás el formato en el que presenta tiene sus problemas. Visualmente es una obra personal impecable y su apartado sonoro también creo que es excelente, pero no me gusta que el texto sea blanco sobre blanco. Da un toque más "cutre" y "sucio" que pega con la obra, cierto, pero resulta complicado de leer en ocasiones. A su vez, entiendo que es parte del carisma visual de esta novela visual. Jugablemente realmente no tiene nada. Es una novela lineal sin interacción pero que usa el formato mínimo del click y del audio para encuadrar mejor los sentimientos que busca que sintamos. No le puedo culpar, creo que consigue a la perfección su propósito y meter más interacción sería entorpecer este cometido.

Si queréis una obra relativamente corta con la que sentaros de manera meditativa y conectar, esta es una de mis máximas recomendaciones. Si eres miembro de la comunidad LGBTQ+ o eres neurodivergente, creo que esta obra puede ser particularmente profunda para ti. Esta ha sido mi mayor sorpresa a nivel de juego en muchísimos años y espero que esta reseña os anime a darle un vistazo.

it's been awhile since i've experienced a piece of art capable of conveying the sublime heartache of finding that specific reason to keep on living, and one made in ren'py no less. sometimes all you need in a work is bespoke illustrations, prose that portrays the messiness of existence without any pretense, and a distinctly queer and neurodivergent perspective that's achingly familiar, all in a concise thematic package that doesn't waste anytime moralizing or patronizing the reader by textually assuring them that everything will be okay. not everything is something

"She questioned her own intentions. What if Finch was just as depraved? She viewed love as an absolute state of being."

some games you simply know will be special to you from the moment you lay eyes on them. i knew the second i opened this one up. before getting past the first chapter, i even put chirk down to return with a few hours to spare! i'm glad i did.

this visual novel tells a love story between two girls, each experiencing their own sorts of dissociation and loneliness. and, for all of its roughness (i have classic criticism on some of its questionable word choices, the text can be hard to read, a confusing menu, etc - also, an edit: a cw for pet abuse and ableist slurs, i may have missed more though), it is one of the most beautiful visual novels i have ever played through. it's pretty much exactly my thing, though. the music perfectly suits my taste, the black and white sketches atop black and white photos are absolutely lovely for a story immersed in hope and nostalgia, and there's something wholly compelling about its mundane yet poetic writing style. i also relate in very queer and autistic ways to its heavy story.

it's more resonant than many other pieces of fiction i've experienced, so much that i suspect it's not solely a personal resonance, one rooted in similarities with the main character and her struggles past and present (though, thankfully, mostly past), but that chirk has also tapped into a tiny sliver in the corner of the massive sprawl of cultural experiences, embodying a feeling of being suspended, forever waiting for the next thing. it made me feel connected across time and space to others i won't ever know

"When I look at people and things, sometimes it all just feels unreal. Maybe beautiful and I can't help but admire it."

completely, overwhelmingly ruinous. a portrayal of the deep tragedy inside years spent being an aimless, lonely child, wasting humid suburban summers inside endless places that have barely heard of the concept of love. one of the most intensely resonant pieces of art I've ever interacted with, and by far my favorite game of all time. i still can't look at a screenshot of it or listen to a song from the soundtrack without a tidal wave threatening to drown me again. it's the kind of thing that leaves you with so much feeling that you can't physically process it, it feels like you're rupturing at the seams, and yet you want to stay in that headspace forever.

i balk at summarizing it any more directly than i have; partly because talking about why i like it in detail would necessarily collapse some of the characters' ambiguity, something that i really enjoyed on my first playthrough, and partly because its itch.io description -
"Lovers in a city where they cremate the roadkill" -
communicates everything i'd want to say about it in a single sentence. know that the visual art is consistently incredible and the pure amount of it present here is inspiring, the prose is fine tuned to be as communicative as possible even when it trends abstract, and the music is fuzzy, spotty and a foundational pillar of the inexplicable mood of the game. nearly every character here, especially the central duo, is constructed with a disarming intricacy and beautiful humanity. finch is one of my favorite characters in all of fiction.

it's free and it's barely three hours long. please, please give it a shot. more people need to have seen this through.