just reread this for the 3rd (or more?) time. really good. i still can't read that last stretch in one sitting. i don't how how explain how heatwave rewired me.

i think my first comment was passed on to you but i don't think it's sufficient. i don't know how to write a comment that would be sufficient here. i'm going to try and at least get across some of the shrimp emotions i felt reading this. i finished it today, after three sessions of reading and saving and "i can't afford to be awake another five hours." the 20k word notice didn't register or parse. heatwave feels at all times like a biopsy excised from a larger body, a single "house" cut out from an endless unfurling growth of a neighborhood, a vertical slice where the fibrous vessels at each end still hint at what they might have connected to. i was surprised when it ended; i had already daydreamed what that grander narrative might be, created my own maps of how del and angel might move forward, calculated probabilities of survival in each. no way to test them. i can only follow them in my mind. roadside picnic's genes are strong. very strong. angel grows in the spaces where i first saw monkey and wondered about a world for [i]her[/i], the sort of world that would create her, a zone she was perfectly suited for. but heatwave is obviously its own existence, so much crueler than the intrigue of the zone because we intuitively understand its cause and existence. a system built on picturesque facades and self-replication and consumption and leaving absolutely nothing behind. capitalism and catholicism and The Perfect Existence with utterly empty interiors. a neighborhood spiralling forever, always open to buy, fake flowers and books that don't open and display beds with sheets that have never been used. of course it's the faggots and the trannies and the hysterics that see the way out. it is communicating it to them. [b]you have no place here.[/b] a person that cannot contribute to the capitalist machine is not a human at all, not anymore. you write psychosis-derealization-engrammatic flare the way i have dreamed since i first understood what it was i was feeling. a single synaesthetic flare. the last moment when a fist has not yet made impact, let distance from knuckle to skin be epsilon, and the precise picosecond after. there is a sick envy in me. the words are beautiful. you have made disorder beautiful. and it's not just the words! the text, the editing, the cuts, the [i]user interface[/i], god, the ui! half of my read was spent messaging birdwrongs in an utter fury, punching through virtual drywall and hollering about things i had never thought of doing in ren'py. you've made me want to go back and rewrite everything i've ever touched. you've made me want to write more, loud and unwell and toxic and full of love. anyway it's the hottest VN i've ever read and it's not close. brb downloading everything you've written and shoving it into my eyes and mouth like i can absorb it

first visual novel i've read from you; i'm coming over from the recently-finished toxic yuri VN jam after being unsatisfied with the levels of toxicity present. you have a keen sense for non-sequitur psychosis-pattern-matching prose and fortunately/unfortunately an equally keen sense for desperate misery. eminently readable the whole way through. great use of the medium, i was especially fond of the narration back-and-forth jumping w/ accompanying cues in the final scene. title cards, borders, and sidebar sprites (something i haven't seen before -- i quite like it! i'm often tired of the bouncy PNGtuber ren'py default) were charming and fun. excellent work to speak on the actual narrative content of the vn: Good lord. Five stars

That was some of the most fucked up shit I have ever seen in my life. 10/10

That was an invigorating read from start to finish. It reminded me of a time when I was bouncing around narrative possibilities where captial and the backrooms intersect. Obviously it's more complex than that, like the parallel between Del and the Heatwave. They intersect with this image of fractured domesticity and Angel's obligation and seemingly intrinsic know-how for navigating them safely.

i have GOT to get my dick chopped off

I have to say I don't think I'm good enough with words to really articulate what I liked about this but I loved it. I've been thinking about it for 2 months. I hope you like the art makes up, at least

I've been reading a lot of visual novels lately, and this is easily one of the most intense games that I've ever played period. Your prose is amazing, and I really loved the entire concept of the world and of the heatwaves. The characters made me uncomfortable in ways that I can barely even articulate, but at the same time I also related to them a lot. I feel like I stared into this game and it stared right back at me and I saw my fucking reflection. You're an amazing artist. I may have more thoughts later, but for now I just want to curl up into a ball and lay down.

thank you for a wonderfully painful read! your ability to make the narration change in tone and style to fit each of your characters is truly masterful. would love to read more by you!

Truly a work of art. As someone who is just getting into RenPy myself, what you have accomplished here is astonishing. You have taken RenPy and made it a vessel for HEATWAVE, made it perform in exactly the right ways. Honestly, the technical components of the game alone are inspiring. The prose and story of HEATWAVE make it a work of art anew, something special about something broken. Thank you for bringing to us a story that will stick to the minds of all that encounter it. HEATWAVE hurts in all the right ways.

This was an amazing read! This might be the most well-written thing I've ever read. Phenomenally poetic in cadence and word-choice. I had to stop frequently just to digest what I was reading because there is so much meat to it. The art and style and presentation were so good, and augments everything perfectly. I'm going to be thinking about this for a while. Instant addition to the list of VNs that have altered my brain chemistry.

This work was not made for me. I thought it was something different, and it turned out to not be that. I am not, however, calling this misleading or bad because it does not work for me. Even if it not what I wished for, I understand that your courage and artistic method. It is clearly something that deserves praise, due to the people who have resonated with this work for the same reasons I am unable to understand it. I may not be able to comprehend this prose, and the way everyone treats Angel makes me feel very angry, but I understand that this is not an unintentional flaw, it is the point. However, the one thing that I was able to understand was the moment when Angel starts laughing. That, I believe, is the only scene where I felt at peace. When Angel laughs and begs for more, that is when Angel is powerful. It was very cathartic. I write this not to center my opinion on your work as important, but to express how your art works on someone who is unable to understand. I thought it might be interesting for you. It would be for me, at least. I apologize if this review comes off as self-centered. This is exemplary work, even if I am unable to conceptualize it. -Calcarina

I don't usually consume works with some of these content warnings but this really pulled me in. When Angel said Yes Sir I was so taken aback by what a type of person I am dealing with here that I had to take a break and curse at her for a few minutes for being so stupid. I think I hate both characters more than I like them, especially Del, but I mean it in complimenting way of how an artist can manage to ewoke such emotions out of me The character art is great too and a good chunk of why these 2, theri relationship, is so gripping and pulled me along. I would read a continuation of this but for now I rest on it and let my mind work out all my feelings.

Horrifying. Gorgeous. Sickening. Delicious. Being forced to inhabit the perspectives of the broken and those who do the breaking (as though some ppl ever have a choice but to do the latter). some of the most scintillating, poetic wordcraft i've ever seen in the medium, all to bring terror and pain and violation to life. SPOILERS ironically the more visceral scenes at the end weren't as terrifying as simply the earlier moments of building dread and simply inhabiting Angel's fragmented, bleeding mental landscape. I can't say I've even come close to experiencing the breadth of trauma that Angel has, but the depictions of dissociation, marinating in anxiety, neurodivergent overstimulation, shame, fawning, impaired communication and disordered thinking and the sheer scrutiny of existing as a visibly vulnerable mentally ill entity proved to be claustrophobic and overwhelming and relateable in the bestworst possible ways. the implicit violence coming into fruition almost felt like cathartic relief by comparison. Emotional claustrophobia like a trash compacter. Incredible story. Eager to inflict it on others.

i feel physically ill (complimentary) This isn't a game; it's a throbbing, aching hot mess of quivering raw nerves of bloated layers of alienations of inviolable microaggressions cross-dressing as pixels, as brutal pixelated abstraction. Impossibly flesh and bones. The glaring vividness—not just oppressively fetishistic lurid but exquisitely scorching—of it's prose made me feel like some brain snotting of decomposing whales (whale-falls) unspooled in a whirlpool of vertiginous precision; moments of esoteric cringing being homoerotically dissected like frog on a cold slab, (however dauntingly-infinitesimal or acute). It hadn't simply told me a story—it pressed itself into my skin, rubbing into the coy crevices of a Gaping I don't remember getting. Effluvia hot. Sticky wet. (It’s hot, sticky, and wet in ways that transcend physicality. The heat is emotional; the wetness, psychological.) It’s as if someone built an almost-home: (like an uncertain sense of newskin) in some single semi-accessible point in my[?] Bodysomewhere and then set it on fire. Ah, but then there were othertimes too where it feels like screen just bleeds and bleeds clumsy with almost-endearing unwieldy gravity: (again, shuddering like an uncertain sense of skin; with barely-sensations tucked just beneath the feebly skin of biopsychosocial sensations, impossible to scratch). And I'm just there to mop it up. Somehow both disarmingly intimate and violently impersonal. It doesn’t want to entertain you—it wants to strip you bare and leave you gasping. I'd say wtf, but also well done. nhhnhnhg/10