My Thoughts on the game "Clinical Trial": The Ultimate Mirror for the Utterly Lonely
I just finished Clinical Trial, a visual novel created by indie game developer homie, and to say I am "shattered" would be an understatement. It isn't just a game; it is a mirror—cold, sharp, and terrifyingly honest. Suppressed desires, inescapable loneliness, and the insane lengths people will go to grasp at a shred of warmth. Some see it as a tale of stalking and murder; I saw a tragic, visceral romance about how two broken people can become each other's only salvation.
The game begins as a mundane, almost clinical depiction of survival. We play as "Angel Martinez", a young individual artist drowning in a soul-crushing job, living with roommates who treat them like a ghost, and suspected of having ADHD, participates in an eight-week psychiatric drug trial for a $1,000 reward. Then there is Lee. A stoic, silent, and professional psychiatric nurse who worked in the clinic as a data collector.
With each weekly trial session, the story's layers peel away. From the outset, I was utterly immersed in author 's masterful recreation of gritty realism: the exploitative job, the apathetic roommates, the bureaucratic medical system, and the trauma of being violated by a coworker, Brandon. The game brims with tedious medical forms, obscure jargon, and a precise portrayal of ADHD's “perpetual brain fog.” Through Angel's eyes, I felt the chaos and helplessness of his existence, while initially trusting Lee. His focused discussions about that Fire Shrimp and his meticulous care for the clinic's fish tank made him seem like a kind-hearted soul, just not very articulate. When Angel's life plunged deeper into darkness due to his colleague Brandon's abuse, Lee's presence felt like a faint glimmer of light.
As Week 8 concluded and Act 2 began, Lee extended an invitation impossible to refuse: “Stay at my place tonight.” The atmosphere changes from clinical to devotional. Stepping into Lee's home felt like Angel and I had entered a sanctuary. Lee's meticulous care—providing clean clothes, cooking meals, watching documentaries together, "you do bed and i do couch", even awkwardly painting with Angel—was overwhelming. My defense completely crumled when Lee was mumbling about "We could... get a cat" almost inaudible. In that moment, I no longer saw a strange nurse, but a boy who had been alone his entire life, finally mustering the courage to dream of a home. I actually began to believe this man might truly save Angel.
The game’s portrayal of Lee’s repression is masterfully subtle as well. In one optional scene, when Angel jokingly invites him to share a bath, this man—of such imposing physical stature—stutters in a fit of clumsy, almost endearing propriety, muttering about how it would be “premarital”. He couldn't bring himself to cast a single glance at Angel the entire time. It was as if looking directly at his ‘Angel’ would be a sacrilege he wasn’t yet holy enough to commit. At this stage, Lee appears to be a slave to an internal script of moral purity, a gentle guardian whose only crime is being "too proper."
The game's turning point came later: when Angel accidentally discovered the secret room behind the bedroom wall—a shrine with her photos, stolen clothes, and even handmade dolls. Seeing the collection of stolen items and the meticulous tracking of Angel’s life, terror should have followed, yet all I felt was a devastating sense of being seen. In a world of 7 billion people, someone had finally deemed every trivial detail of Angel’s life—every shift at the bakery, every lost jacket—worthy of sanctification.
The horror, however, deepens as Angel confronts the reality of this obsession. Upon finding their lost jacket and demanding it back, the mask of the “pure guardian” finally slips. Lee’s desperate, panicked insistence on “washing it first” is a visceral punch to the gut. It isn’t the hospitality of a host; it is the frantic scrambling of a man trying to scrub away the "crusty white stains"—the physical evidence of his secret desecration. He is terrified for his "Angel" to see the reality of his repressed lust, a moment that turns his silent devotion into something far more stifling and macabre.
Yet even this is just the threshold. Following the dark hallway down into the basement, the true abyss is finally unmasked: The basement scene forces every piece of the puzzle into place: When Angel confided days earlier about being sexually assaulted by her colleague Brandon, Lee didn't offer cheap comfort or useless advice. He had already chosen action—the most extreme, violent action—to erase the man who hurt Angel from existence, permanently.
Immersed in his clumsy yet sincere care, I started actively ignoring the unsettling details that had already surfaced—like his obsession with Angel's jacket, or his ruthless disposal of “troublesome” creatures in the aquarium. From the opening scenes gives a real "naive hope" for a connection transcending the doctor-patient dynamic. But looking back, the clues were already there, homie buried the most lethal intent within the most mundane dialogue. Lee’s calm admission of ‘disposing’ of aggressive fish was a masterclass in narrative irony. What I took for simple tank maintenance was, in fact, a blueprint for murder. The same went for his collecting Angel's graffiti-covered flyers and his attention to her cat-hair jacket. It wasn't until the basement revelation late in the game that I jolted awake—that mundane statement was Lee's first warning of his violent tendencies. That fish tank was his ideal world: all “impurities” threatening his cherished possessions (the shrimp, i.e., the protagonist Angel) must be purged. Every metaphor in the game now reads like a key. The Jenny Haniver symbolized the “monstrous angel” misunderstood by society that cannot comprehend its nature in Lee's self-image. Even the fire shrimp were symbolic, representing Lee's silent acceptance of Angel’s gender non-conformity. In these early hours, the deadliest foreshadowing isn't actually hidden—it is simply, and terrifyingly, masked by the facade of the ordinary.
Reflecting on the narrative, I find homie’s characterization of Lee to be unnervingly, almost pathologically, precise. There exists a twisted yet perfectly self-consistent paradox here: Lee can calmly execute Brandon with a drill in the basement, acting as a god of cold-blooded vengeance; yet, he cannot bring himself to steal a single glance at Angel in the bathtub, behaving like a terrified devotee fearing he might desecrate his own deity. This morbid piety infuses their bond with a sense of religious tragedy: he would burn the world down for his "Holy Grail," yet he dares not touch it with his own hands. homie’s precision here is clinical; it makes me feel as though I am not just playing a game, but witnessing a visceral dissection of human repression and longing.
The game then narrows down to a single, non-moral question: Accept or Reject?
Such a plot should have instilled utter terror, yet strangely, my first reaction upon seeing the scene was: “He was willing to go this far for me, damn.” Faced with the binary choice, I chose "Accept" without a moment of hesitation, for I saw the motive behind his actions—protection. In that instant, Lee's deed ceased to be murder in my eyes, becoming instead an extreme, blood-soaked declaration of love. I willingly became his accomplice, burying the body together, fantasizing about starting anew somewhere unknown. For I understood Angel's feelings: It is better to be devoured by a monster who knows your name than to be ignored by a world that doesn't care if you live or die.
Yet when I finally pulled myself out of that sickening romance of “being absolutely needed” and revisited the “Reject” option I'd abandoned, I realised what a cruel logical loop homie had crafted here:
On the surface, "Reject" is the "right" thing to do. It is a stand for morality and autonomy. But as many have noted, the narrative punishes this choice with a bleak, abrupt silence. To reject Lee isn’t merely a boundary—it is a death sentence, it is to return to the life of "death by a thousand cuts," burdened by a guilt you didn't ask for, while the only person who ever truly prioritised you over anything ends their life in a corner. Lee has harbored a suicidal impulse since the age of nine; Angel was the first and only source of “oxygen” in his lifetime of drowning. To pull away is to effectively suffocate him.
"Accept" means a surrender to a codependent symbiosis. Lee’s act of murder isn't just a crime; it’s a "surgical removal" of Angel’s trauma. He didn't offer empty platitudes; he offered a blood-stained shield. For the chronically lonely, a "monster" who would burn the world to keep you warm is infinitely more precious than a "saint" who does nothing while you freeze.
This ending itself transcends ordinary game narratives. It feels less like a choice and more like a inevitable deadlock: For a soul driven to the edge, “doing the sensable thing” is a meaningless thing. ‘Morality’ is nothing more than the noose handed to us for our own suicide. It is only by choosing the ‘immoral’ embrace that a blood-stained rose can finally bloom from the cold concrete.
It left me with a lingering chill, the abrupt, unexplained conclusion after Reject is steeped in brutal realism. The final scene before Lee's suicide in Ending 1 pushes this despair to its absolute limit. He shows no anger, no aggression—only silently retreats to the corner of the room, curls up facing the wall, as if reverting to that 9-year-old boy abandoned by the world. He says: “I always felt safe standing in the corner. You can't get in more trouble if you're already there.” He spent his entire life trying to escape that corner through ‘excellence’ and “control,” but when his last hope shattered, he retreated to that most primal, safest psychological refuge, only to seal himself there forever through death.
But then, Homie peels back the final layer of psychological horror—a detail that still gives me PTSD. If you hesitate during Lee’s countdown—if you don’t force Angel to leave the basement immediately—the screen doesn't cut to black. Instead, you are forced to watch Lee raise the drill and end his life right in front of you, anchoring himself to that dark corner forever in death with the ultimate emotional blackmail. The author manifests this extreme control and moral entrapment into that spinning drill, boring straight into the player's heart.
It makes me wonder: what kind of life crafts such a profound, visceral aesthetic? What level of endurance is required to build a narrative this unflinchingly heavy, yet so deeply human?" And perhaps, the author didn't conjure this from thin air, but lived through the consequences of such a choice.
I couldn't stop speculating. There is a profound sense of authenticity in the game's technicality. Its satire of the healthcare system's cold bureaucracy brims with the resentment and resignation of an insider, the medical jargon—EHRs, peer-to-peer authorizations, RVUs—isn't just research; it feels like the bitter residue of a past life. There are rumors that homie is a survivor of significant physical and social trauma. If true, this game is a massive act of trauma re-enactment.
Homie’s creative history is a relentless landscape of gore, physical mutilation, and the systematic erosion of their characters. Is it "fetishization" or "darkness of the soul"? Perhaps it’s both. While unverified rumors about his private life circulate, one thing is certain: This is survivor's art, and the author forged this dark fairy tale with their own flesh and blood. When one endures shattering trauma, reenacting that pain through art becomes a way to seize control of the narrative. Eventually, the act of seeking solace within the wound evolves into its own kind of eroticized fixation—a 'fetish' born from the need to survive. Lee’s dream of becoming an orthopedic surgeon—someone who meticulously repairs broken limbs—feels like a heartbreakingly corrective fantasy for the author’s own physical loss. The profound isolation shared by Lee and Angel is a direct mirror of the author’s reality: a state of being hunted, misunderstood, and exiled by a world that demands a 'purity' they no longer possess. That silent black screen might be the most authentic image in the author's memory—“I did the right thing, so why did the world punish me?” That seemingly perfect Happy Ending might be the author posing a weighty question to themselves and players in this virtual realm: “If you could start over, would you choose another path to happiness—even if it's sinful happiness—with me?”
But as the dust settles and I reflect on my choice, my initial "analytical" horror was only touching the surface—I tried to observe from another point of view. I viewed Lee through the lens of a master manipulator with his high intelligence and chilling foresight made it even darker. He didn't just kill Brandon to protect Angel; he meticulously ensured that the crime was pinned on both of them. He created a "forced symbiosis" through evidence and timing, essentially taking Angel—and the player—moral hostage. It was a kidnapping of the soul. He used the corpse, and his own impending suicide, as the ultimate leverage. And Lee doesn't just offer a home; he builds an aquarium of his life. The cell phone jammer is the ultimate proof of this. He isn't just protecting Angel from Brandon; he is "killing" Angel’s connection to the outside world. He creates a vacuum where he is the only source of oxygen. When Angel disables the jammer only to find that no one has messied them for three days, Lee’s trap is complete. He has successfully convinced Angel that the world has already abandoned them, so they might as well crawl into his cage.
And yet, as I scrutinized Lee’s "master plan," a series of jarring inconsistencies emerged. The narrative, for all its psychological brilliance, relies on a cascade of improbable coincidences. Angel’s discovery of the shrine by accident, Lee’s bizarre decision to take a shower at the most critical moment, and "trying to troubleshoot a Wi-Fi router even upon discovering their caretaker is a stalker"—it all feels less like a meticulously planned entrapment and more like the author was trying to force the plot forward. For a moment, this flaw pulled me out of the game's hypnotic trance.
But then, looking at the official art with two lines of caption, “In my last days on earth, an angel came to stay with me,” Suddenly, the clumsy plot holes no longer mattered. That single sentence recontextualized everything and solitified everything about Lee.
Lee wasn't hunting; he was never a stalker or a predator. A predator would never be so heartbreakingly servile, born from a profound sense of unworthiness and self-loathing. He was a desperate, dying man who had repressed himself so much that he forgot how to love, believing he was fundamentally undeserving of the light he so desperately worshipped, clinging to his last, unexpected miracle.
He didn't have a flawless plan because he never expected to live long enough to need one. His love was never a calculated trap; it was the wild, illogical flailing of a drowning man who had just been thrown a lifeline. The basement was never meant to be Brandon’s prison—it was dug to be Lee’s own grave. Since the age of nine, Lee had been a "walking ghost," tethered to a world he despised by nothing more than a rigid, hollow script of professional duty. He was a man who had already checked out of life, waiting for the clinical trial to end so he could finally disappear into the hole he had built for himself.
In Lee’s eyes, Angel wasn't just a participant; they were a literal answer to a silent prayer he had forgotten he’d made. When he discovered the trauma Angel suffered at the hands of Brandon, Lee didn't act out of a desire for control—he acted out of a dying man’s scorched-earth devotion. He used the only "power" he had left—the fact that he had nothing to lose—to erase the person who dimmed Angel’s light. The cell phone jammer and the isolation weren't tools of kidnapping; they were his way of stopping time. He created a vacuum because, in his mind, the outside world had already "killed" both of them long ago. He was simply offering a shared, quiet afterlife, showing Angel the brutal reality they both share: the world is indifferent, but I am here.
Lee loves Angel because in a life defined by cold, rigid protocols—a life he had already signed over to death—Angel is the only source of "spirit", he sole anchor to the living world; their vibrant, ethereal presence is the only thing that made him pause his countdown to the grave. While the rest of the world sees Lee as a stiff, clinical machine, Angel is the only one who noticed the blue bandages he carefully chose for them. They were the only soul who truly listened, with sincere tenderness, to his long and awkward monologues about fire shrimp.
And Angel loves Lee because in a world that never stops inflicting "death by a thousand cuts," only this massive, clumsy, and terrifyingly obsessive man can build a wall thick enough to shield them from the storm. Lee’s focus—whether it is memorizing their work schedule or sharing the trivial details of an aquarium, is the only warmth they have ever truly owned. When Angel says, "I want to be a small animal," the moment Lee "takes over" their existence, Angel receives a sacred exemption from the agony of being a person. In the sanctuary of their shared crime, they no longer have to feel the shame of their ADHD or apologize for failing at life. Angel willingly trades their autonomy and their "innocence" for a peace as a cherished, protected, and absolutely possessed "small animal."
Clinical Trial left me in a state of hollow resonance, because I see pieces of my own history in both the brokenness of Angel and the suffocating repression of Lee, and this game takes the quiet desperation of our lives and amplifies it to the extreme until it screams. I understood Angel's despair because I, too, have lived through the slow, internal grinding that leaves you feeling 'not cut out for being human.' When the world offers only cold indifference, Lee’s obsessive gaze doesn’t feel like an intrusion, **it feels like a witness.** This is why Lee’s logic, however twisted, becomes so seductive: since the wall of professional ethics barred him from having Angel in the open, he might as well tear down the wall. Througha single, violent act, he forges a bond deeper than any promise, built on a shared secret. In that moment, all suppression vanished—they no longer needed to perform for the world, only to be real with each other. The question ceases to be whether we can trust a murderer in an "evidentiary vacuum." It becomes a devastating realization: for the truly broken, Lee’s clumsy, violent devotion is the only sanctuary left. He burned down his own life to make sure his Angel wouldn't have to shiver in the dark during his final days on earth, and for Angel, that fire fills a void the "normal" world left wide open. In their shared darkness, the tranquility of them painting together is real. The safety Angel feels in Lee’s arms is real. "I don't care if it's wrong as long as you love me, as long as we are together" is the only reality that matters.
Clinical Trial ultimately didn't cure ADHD, yet it healed two souls' despair through murder. Many saw the blood, the perversion, the control. But I saw the loneliness. Perhaps that is the most beautiful and tragic thing about it. It’s extreme, it’s twisted, yet for anyone who has ever felt bone-chilling cold in the dead of night, it is breathtakingly beautiful. It forces us to look at the parts of ourselves we’ve spent a lifetime trying to hide: the part that is tired of "being strong," and the part that would gladly embrace a monster if it meant never being invisible again. I could never forget that faint, blood-stained warmth. It is the cruelest, yet most tender hallucination the author left for every lonely soul out there.
To me, homie is the ultimate Vigilante. He couldn't fight his bullies in the physical world, so he fought them with his art. He built a world where the broken are protected. To create is to take revenge on a world that wants you silent. They didn't just make a game; they broadcasted a frequency that only the fellow lonely can hear. And I heard it, loud and clear.
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