Release date (Windows, Mac OS, Linux)
English: April 1st, 2025
"In a colorless world, three protagonists live their empty routines, trapped in an existence that brings them neither joy nor pain. They have no dreams, ambitions, or the strength to change their lives. But all of that is about to end.
Without warning, three strangers enter their lives—captivating, magnetic, and intense.
Each path is a dive into the unknown, where the line between passion and terror dissolves. Is there a way out? Or, deep down, was this always the only way to feel something real?"
This is a free game created by Honey Bunny for NaNoRenO 2025! You can download it here.
One who deals with the Daily Life, and the other who takes over during Deadly Life.
(While they could share POV's during the Prologue, there could also be a third decoy protagonist we follow who, at the end of the Prologue, tries to rebel against the mascot only to be killed, leading to the POV switch.)
Tuppence Middleton in Sense8 (2015) Fear Never Fixed Anything
S2E5
Bug hits on a solution to Nomi's legal troubles, new cracks begin to appear in Kala's perfect life, and the Sensates consider a bold change of plans.
*The venue of Riley's gig is a very popular venue in Amsterdam, called Paradiso. It used to be a church before they converted it into a concert hall. Artists like Prince and David Bowie performed there in the early days. The Rolling Stones even had an additional balcony built for their show.
Content warnings: suicide, self harm, depression, recreational drug use, non-explicit sex scenes, death by illness, and a sexual relationship between a minor and an adult.
Each evening was nearly a religious experience. The death girls would close their eyes and think of the suicides of their poets, of the sadness that filled every inch of space. Soon there would come that familiar off rising feeling in each of them, and whoever’s turn it was that particular night would begin to read the lines of a poem (8).
Edition reviewed: Wolitzer, M. (2014). Sleepwalking. New York: Riverhead Books.
Original publication: Wolitzer, M. (1982). Sleepwalking. New York: Random House.
Sleepwalking takes place two years after the death of the fictional poet Lucy Ascher, who killed herself after many years of depression defining her life and her poetry. It follows Claire Danziger, a first year university student with severe depression and an adoration of Ascher and her poetry. She meets two other girls who, like her, devoutly love a poet – Naomi, with Sylvia Plath, and Laura, with Anne Sexton. They are called the Death Girls. They meet each night, light candles, and talk about their poets and their deaths.
Claire begins a relationship with Julian, a boy unfamiliar with poetry and death, and she begins to feel unfulfilled in her relationship with Ascher’s poetry and the way it defines her life. Taking the advice of the other Death Girls, she finds the home of Lucy Ascher and offers her services as an au pair to Lucy’s parents, Ray and Helen. The plot diverges, Lucy’s childhood through to adulthood and death and the lives of her parents from the beginning of their relationship through to the ways her suicide both violently and insidiously changed their lives unveiling alongside Claire’s childhood and family history, while in the current day, Claire shares a home with the Aschers and the other Death Girls and Julian try to get her back.
Sleepwalking is a beautiful and winding expose on grief, human connection, and the way that writing and poetry can change and meld and save lives.
Aesthetics: 8/10
Perspective: First person
Tense: Past tense
Focalising characters: Four (Claire, Helen, Ray, Lucy)
Style: Ruminative poetic prose, slightly varying with each focalising character. The influence of the poets on each Death Girl is clear in their speech.
Characters: Very real and immensely sympathetic.
World-building: Vivid, detailed, and just as Claire observes of Lucy’s poetry, Wolitzer ‘did the most incredible thing – she made death a landscape’ (17), but made it something liberating, rather than suffocating.
Pacing and structure: Two parts in fourteen chapters; slow – the events of the novel in the current day span little more than a month, but could have been months.
Ethics: 7/10
Sleepwalking is unlike any other book I’ve read which focuses on mental illness and/or suicide, particularly in the context of books about artists, authors, or poets. It is very explicit in representation of self-harm and suicide, but it doesn’t romanticise them. The Death Girls do so in the beginning, but it changes over time. The book makes mental illness real and horrible in the characters’ own headspaces, and while the writing is poetic and beautiful, it doesn’t cast the themes in the same light. It makes beautiful the small, day to day and mundane things, and it also makes beautiful recovery and moving on, which is so rare, particularly in YA and NA books. The Death Girls stay loving their poets, but they stop self-destructing in the name of that love.
The portrayal of drug use and underage sex is somewhat detached – it preaches nothing.
It’s horrific for a stranger to come into the home of a celebrity’s parents under false pretences, and while it has a good result, it’s never quite acknowledged how invasive Claire was in coming to the Aschers.
The cast of characters is quite small and focused tightly on families; it’s not particularly diverse. The Danziger family is Jewish and it’s integrated through the text naturally, which is lovely. The portrayal of people of different ages was something I really appreciated – developing from childhood through to middle age, they all seemed real and dynamic, and the middle aged characters weren’t written with derision as they sometimes are in books centred on young adults. Their suffering and recovery are treated just as seriously as Lucy’s and as Claire’s.
Rhetoric: 8/10
I read this book in less than twenty-four hours, much of that reading time being between midnight and six a.m., which is a big deal. It was an experience of ‘can’t put it down’.
The Aschers so willingly taking Claire into their home seems, in hindsight, almost absurd, but midst the depth of their grief and the disruption of their lives of the years since their Lucy’s death, I didn’t even question it. However, they questioned it and themselves, and reflect on how it was a bizarre choice to make. Their self-awareness made it seem real.
Fun fact: Wolitzer says that the book ‘predates the Brat Pack era that would follow it in a couple of years; this book does not feature a college world ... of careless debauchery, but instead one of bookish, brooding self-consciousness’ (xiv). Funnily enough considering her scorn, Wolitzer has been considered part of the literary Brat Pack for decades, alongside those such as Donna Tartt and Bret Easton Ellis. She is right, though – while still a part of the Brat Pack, as a campus novel it is far different from The Secret History or Rules of Attraction.
Would recommend: Yes, with the caveat that it could be triggering for some, and probably with a reading age of eighteen and up, with a limit of perhaps fifteen. If you don’t like ‘slow’ books it’s probably not for you.
Does it fit into Dark Academia? Yes! It’s pre-Dark Academia but has a clear influence on it and fits into the aesthetic, themes, and values of Dark Academia. It doesn’t, as Wolitzer said, have the focus on debauchery and decadence that many of the key Dark Academic texts do, and the Death Girls aren’t studying poetry – it’s extracurricular, with the University more of a setting based on their ages than part of the plot. Their rituals, cultishness, and taking on of Sexton, Plath, and Lucy Ascher is pretty archetypal of Dark Academia. It’s more ruminative and character based than plot and action based, but the questions of eternity and immortality, personal responsibility, the importance and joy of connection about something loved, and ‘what makes life worth living?’ are central.
The </reality> Launch Trailer is live! Take a look and let us know what you think!
And, the </reality> Steam Store Page has been updated with the new trailer and fresh new screenshots! Launch is just under 3 weeks away now, folks! Woah! It’s getting real around here (pun intended).
Don’t forget to add the game to your Steam Wishlist if you’d like a reminder upon release!
Meanwhile, we are furiously working to complete the last of the story revisions and final touches needed before testing and release.
As always, we’re so grateful for all of your help spreading the word about the project! Here are some links to make your life easier:
Hey everyone! We released the ＜/reality＞ beta of Book 3 - the final part of the story - via Steam last night, for beta-access backers. And, there are only 4 days left until the official full release! We hope you’re getting as excited as we are! Please check out our Coming-soon Steam page and add the game to your Wish list if you’d like a reminder upon release!
Book 3 - "Truth"
Book 3 is the final - and, as the name suggests - most revelatory part of the story. All of the story threads we’ve been weaving through books one and two come together here, and your choices begin having a larger impact than ever before. The heavy branching in Book 3 and the Epilogue was definitely an editing challenge - however, we think it adds a lot (especially to replay value)! It’ll be fun watching people compare their epilogues and the very different paths they can take!
Here are a few [mostly] spoiler-free screenshots from Book 3:
^ In more ways than one...? o.o
^ But is it good? That’s the question.
Over the last few weeks our composer, Chase, has produced a ton of new and wonderful music tracks! You can listen to one of the new tracks, “Remorse,” right here.
Stretch Goal Post-Launch Update
Unfortunately we haven’t had time to add in all the extra CGs and art for the stretch goal, and we didn’t want to postpone the launch date again. Instead, we are planning to release an update in mid-May with all of the extra art (along with some other non-essential updates and polish). The game that will be released on April 18th is a full and complete experience that we’re proud of, but if you want a little extra art and prettiness, you can wait for the May update - we’ll leave that up to you!
Backer Rewards
Because of the crunch to release on time, we will be sending out all the Kickstarter backer rewards (besides the game itself) post-launch. Digital copies of the game (DRM-Free + Steam) will be sent out via HumbleBundle on April 18th, and all other rewards will be sent out within the following month.
Spread the Word!
As ever, thank you for all your support, and for coming this far with us! This has been an amazing journey. All your help spreading the word has been greatly appreciated - please keep at it - on social media and beyond - as launch nears. Let's build some hype! And once you have the game in hand, please share your screenshots and reactions using the hashtag #RealityVN! We can’t wait to hear what you think!
We have released Book 2 of </reality> to Beta-access backers (chapters 4-6)! Book 2 is titled “Contact,” and it is where things start getting strange in </reality>, and the first major twist is revealed. In these chapters we also spend more time getting to know the three main characters pasts and quirks, and there are some interesting moments of “contact” between them - perhaps heart-warming, but possibly heart-breaking, depending upon your choices.
In other news, we launched a coming soon page on Steam for </reality>. Feel free to check it out and definitely share it with anyone you think would be interested in the game. As you can see on the Steam page, we have officially moved our release date to April 18th, 2017. This is mainly because of some major edits we decided to do the the ending. Book 3 will take more than a month to finish, and then we will inevitably have revisions based on beta feedback, as well as marketing work.
Chase (our composer) has continued to send us tracks and flesh out the soundscape of </reality>. We will probably post an update to the Demo (chapter 1) soon with all of the new tracks (so it is more varied and less repetitive), but for now you can listen to a preview of Ben's Theme.
Our second artist has now completed over half of the ending panels. She is very fast and efficient, and we are quite pleased with how the illustrations are turning out. We would share some with you if they weren’t spoilers for the ending(s)!
March Plans
For the rest of this month, our plan is mainly to write the new sections for Book 3 - the final book - and finish editing it. We also have a number of CGs that need to be done, and two final characters + more expressions for all the characters. We should hopefully have the Beta of Book 3 released by April 10th, giving us a little over a week for revisions before the official release.
We’re looking forward to hearing beta-readers reactions to the new ending - we think it greatly increases the strength and conflict, plus it gives a little more screen time to some of our more minor characters.
As always, many thanks to all our awesome supporters for your help spreading the word, likes, reblogs, etc! Look forward to more dev updates as we enter this final stretch of development!
There’s only a month left until we release </reality>, and we are fixing up a lot of the loose ends and preparing for launch. For this week, we have a lot of updates to share!
Major UI Overhaul - the old UI was more a placeholder than a final asset, so we’ve finally updated the UI! It’s now smaller and takes up less screen space too - so you can see more of the pretty backgrounds!
Added Choice Indicator - there is now a cool effect (visible in the above video) for big choices, that will let you know that your choice had a major impact on the story.
Demo Update - We updated the Demo (chapter 1) with the new UI and choice indicator, along with some edits and improvements. The Steam version has also been updated for Beta backers.
New Music Tracks - Chase, our composer, has been hard at work creating the last few tracks of music for the game! You can hear one of the new tracks in the above video.
Chapter 7 Edits - Even with all this going on, we have been continuing to edit and work on the last book of the game, and have written nearly all of the missing scenes from Chapter 7 now.
We still have a lot to do between now and April 18th, but we’re moving as fast as we can to release on time. We plan to give more frequent updates as we move closer and closer to the finish line.
As always, thanks for all your support and help spreading the word!
