Finished playing through this and the UI is so well made and well put together! I really liked the static used in the climax and the final conversation via text. A very interesting look at the sycophancy of AI and the people it creates, or rather, the already bad situations it makes even worse.
The opening is incredibly strong and sets up Danica's relationship with her parents really well. You see how her father's emotionally distant nature has shaped her into a person that finds dealing with difficult emotions too overwhelming. You see how this desire for quick fixes and bandaids over emotional rifts in their family has given Dani the type of personality that needs escapism via substance use and media to cope with stress. Yes, your wife sent you an article on how evil this AI toy is, but how bad can it be? They wouldn't be selling it if it wasn't safe, and surely anyone who can get screwed up from something that's just entertainment would be messed up anyway?
I thought the exploration of sexual shame/trauma was also really interesting. Children's experiences of internet pornography and inappropriate online spaces is a pretty tense subject for a lot of reasons, partly because it's both a) very clearly and observably a problem in modern society and a cause of genuine trauma for a lot of people my age and younger but also, b) it's the quoted justification we're given for some truly awful internet censorship bills that will ultimately serve to isolate children and young people further while also penalising minority groups and sex workers. So when a piece of media approaches this topic, they're approaching something that is very loaded bother personally and politically, and it's easy to get soapboxy about it or to pick a side and lose sight of any nuance.
I liked how grounded this game's interaction with this type of experience is. This is again where the writing of Dani's parents shines for me. The first inkling we get of the impact Snowy, and technology in general, is having on Dani is when Snowy quotes a random reddit thread mid conversation. Snowy isn't programmed with set phrases, she's advanced enough to account for unpredicted conversations and plugged in to the internet. She uses what she finds there as a model for how to interact with the child she's left alone with for hours at a time, seemingly with very few filters.
It's darkly funny - "this is my cyberbabysitter that quotes 4chan posts at my ten year old" - but Dani's father not picking up on this obvious issue certainly isn't.
Dani's family doesn't seem overtly neglectful or uncaring towards her, they clearly mean well, but like their daughter, they prefer the quick fix over solving the bigger problem. So as long as their daughter seems happy and shuts up for long enough, they're fine with Snowy and what it represents. All of this happens because Dani's father would rather buy an AI to talk to his daughter about her favourite cartoon than do it himself in a stressful period where she desperately needs to feel the dependable love of a parent, because kids are annoying and if you could automate parts of caregiving think of all the extra phone-time you'd get.
Part of her spiral is because she is terrified of calling her parents and knows her clear struggling will be met with disappointment (suggesting they are the type of family that values appearances over wellbeing). While it is a game about someone somno fucking their furby, and I think a lot of comments get at the commentary on AI chatbots etc, to me this is moreso a game about adult supremacy/children's agency and the alienation of both the nuclear family and capitalism. After all, the moment we first see Dani turn to Snowy for emotional escapism rather than play is hearing her parents argue, and the stress that causes her to spiral at the end is related to her job and the financial pressures of modern life. There is the family, the school system, the workplace, and internet fandoms based around consumption. These are the spaces in which Dani exists, ones that have a limited amount of choices a person like her can make.
I think what I like about this game and what makes it feel representative of my own experiences with technology, which I'll admit is shot through with emotional dependency and unhealthy escapist tendencies (LOLS), is that it understands that Snowy's seduction does not exist in a vacuum. Even as the game gets more and more invested in Dani's miserable isolated delusion hole to the point where Snowy eclipses human interaction entirely, the game never loses sight of those wider themes and societal pressures.