A gripping, thought provoking visual novel game where you explore the possibility of AI taking over mental health services to aid people and act as a mirror. However, it brings up the question of weather technology should be utilized in this way. Where is the line where we loose our humanity? In an ever isolating world where people are disconnected from each other, where do we draw the line between relaying on technology and relaying on community of others that can provide that human connection? Can that really be replaced? Explore the world as Evelyn, the pioneer that designed Eliza, the new AI counseling app sweeping Seattle. As she rejoins society after a 3 year hiatus and decides to test her product as a "proxy" or a human barrier between the patient and the Eliza AI algorithm, we explore what makes us human and the roles both good and bad that technology can bring us.

Eliza is a great experience which I stumbled upon randomly after it was a long time in my backlog and there may be some bias having not played many VNs before but this resonated with me greatly.

Even though it may seem like a typical "anti big corporations" story it really is more founded than that with multiple angles and decisions with characters that all just are well established.

If a work can give me the feeling that characters don't just exist to advance the story but with or without the players involvement and enhance the decision making by contributing to being invested in their story is just good writing, so hats off to you.

The setting is great and has soothing background music to fit the atmosphere and 1 playthrough on my side clocked in 5 hours which for me is the perfect length. Should the story get overwhelming you can boot up relaxing apps on the phone to just unwind and reflect on your current thoughts or enjoying some rounds of solitaire. If this sounds appealing I can just recommend to try this and enjoy the experience.

Something which deserves a special praise in my book despite the already positive points form above is following:

It is refreshing to see a modern game that is made with confidence to quality and a specific vision and not relying on cheap tactics to inflate the playtime like achievements for completionists or blowing up the word count which ultimately leads to overstaying the welcome and being accessible to a wide array of stores (GOG, itch.io, Steam) for now and in the future.

It is an optimized singleplayer experience (as in fully offline as it should be) without alerting my firewall a single time to try and collect any data, which goes against the current standard in the gaming industry that I very much appreciate.

All in all this game just is what it is, a software with no ulterior motive trying to give you a great time and made me curious to check other works from this developer to support this approach.