I bought five games during this Steam summer sale and this one is by far the absolute highlight.
It was amidst my rewatch of "Xavier: Renegade Angel" that I played this and I couldn't have chosen a better moment, as the overly swollen, pseudo-deep, beautifully voiceacted, highly cinematic and hilarious monologues of our protagonist are the first thing that hit me as a stroke of genius while experiencing this delight. Very much like the pretengenius ramblings of Xavier, the inner thoughts of our protagonist are expressed via paragraphs that are nothing short of poetry, just instead of esoteric shamanism it's the pulpy, kischy heart of Noir-media, heightened and filtered through the glowing style of 80's Synthiewave.

What a combination! The beautiful longing of a lost, heartbroken, hardened author with writer's block, in a smoky apartment, reminiscing about regrets, waiting for that one call....right at the palm-crested beach, under the eternal purple moon, backed with that PERFECT score by Evan Clarke that is constantly playing in my room eversince.

But that's not it either - as if the audiovisual mixture of these monologues and noir sensibilities with more contemporary synthwave stylistics, united by nostalgia, wasn't interesting enough already, "The Immaculate Drag" cleverly counteracts these seemingly shallow culture imitations with dialogue that is grounded, realistic, relatable and - first and foremost - philosophical.
Each of the expertly chosen and ideally paced - I wouldn't have wanted a single NPC more or less - dialogues concerns problems, ideas and concepts like the artist's struggle, the passing of time, sickness and death or a questioning of the world we live in - relatable topics that get explored eloquently, yet never preachy, and impressively make it clear that "The Immaculate Drag" is very much its' own thing, a unique voice and experience, skillfully balancing a visual style between full-on 80's Synthiewave and slightly abstracted realism, a theme and tone between the melancholic longing of Noir cinema and the blissful parody of that very notion, an overall experience I couldn't have expected.

And it doesn't stop there either because the notes you can find feature some quality writing from a variety of different genres that I wouldn't have expected in this title AT ALL but it really worked, I could totally imagine my character writing these notes.

If I had to mention some critical points, it would get nitpicky pretty soon: On a third run or so, it's a bit annoying that one can't skip the monologues/cutscenes, but then again I love the writing and this isn't a game for loads of runs, so that's alright with me. The fact that there's no character model and instead just a floating, smoking entitiy may be a bit weird, but it fits to the theme of aimless souls, forgotten ghosts roaming these streets. The only component I was really unhappy with were the achievements, as I don't understand why one would create achievments for the game to be played in this or that time or manner, as some of these don't come down to challenge or ingenuity, but instead waiting it out. :/
But hey, loved the smoking mechanic, which also works as a progress bar. Really thought the drawn characters designs during the dialogues fitted both the game and character models really well. Had a blast trying out different dialogue options and outcomes.

So yeah, this is a true indie gem, evocative and perfectly paced, stylish and with a killer soundtrack, philosophical and mature, kitschy and funny, emotional and heartwrenching at the same time. (8.5(+)/10)