Note: First and foremost, it must be said that this game is not for the faint of heart, or those who are not willing to dedicate a SIGNIFICANT portion of their lives to beating the game. I myself spent WELL over nine minutes to get to the point of "THE END." If this is something for which you're not fully prepared to set aside your personal life for, I recommend a much shorter experience such as getting all the endings of Clannad. Next, I'm going to have to warn all players that this may be a life-changing experience for you. You're probably just like me, thinking, "Ha ha ha, Great Toilet Simulator - what a gag! What a novelty! What a joke!" Boy, was I wrong. After those 9 excruciating minutes, I can genuinely say I'm not the same person I was when I first launched this game. Something inside of me.. something very deep, very visceral, very HUMAN... has forever been altered. Colors are different. Smells are different. I FEEL different. No longer do I wake up and just get started with my day... now, when I awaken, I look around, and think to myself, "I am HERE. I am NOW. I LIVE. I.... I..." Well... now, I Love. I have finally... learned... to love. The concept of the game is deceptively simple: you're driving along, and realize you need to take a dump. I think we can ALL relate to that - being on a journey to somewhere, and having something pressing - something we simply cannot deny - standing in the way. (By the way, this game is filled to the brim with symbolism.) So what do you do? You have to stop that journey and take care of the thing in your way. In the case of this game, you pull over to take a crap. But, just like in real life, just because you have stopped to deal with the things standing in your way, that doesn't mean life will just... OFFER you a solution. No, you're going to have to go out and FIND that solution. In the case of this game, you've got to find an outhouse so you can let a fat, steaming turd drop out of your sphincter. But isn't that a symbol of life - needing to drop the problems of your life into the toilet of reconciliation? So you set out from your vehicle, armed only with a flashlight and a shotgun. My mind is still reeling from the intense symbolism - what is meant by the necessity of a shotgun in the search for a toilet? How does it relate to dealing with the issues in your life? What is the developer trying to SAY here? You must go out into the forest.. you must search,, and you must find your toilet. Your one means of solving the problems you face. You must search through this vast, rich world... for the one thing that can bring you peace. Along the way, you will do many things that are deep and powerful analogies of real life. You will shine a flashlight. You will fire a shotgun, seemingly for almost no reason. You will fart. You will move around, look around. You will yearn to find the solution. The reason. The goal. You may go left. You may go right. You may even go forward - or even backward! You might look up, or down... sometimes you look straight forward, or spin a 180 and look backward. Sometimes you will only look 90 degrees to your left or right. In all cases, you will be moving... in all cases, you will be looking. Searching. Yearning. As you progress, you will find yourself farting. I believe this symbolizes the various ways we may try to temporarily solve our problems in life... perhaps your wife has died, and you just need to... get all that pain out of your intestines, dump it into the toilet of healing. You may try all kinds of solutions to bring release to that pain... maybe you start drinking. Fart. Maybe you rent dozens of prosties every night... fart. Maybe you dig up her dead body and cuddle it for hours in the graveyard... fart. Whatever you do, it's just a fart, and it's not going to excrete the painful mass lodged deep in the large colon of your soul. The farts may bring a temporary release, but they're not going to push out the brick of agony in the colon of your heart. No, you need to find the toilet. You need to get it out. You need to find release... and only then can you get back in the car of life and get back to the journey ahead of you. See what I mean? This game is just a RIVER of symbolism. The graphics are so next level that at several points I thought the game was actually real life. I mean I literally thought it was a video rather than a game. It was so detailed - I can't even imagine how much love and effort the devs put into this. I wouldn't even DARE try this game in VR.. the experience might be too intense to handle. The music puts James Horner and the like to shame. I just imagine the great composers of musical and movie history cringing in their corners, cowering in shame compared to the vast, rich, moving, and REAL music this game features. Not even joking - there were several times during those 9 minutes where I simply set down my Steam Deck and just cried. I just lifted my eyes to the heavens, listened to the soundtrack, and let the tears stream freely as I took in every precious ounce of life that I possibly could. The game is honestly worth buying for the soundtrack alone. The sound effects? Man, I'm telling you.. when I fired my shotgun, I actually jumped out of my seat because I thought there was yet another drive-by going on in my neighborhood. When I did the fart sound effect, I actually thought I had farted! I recommend headphones because you are NOT going to want to miss the realism! The story is something no literary author in the history of humankind has ever produced. The developer of this game knows perfectly how to blend realism - with the atmosphere, the graphics, the sounds - with symbolism, drawing you deep into thought, leaving you pondering for days what the story really MEANS. If you think you've read some good books, do yourself a favor and throw them all away before playing this game. You won't want that filth in your house by the time you finish this saga. And the price! The PRICE! Norrmally 99 cents, I bought it on sale for 49 cents. I now feel that I have ripped the developer off... I only wish there were a way I could take out a second mortgage on my home and give them all of my money. I am on the verge of draining my 401k just to send every last cent in.. after all, if a life is priceless, what is a CHANGED life worth? You can't put a price on a game like this. Although you can get it for a dollar, once you reach "The End," you'll realize what a blessing has been given for mankind. You'll realize that EVEN THE PRICE ... is but symbolic of something else. That the reason the developer put a price on here at all is merely to point out that sometimes the smallest things... can be the biggest. Sometimes even the things that seem worthless.. can be truly great. So do yourself a favor. Don't put this on your wishlist. Don't 'consider' it. Don't wait. Buy this game TODAY. Cancel all your therapy sessions and get rid of your social support network. This game is all you will need. I just hope you're ready to let go of the pain and experience something... truly wonderful.
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