You are PhD student and you must defeat the ultimate boss monster: your Thesis! Develop relationships with quirky allies and improve your stats by inspecting your surrounding and making difficult choices. Will you explore and alter memories for a chance at a better life? Will you risk looking back?

## About This Game
Looking Back is an autofictional game that takes you, the Player, inside of
Kris’s life as a PhD student. Appropriating the classic J-RPG style with a
Choices Matter twist, it is a parts exploration, parts visual novel game, in
which you must carve your own path toward the destruction of the ultimate boss
monster that haunts your everyday life: your Thesis. It lurks in your bedroom
and fills you with anxiety, but before fighting it, you must make sure your
Mental Health, your Energy, your Skillfulness, your Wits, and your Endurance
are high enough to tackle this challenge of a lifetime and finally obtain that
degree! However, the way to become stronger is not by gaining experience
grinding on endless hordes of monsters. Rather, you improve your stats by
exploring and making decisions, building relationships with people around you,
and altogether attempting to improve your everyday life. Simple things like
choosing your dog to be a German Shepherd instead of a Cocker Spaniel, or
difficult decisions such as saving one of two friends, every choice matters
and affects your stats, your world, and yourself, indelibly.

Memory “triggers” are scattered throughout the city of Toronto, allowing you
to explore them, which may or may not improve certain outcomes and your odds
at defeating the Thesis. Some are beautiful, some are heart-wrenching, but You
have the power to modify some memories at the cost of some Mental Health
points. Memory shards even allow you to go through certain dream sequences,
embodiments of your subconscious. You have the power to change the present and
the future, but abusing this power may lead to your demise — running out of
Mental Health means utter despair…

Will you look back and alter the past to get a chance for a better future? Or
will you look forward and focus on accomplishing your dreams?
## Features:
* Branching storylines.
* 10 allies that may join your party.
* Beautiful and emotional music.
* Quirky characters.
* An adorable dog that you can take with you everywhere (if you choose to!).
* A combination of different endings.
* Over 15 explorable memories and dreams.
* References to famous and infamous philosophers and critics.
* Countless retro video game references.

## Mature Content Description
The developers describe the content like this:
Some dialogues contain strong language.
There are textual references to sex and themes of physical and mental health
(death, mourning, domestic violence, suicide).

Looking Back