Elian, Elisa, ChatAid

I want to be upfront with you before anything else: this is one of the smallest, quietest things you will find on PC, and it has since been delisted from Steam. What you have here is a text-based, linear narrative crafted by solo developer Mia Blais-Côté, split into two short parts and packaged alongside a bonus story. The whole experience sits well under an hour, possibly closer to fifteen or twenty minutes for a careful reader. That is not a knock. Some stories know exactly how much space they need, and the question worth asking is whether this one earns its brevity. The central narrative follows Elian, a relaxed university student, and Elisa, a more disciplined scholar, who discover a strange device in a library basement. That device, ChatAid, turns out to connect to other worlds and people in crisis. It is a curious, low-key premise that leans harder on atmosphere and quiet character contrast than on plot mechanics. There are no combat systems, no maps to traverse, no resource bars. Progress is purely reading, clicking, and occasionally making a choice. The RPG Maker MV shell is basically invisible here; the engine is just a vehicle for dialogue boxes and scene transitions. If you come in expecting RPG systems, you will find an empty room. If you come in expecting a short, mood-driven text piece, you are at least in the right building. The bonus story, Shantalia and Corali'hulu, takes place on Ryordant Island and leans into dark fairytale territory, specifically a ritual sacrifice tradition tied to a sea monster. It has a noticeably different atmosphere from the main story, closer to something you might find in a hand-typed zine from the indie fiction community. The tonal shift is real, and for readers who enjoy that kind of dark folkloric register, it may actually be the stronger of the two pieces. The whole package carries mature content warnings, including themes of sexual violence handled in text only, with no imagery. The developer updated those warnings to be more explicit, which I respect as an act of transparency toward the reader. What does not quite land is the lack of any meaningful interactivity. The choice-driven framing in the store description oversells what is essentially a linear read with minimal branching. You are not shaping destinies so much as turning pages. For a certain kind of reader, that is fine. For anyone expecting genuine agency, it will feel thin. The RPG Maker presentation also adds little; there is no original soundtrack or visual art to speak of that would lift the prose into something more atmospheric. The writing itself, which is all this really is, carries the whole weight, and whether it holds depends entirely on whether the developer's voice connects with you personally. As a small, personal, one-person project, I hold it to a different standard than a studio release. Mia Blais-Côté put a complete story out into the world, signed her name to it, and kept the content warnings honest. That counts for something in a sea of anonymous asset-flip releases. But with the title delisted from Steam, your path to it is narrow, and I would not go out of your way to track it down unless you have a specific appetite for micro-length NSFW text fiction made with care rather than polish.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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