Me and my aunt – sometimes my mother –

Amidst the haze of a sweltering summer, you return to your childhood lakeside cottage—a place haunted by fractured memories and a family tree tangled with secrets. Your aunt, a woman as enigmatic as the storm clouds gathering over the water, insists you’re here to “help her recuperate.” But as days blur into nights, reality warps: Conversations loop with subtle differences, photographs shift in their frames, and the line between caretaker and captive thins. To unravel the truth, you’ll navigate a labyrinth of half-truths and inherited guilt, where every chore completed or story shared rewrites the past… and your role in it.  

Core Mechanics  

1. Echo-Driven Timeline – Progress hinges on “echoes” (repeated actions with variations)—skip breakfast three times to trigger a confrontation, or mismanage firewood to force a late-night search for warmth.  

2. Fractured Affinity System – Build rapport through layered dialogue; agree too readily, and your aunt grows suspicious, but defiance risks locking you out of critical memories.  

3. Ambient Event Triggers – Hidden flags activate based on environmental cues (e.g., lingering near the grandfather clock at 3 PM summons a phantom visitor).  

Defining Features  

1. Chronoslip Environments – Rooms morph subtly between visits—a vase shattered yesterday sits whole today, hinting at parallel timelines to exploit or repair.  

2. Veiled Rewind Function – Replay days with retained knowledge to alter outcomes, but repeated loops degrade scene stability, introducing glitched interactions.  

3. Memento Gallery – Post-clearance, reconstruct fragmented events via collected items (a torn letter, a distorted recording) to unlock censored memories and piece together the family’s true history.  

Strategic Insights  

1. Track Weather Patterns – Rainy days amplify emotional dialogues; use them to fast-track affinity at the cost of heightened conflict risks.  

2. Embrace Inefficiency – Occasionally ignore tasks to trigger “idle moments” where the aunt reveals unscripted truths while repairing broken objects.  

3. Decode Household Symbols – Recurring motifs (crescent moons on curtains, numbered floorboards) hint at optimal times to investigate locked areas without penalties.