Through the Looking Glass

Editorial Has potential

Through the Looking Glass is an early-access action-romance game that blends survival mechanics, combat, and intimate progression with a captive-romance premise. The community is divided: romance players praise the character work and emotional impact (especially a nightmare dream sequence that genuinely blindsided players), while others seek more sexual content and complain the relationship system remains incomplete. Combat is serviceable for Ren'Py, though some find timing finicky. The game's biggest weakness is poor explanation of its mechanics—the cleaning minigame in particular has a steep, poorly-documented difficulty curve that frustrates new players. Technical performance is competent; the developer is experimenting with modern codec compression (AV1/AVIF) with mixed results on older hardware. As a creative work, the game shows real potential in its pacing and character dynamics, but it's held back by incomplete systems and a lack of clarity. Relationship progression is limited (hugging, one dream scene, a non-consensual "night crawl" scene after picking a lock), and players understandably want clarity on what the full relationship path will look like.