Pretty melancholic visual novel vibe with the soundtrack and rain and the sad red balloon (nice string physics!). The character vaguely reminds me of "Six" from "Little Nightmares", though I got confused that all the friends/adults are all tall scary looking monsters. Maybe the other kids should be small scary monsters? :)

At the start I sometimes got lost when going too far left or right. It _seemed_ like the balloon bounced in the direction of where to go (at least, following it helped keep me on track).

Unlike Jan, I think the story could go on a little longer. The growing sense of dread let me anticipate what was coming, but perhaps some other scenes following that would help close out the story.

Nice job though!

Beautiful, somber little experience you crafted. I enjoyed it very much :) I believe it dragged on for just a liiiiiiiiiittle bit. Maybe take out a couple of sentences, it’s just right.

I wasn't able to run the Mac binary (I think something with it was broken) so I compiled and it ran just fine!
I think you did a good job of communicating a narrative and getting an emotional reaction through really limited set-pieces. Your music choice fits really well, and the minimal textures you do show add to the effect of loneliness. It took me a little time to understand the controls, or where the NPC spawns, but once I figured that out, it was easy to continue the story at a normal pace. This definitely is more in the "walking simulator" territory (and to be clear, I use that term lovingly) of interactive fiction, so it could have benefit from some smaller interactions between dialogue cues. I think you also did a good job hinting of the ending; perhaps a little too well, as I felt the last few pieces of dialogue could have added a little additional information or something. But overall, I enjoyed the setting and writing.

At first I was a bit confused on where to go but the balloon pulling you was a nice touch for guiding the player. The controls were a bit wonky to figure out at first, didn't expect car-esque controls on WASD but isn't too hard to get used to after a bit. The story could definitely use some work I think and maybe add some more environmental storytelling instead of dialogue (though I know that's a lot of work).

Had to compile it myself for macos (probably because apple's security stuff is stupid), but ran well for me even with just `cargo run`.

Good job :)