Run it Back

I started playing itch.io games yesterday and I created an account dedicating to reviewing/shouting out/analyzing games on here more-so than making my own.

I've played over 10 games on here and I love a lot of them, and I'm 100% serious when I say that not only is this my favorite Itch.io game, it's one of my top 10 favorite games of all 2025, and I've played a lot of incredible games this year.

What a genius commentary/satire of daily life, good art direction, too! Seriously, great job! A 9/10 game imo that I loved so much! I'll make a full review in the future.

One word:

Beautiful

I felt both sorrow and beauty in the way the relentless days of labor were depicted so calmly.
Nowadays, I access information from around the world on the internet every day, and I relieve stress by playing various games.
But in past generations, people lived by working day after day, cherishing rare moments of joy that came maybe only once a year — this work really conveyed that to me. (=^･ω･^=)

This game rocks! 

Very good game. The Topic and the loop works very well together

Hits you right in the stomach
I'll go and wipe my tears with my paycheck now...

the art is on point, the sound is effective, the design and delivery are done well.
it's a well performed piece and almost a perfect product.

on the critical side it is slightly leaning towards an overtly simplistic message.
the player is hit on the head with it, it could do with slight improvement in game design in order to strengthen the emotional experience  and make the message more nuanced.

while the work part is brilliant, for it provides a slight sense of mastery in face of the mundane, as shown in the player's slight improvement from one run to the next or between days, this is too quickly substituted with a feeling  of zero agency.
failure breaks should be slightly shorter, the keypress timing a little less forgiving  and the rate of speed increase less steep, 
so as to allow just a bit more room for mastery
this is playing with the player's emotion as it allows for a small success within a mundane and trivial task, which leans well into the message.

walking home and home chores need either a slight variation, adding a miniscule sense of discovery or some angle for mastery
the walk home is the most failing part of the game where the player is reduced into the audience  of an uninteresting film. adding a button to press while the predetermined film is playing feels like the designer is mocking the player for playing, not like dealing with a routine. it deducts from the message.
even real life traffic jams, offer something.
either the pointless game of switching lanes with the false belief of state improvement or the timing game of releasing and reapplying the breaks or, at the very least, the act of people-watching in the adjacent cars.
The music alone is what saves the walking home part and adds some taste to it.

Last is the vacation itself,
the act of the "reward" turning into nothing but a tiny picture on the wall is shear genius.  it provides an emotional "drop" of disappointment mixed with humor before returning to your tiny work-mastery drill.
But, having the vacation itself repeat with zero variance too quickly drains the emotional potential and humor out of it.
the gag runs dry as soon as you hit the second vec.
providing a very slight variance in the vacation "scene", and therefor variation in the picture collection on the wall, will allow the player to sustain the very tiny aspiration for his next vacation in the face the loop-like rat race, even if merely in order to "complete" or "collect" which are effective player drives.

these tiny increases in variance, mastery or maneuverability will go a long way in doubling down the potential emotional ride of this piece:
a dire contrast
between the tiny momentary incentives and rewards and the overarching meaninglessness of the meta-loop.
or put more simply, life.

This game is so solid!!

The moment of vacation before being tossed right back inside the wheel
is pure genius XD

MAKEGAMESJLM PRIDE!!!!!!!

Nice music + art; real "immersive"

W Narrative!