Because You Are Alive

Because You Are Alive, created by everest or evie for the Toxic Yuri VN Jam 2, presents a 40,000-word narrative about Celestine, a suicidal woman confined to an oil rig with nowhere else to go. The premise strips away romantic fantasy: this is not a love story about salvation through connection, but an unflinching examination of how two people can simultaneously damage and sustain each other when trapped with nothing but time and desperation.

The game's core tension stems from its refusal to separate intimate moments from the psychological deterioration surrounding them. Celestine grapples with active suicidality, environmental guilt (she knows she's destroying the earth), and the claustrophobic reality of her situation. Within this pressure cooker, a relationship develops—marked by explicit lesbian and transgender content—that feels less like escape and more like two people learning what it means to want to stay alive, specifically because someone else is there. The NSFW scenes are integrated into this thematic framework rather than existing apart from it; they carry the weight of the narrative's exploration of desire, vulnerability, and bodily autonomy.

Everest or evie handles mature content matter-of-factly, including scenes involving watersports, without sensationalizing. What distinguishes the work is its commitment to psychological realism: mental health struggles don't resolve through love, and the game doesn't pretend otherwise. At 3–4 hours, the scope feels deliberate—long enough to build genuine tension between characters, short enough to maintain narrative focus. The writing frequently breaks the fourth wall with developer commentary (see the Android port note), which some will find charming and others distracting. Available on Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android, the game is accessible across platforms, though players should note the Android port was experimental at launch.