ALTER EGO/Gameplay

The gameplay is pretty simple: watch the visual parts of the novel to gain your footing in the story, and solve each round of puzzles to continue while also gaining crucial parts of the plot by examining different items.

Visuals
You usually have to wait until the visual begins restarting before progressing as to not skip important parts of the story. Sometimes this is finicky, but really you just have to wait until the screen is filled with dialogue or art.

Puzzles
I would say there are four main mechanics to the puzzles portion of the game. Examine, Use, Combine, and Interact. Each is used to progress and/or solve the overall puzzle, and progress the game.

Examine
An object that can be examined is highlighted when you hover over it with your cursor. Examining can either add to your inventory, reveal puzzles, or inspire some dialogue from the main protagonist—which can contain meaningless details, important bits of lore, or helpful hints.

Use
This is one of two things you can do with the items in your inventory. You would pick them up and use them on different puzzles to solve them.

Combine
This is the second thing you can do with the items in your inventory. You can choose two different items and combine them before using the item you created to solve the puzzle.

Interact
This is one of the possible products of examining an item. Interacting comes in when you examine an object and it opens a puzzle that doesn't necessarily need an item to solve it.