In short, this game is a decent start to something that could turn out quite good. There are problems though, especially in the form of little annoyances, and coupled with the early state of progress, 3 stars is about as high as I think I can go on this.
The character art is very well done, it is unique, and while I usually enjoy any hand drawn game art, I like it even better when the artist knows approximately how long limbs are supposed to be, and what level of articulation the human body is capable of. In this game, the artist knows those things. Characters are nicely posed, and there are no massive anatomical flaws or unnatural proportions. The number of pictures is quite low, but hey, everything that's in there looks good.
Background art is a bit more mixed. There is a style to it, and it's kept deliberately simple and unobtrusive to avoid detracting from the action. It is not, however, as consistent as the character art. The difference in palette and line weights between scenes threw me more than once, and not really in a positive way. I feel like more could be done to stitch single scenes into a contiguous world.
The story is good for what it is, although very limited in scope and perspective. There isn't much to do, but what's there is a reasonable effort. I don't particularly care for the protagonist, who seems a bit of a doormat, but then I don't have to: The important part is whether or not the story makes sense from his perspective, and it does so well enough. As the game progresses, the number of typos and grammatical errors increases. Unfortunate and irritating, but then again not difficult to fix. My first impression of the developer is that they seem to care, and as such I'm sure details like that will be worked out at some point.
Forced pauses can die and go straight up the developer's ass. Don't get me wrong, if you really need to make a point then there's nothing inherently wrong with inserting a pause to simulate thinking, or time passing, or what have you - the problem occurs when you do it all the fucking time. It's unbelievably annoying. I don't want to be staring at a blank text box, waiting for the next line of text. I don't want to be staring at a clock face. I understand that moving from one place to another takes time, or for that matter that the protagonist going 'Hmm...' probably means they take a minute to think. I don't need it forced on me any more than I needed older Ren'Py games to drip-feed me text character by character at a snail's pace. Without a very good motivation for doing things like that, all it's really accomplishing is separating me from the game by painfully drawing attention to the interface. Don't.
You may have realized by now that all the negatives are really only small niggles that compound into something capable of rocking the boat, and mostly because the boat is rather small. With continued development and a few timely fixes, I think this could turn out very good indeed. It has a lot of potential, but then potential is not what I aim to rate. At this stage of completion it's more a good demonstration of effort and ambition than a five-course meal, and as such I give it a mere 3 stars for now. One to watch, but on the other hand you might be best served by waiting an iteration or two to see if the developer keeps their sails tacked.
