Acting Lessons serves up a slice of life visual novel that features some fairly unique branching and decision making for a game made in the West, along with highly engaging characters.
The player is prompted to choose one area of focus out of three available, and while is has been done before, the game actually implements decisions and scenes where these choices pay off, instead of the usual business of creating a single branch and ignoring the specialization for the remainder of the game. Despite the fact that a single choice can alter scenes later in the game, the developer has their options completely covered, with completely separate scenes or modifications to a common scene. There's a lot of work put into this branching, from simple coding to a really large grip of renders.
The best feature of the game might be the characters, each with their own personality and ability to charm the player. It also has Liam, possibly the greatest bro character ever written for an erotic game.
From a technical perspective, the variety and expressiveness is a highlight. The character models themselves are all done competently, though the Melissa character is a complete smoke show. The developer is moving to 1920x1080 resolution for 0.3, which will definitely be a welcome change. And while some of the music will be familiar, it is inoffensive and, in my view, most welcome, as it is usually skipped in Ren'py games.
If you are looking for a visual novel that is light on fetishes but heavy on story, characters and technical competency, Acting Lessons should definitely be on your watch list.