VN Ren'Py Completed Acting Lessons [v1.0.2] [DrPinkCake]

[EtKnell]

Just finished the game. Man, the writing is good, characters do feel like a living, breathing persons. If you came for the sex stuff - Being a Dik is better, it's okay here, just not that great. And what's with constant desire of an author to bust my balls? I get that you need some drama, it's great and all, but it feels kinda undeserved. Both here, and in Dik - you get forced inside a candy shop, they tell you that everything here is free to grab, and then they try to make you feel bad for doing that. And yeah, constant cheating, both game are centered on it. You really just forced into situations where only choice you have is to cheat on someone. That works the first time, alright, but then it's gets old way too fast. Still, I've got my fun, all problems here are definitely not a deal breaker, one of the best novels I came across here

 

[aaaaaaaaaabaaaaaaaa]

they tell you that everything here is free to grab, and then they try to make you feel bad for doing that.

I don't know, I think DPK does a pretty decent job of warning you what to expect. I've only played to ch 4 in BaDIK, but that was enough to know that in both stories characters are pretty clear early on that they've cheated/been cheated on and it was NOT okay, so it makes sense that if you cheat on them in the middle of the story, they won't be okay with it. I think it's more the F95 norm is to expect that your goal is just to get with as many of the girls as often as you can, so DPK's stories are definitely a deviation from that. I feel like that makes his stories a bit more realistic in a sense (ofc still way overdramatized compared to what most people go through irl, but still), and I think that is really what his goal is. And I think it's part of what makes his stories so good and so powerful.

 

[Red469]

Exactly. We worked so well together and were really good friends so I didn't want to ruin that. She knew I loved her because of what other co-workers told her, but never approached talking about it with me. Oh well. That was 12 years ago, but it still fucking stings

Mark, if she single then its never too late... I actually did what I Wanted, and that turned out to be both AMAZING, and amazingly sad. The amazing part was finding her in the first place and getting a taste of what life could be like with her...

The sad part came when I had to leave the country, and ya she was well... 'unavailible' to come with me
This was some time ago, and if I could have, I would have persued her to ends of the planet...

Living with regret is like chewing on gravel and pretending its bubble gum... so what if its been 12 years...

Much like this vn shows us... some girls show up on our doorsteps... are you going to invite Megan into ur life? or are you going to be a heartless fuck and turn her away?

It all comes down to choice... Who will you choose? Megan? Mel? a rl version of either?

 

[Crazygamer43]

mega link fixed.

 

[ChubiChubi]

Just finish the game days from now and it broke me. I never thought that I could be this affected. This is amazing to think for me because I have never guessed this could happen but also disrupts me from the inside at the same time. Even now while typing these words I still think about it. Even after playing it, again and again, exploring the different endings of the game. Still, the shock that I get from the first time I finished it remains. Overall it's not a good game, it's a great game. This game reminded me of how life can take an unexpected turn at moments you will not expect. The choices you make right now weigh a lot on how you will become in the future. Well, Cliche's are Cliche's because they are "Cliche's" for a reason. Just like what in the game have told us. For now, I'm still processing this feeling that I have and coming to terms with it. This is also the reason why I write this long review. Hoping it will help me realize what I'm finding wrong about me right now. Not just because of playing the game, also from the problem that I am facing in my personal life. I hate to say this but, this game; has become an eye-opener to me. So yeah..... I came for pussy and look what I get? Dr. Pinkcake. Who am I to complain?
I am conflicted right now, even so, it was a great experience. I am now a troubled man and also an admirer of this work and when I have the means to support or the ability to give back in the future I will never hesitate.

PS, I will still look for pussy and I don't mind if Dr. Pinkcake is in it

~ this is my first review, I'm anxious about it so...... lay it on me I think I could handle it ~

 

[SpearOfReigns]

Just finish the game days from now and it broke me. I never thought that I could be this affected. This is amazing to think for me because I have never guessed this could happen but also disrupts me from the inside at the same time. Even now while typing these words I still think about it. Even after playing it, again and again, exploring the different endings of the game. Still, the shock that I get from the first time I finished it remains. Overall it's not a good game, it's a great game. This game reminded me of how life can take an unexpected turn at moments you will not expect. The choices you make right now weigh a lot on how you will become in the future. Well, Cliche's are Cliche's because they are "Cliche's" for a reason. Just like what in the game have told us. For now, I'm still processing this feeling that I have and coming to terms with it. This is also the reason why I write this long review. Hoping it will help me realize what I'm finding wrong about me right now. Not just because of playing the game, also from the problem that I am facing in my personal life. I hate to say this but, this game; has become an eye-opener to me. So yeah..... I came for pussy and look what I get? Dr. Pinkcake. Who am I to complain?
I am conflicted right now, even so, it was a great experience. I am now a troubled man and also an admirer of this work and when I have the means to support or the ability to give back in the future I will never hesitate.

PS, I will still look for pussy and I don't mind if Dr. Pinkcake is in it

~ this is my first review, I'm anxious about it so...... lay it on me I think I could handle it ~

I've been there too, I know what you feel. The doc knows how to inject life & personality into his characters so we can't help but care about them. Once you're done recovering I suggest you try his next & ongoing project titled Being A DIK

 

[UncleFredo]

I've been there too, I know what you feel. The doc knows how to inject life & personality into his characters so we can't help but care about them. Once you're done recovering I suggest you try his next & ongoing project titled Being A DIK

Yeah I'll pass on any VN he ever produces. I don't support his kind of duplicity and I suggest to anyone who felt that they were unjustly put through an emotional wringer, to consider making the same choice.

 

[Tor7]

Yeah I'll pass on any VN he ever produces. I don't support his kind of duplicity and I suggest to anyone who felt that they were unjustly put through an emotional wringer, to consider making the same choice.

"Unjustly put through an emotional wringer"? When I was in... my early teens I read a Dragon Lance novel (Dungeons & Dragons book) and one of the main characters died. It is the only book that I've read where I have cried. I don't hate the author for making me care about the fictional character. I don't hate the author for deciding to kill off that character. The fact that the author made me care so much about the character that I cried at their death means they did an awesome job of letting me connect with them.

Same with this. When I got to the decision point, I struggled with the choice. Do I pick the Megan, the main character the game is about or do I pick Melissa, the character that I feel a real connection and actually care about? My first run through I only saw one vague spoiler about the event, so I knew "something" was coming, but didn't know who or what or how. I don't use a walkthrough on my first run throughs either. I want to discover everything on my own.

Right now I'm playing a game, in which the primary character I deal with is pretty much what I would want an ideal wife to look like. But the story, the writing, is ... meh. I'm just over halfway through it, but instead of finishing it outright, I do a little and move on to something else. The STORY matters. The characterizations MATTER. If I wanted fap material, I'd go to pornhub.

 

[UncleFredo]

"Unjustly put through an emotional wringer"? When I was in... my early teens I read a Dragon Lance novel (Dungeons & Dragons book) and one of the main characters died. It is the only book that I've read where I have cried. I don't hate the author for making me care about the fictional character. I don't hate the author for deciding to kill off that character. The fact that the author made me care so much about the character that I cried at their death means they did an awesome job of letting me connect with them.

Same with this. When I got to the decision point, I struggled with the choice. Do I pick the Megan, the main character the game is about or do I pick Melissa, the character that I feel a real connection and actually care about? My first run through I only saw one vague spoiler about the event, so I knew "something" was coming, but didn't know who or what or how. I don't use a walkthrough on my first run throughs either. I want to discover everything on my own.

Right now I'm playing a game, in which the primary character I deal with is pretty much what I would want an ideal wife to look like. But the story, the writing, is ... meh. I'm just over halfway through it, but instead of finishing it outright, I do a little and move on to something else. The STORY matters. The characterizations MATTER. If I wanted fap material, I'd go to pornhub.

Spoiler: Duplicit because... (Serious spoiler if you haven't played)

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[moskyx]

Spoiler: Duplicit because... (Serious spoiler if you haven't played)

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That's right. In order to show 'actions have consequences' you don't need a fucking psycho burning down a house from which you can only save one person. Especially when your actions during the game can be perfectly fine to avoid any kind of bad move. After all, you can reject Leah from the start (which leaves you as a victim of a rapist) and keep your dick in check while trying to build a healthy relationship with Megan & Melissa... just to be forced to choose to save one just because. What were your bad actions then? It's drama just for the sake of drama, and a cheap one at that. AL is not a well-designed game, no matter how touching the mourning part of the game can be for a lot of people. In my opinion, if you want to show that cheating is not the way to go and 'actions have consequences', Become a Rock Star is doing it infinitely better

 

[felicemastronzo]

That's right. In order to show 'actions have consequences' you don't need a fucking psycho burning down a house from which you can only save one person. Especially when your actions during the game can be perfectly fine to avoid any kind of bad move. After all, you can reject Leah from the start (which leaves you as a victim of a rapist) and keep your dick in check while trying to build a healthy relationship with Megan & Melissa... just to be forced to choose to save one just because. What were your bad actions then? It's drama just for the sake of drama, and a cheap one at that. AL is not a well-designed game, no matter how touching the mourning part of the game can be for a lot of people. In my opinion, if you want to show that cheating is not the way to go and 'actions have consequences', Become a Rock Star is doing it infinitely better

this myth that betrayal is punished lives a life of its own

If there is a game in which betrayal is not punished but encouraged, it is this one.

of the 3 LIs, the path to two of them presupposes a blatant and inevitable betrayal, one of these betrayals is apparently rewarded by a trouple that is then denied, and this would happen anyway

 

[EtKnell]

I don't know, I think DPK does a pretty decent job of warning you what to expect. I've only played to ch 4 in BaDIK, but that was enough to know that in both stories characters are pretty clear early on that they've cheated/been cheated on and it was NOT okay, so it makes sense that if you cheat on them in the middle of the story, they won't be okay with it. I think it's more the F95 norm is to expect that your goal is just to get with as many of the girls as often as you can, so DPK's stories are definitely a deviation from that. I feel like that makes his stories a bit more realistic in a sense (ofc still way overdramatized compared to what most people go through irl, but still), and I think that is really what his goal is. And I think it's part of what makes his stories so good and so powerful.

Yeah, I agree with you, he really does a great job, but that's not really my point. Both here and in BaDik you meet those nice girls at the beginning, and you have literally no reason to reject their advances, they are cool, you're cool, and it's going to work, so why not, right? You might miss your chance if you don't do it. And then, 10 minutes later there's another one, and another, and another. Less vanilla, more up your alley kind of girls, better looking, funnier and likeable, but you already hooked on the first one, and she's so nice and really in love with you, so you just got yourself a situation when you either brake a poor girl heart and dump her, or cheat on her. You can stay, but you really like that other one, right? She's there for the taking. And yeah, being in that situation feels like shit, and does work as intended, but for the first couple of times, then you're stuck with mentally slapping your own hands and feeling bad for going in the first place, or going all in and screwing pretty much everyone who has a vagina. All of that stuff above wouldn't be a big deal, really, but it looks intentional, and a bit forced and overused. I dunno, just something that was spoiling the fun for me, because I can't help but feel that I wouldn't have gotten myself in this situation in the first place, if all of the cards were on the table from the start. Anyway, as I said before - not really a deal breaker, just a bit irritating

 

[aaaaaaaaaabaaaaaaaa]

That's right. In order to show 'actions have consequences' you don't need a fucking psycho burning down a house from which you can only save one person. Especially when your actions during the game can be perfectly fine to avoid any kind of bad move. After all, you can reject Leah from the start (which leaves you as a victim of a rapist) and keep your dick in check while trying to build a healthy relationship with Megan & Melissa... just to be forced to choose to save one just because. What were your bad actions then? It's drama just for the sake of drama, and a cheap one at that. AL is not a well-designed game, no matter how touching the mourning part of the game can be for a lot of people. In my opinion, if you want to show that cheating is not the way to go and 'actions have consequences', Become a Rock Star is doing it infinitely better

You can't just try to boil the story down into 1 trope like that. The end of AL is just as much about the 'shit happens' trope as it is 'actions have consequences'. You're totally right that it feels unfair that player choices have no impact on preventing the fire or being able to save both , but there's a lot shit that people have to go through in real life that they didn't get any say in or do anything to cause to happen to them. Thinking a person has complete control over everything in their life is delusional (to be fair, avoiding responsibility for your actions and always coming up with excuses isn't healthy either - you need to be somewhere between those extremes). In rl, sometimes you just have to accept that shit happened and figure out how to come to terms with it and move on, which is what the characters in AL do (in the good endings anyway). That's what makes AL a good game - the realism that even when you 'win', not everything goes the way you would want it to in a 100% fairy tale world, along with the realistic reactions/emotions/personalities of the characters - not 'cheap drama'.

 

[Jumbi]

"Unjustly put through an emotional wringer"? When I was in... my early teens I read a Dragon Lance novel (Dungeons & Dragons book) and one of the main characters died. It is the only book that I've read where I have cried. I don't hate the author for making me care about the fictional character. I don't hate the author for deciding to kill off that character. The fact that the author made me care so much about the character that I cried at their death means they did an awesome job of letting me connect with them.

I think I read that book as well during my teenage. I always liked fantasy narrative. If my memory serves me well, there was a female character by the name of Gwyneth, who actually was a silver dragon. Good times.

 

[moskyx]

You can't just try to boil the story down into 1 trope like that. The end of AL is just as much about the 'shit happens' trope as it is 'actions have consequences'. You're totally right that it feels unfair that player choices have no impact on preventing the fire or being able to save both , but there's a lot shit that people have to go through in real life that they didn't get any say in or do anything to cause to happen to them. Thinking a person has complete control over everything in their life is delusional (to be fair, avoiding responsibility for your actions and always coming up with excuses isn't healthy either - you need to be somewhere between those extremes). In rl, sometimes you just have to accept that shit happened and figure out how to come to terms with it and move on, which is what the characters in AL do (in the good endings anyway). That's what makes AL a good game - the realism that even when you 'win', not everything goes the way you would want it to in a 100% fairy tale world, along with the realistic reactions/emotions/personalities of the characters - not 'cheap drama'.

That's right, real life is shit, and that's exactly what I don't want in a game. In a game I want agency, I want to be able to beat the game, not being forced to get a bitter ending as the best possible outcome. In my opinion it is cheap drama, yeah, because it's the hardest hit you can ever suffer but it's presented in a too much convoluted way (a psycho nurse who rapes you and get obsessed with you and then try to kill all your beloved ones, all of that is very 'realistic', yeah) and you're forced to feel bad about a choice you didn't have any sort of control about (and sometimes you can't even make that choice). You are forced to see how your character is ruined because he couldn't save one of the girls when you, the player, never have the real choice to avoid that: so, if I don't really have the choice because the game never allowed me to have it, why should I feel bad for my 'decision'. Simply put, I don't like to be forced to feel bad (neither do I like to be forced to see how my MC falls in love for someone against all my choices, that's another game's big flaws that needs to be there just to amp up to the max that big unavoidable shock). That's when I just pop out from the immersion because once the initial shock goes away and I tried to rationalize the feelings and the plot itself I just felt cheated and tricked by game's dev, and I don't like that feeling. Then sure, some scenes are emotionally superb (that one in Melissa's path when you and her are just sitting on Liam's house while he's slowly bringing in new things is top notch from both artistic and storytelling point of view) but I just weren't there anymore.

tl,dr - a good (although a bit over the top) drama story for a book or a movie, not for a supposedly choice-based game

 

[Tor7]

tl,dr - a good (although a bit over the top) drama story for a book or a movie, not for a supposedly choice-based game

It's about the choices...

Spoiler: Dating/Sex Choices

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Spoiler: Demolish Him

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Spoiler: Liam

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Spoiler: The Major Choice -- DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN'T FINISHED YET

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Our life is full of events and people that we have little or no agency to control. You have control over your actions and reactions and sometimes, there are circumstances were even that control is taken from you. This game shows just that. It certainly is not like other games where you are the hero and everything you do turns to gold, but that doesn't make this game cheap or bad. It's just not the ego inflating wish world that other games create.

 

[moskyx]

It's about the choices...

Spoiler: Dating/Sex Choices

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Spoiler: Demolish Him

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Spoiler: Liam

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Spoiler: The Major Choice -- DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN'T FINISHED YET

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Our life is full of events and people that we have little or no agency to control. You have control over your actions and reactions and sometimes, there are circumstances were even that control is taken from you. This game shows just that. It certainly is not like other games where you are the hero and everything you do turns to gold, but that doesn't make this game cheap or bad. It's just not the ego inflating wish world that other games create.

You could have just quoted my first sentence and end it there. It's obvious we look for different things in games

 

[Tor7]

You could have just quoted my first sentence and end it there. It's obvious we look for different things in games

LOL Yeah, true, but then I wouldn't have written a 500 word post with 20 different spoiler windows. Where's the fun in that?

Actually, we probably have similar tastes in games. This one is just different from every other VN I've played, which is also where some of the novelty is from. It's a refreshing change.

Regardless, Happy Playing!

 

[Hippity Hoppity _]

is there a way to play this on iOS?

 

[anonykun]

pretty damn good