Reviewed: v1.17
I remember reading a comment by the main dev, probably somewhere in this very thread, where he mentioned somewhere along the lines of being inspired by old school adventure games like Leisure Suit Larry and Monkey Island. I've honestly never played those type of games, but considering their reputation as basically puzzles, I can totally see the influence.
You have several general stats and love and lust stats for specific girls, which will determine what choices you can pick. You can upgrade some of them by finding items in the world, but mainly it will be determined by what choices you choose. Some choices are also only open based on a choice beforehand, meaning there are basically branching routes, but not in a specific sense. However, none of the routes or story itself seems mostly finished at its current state, although there is still a decent amount of content storywise. As a result of its pacing though, there aren't a lot of lewd scenes as one might expect. The gameplay loop involves moving around the game's setting and interacting with the girls to start or do quests. You can "talk" and answer a few questions, but it's very barebones and basically unnecessary currently.
As you've probably already heard, the quests tend to be really grindy. They almost all involve having to grab some items somewhere in the world, combining them with another item, sometimes multiple times, and then interacting with an object in a room. Almost every interactable has two options, "inspect" or "interact", even doors so you'll have to tediously have to click on "interact" everytime. Inspect may be useful, but for us coomers the quests tend to be puzzling or convoluted like you're playing a hardcore point and click adventure game from the 90s. I'd say using "inspect" is pretty much useless because the hint system will carry you through almost 100% of the time. It almost always helps but there are a few times in which it's not specific enough, such as assuming you already have an item when it should have told you where to get it. Even then, the quest itself may feel too long than it should be.
Despite those flaws, I still really like Another Chance. In my opinion, its strengths are too great to stop me playing and keeping tabs on its development. I love the unique art style and the design of the girls, appreciating each one of them. I think the scene CGs that the game currently has are great, although I wish the sex scenes were properly animated instead of fading between two or three frames. What I do think is really top notch though is the writing.
The writing feels well written and natural, well for a lewd game at least. Although the quests are tedious, I otherwise like the pacing of the writing. They may be point A to point B, but it's not like next thing you know a girl is automatically on your dick. It has enough build up that feels rewarding when you finally get into the sex scenes. This is especially if you made the right choices or leveled up your stats beforehand, which add a bit of replaybility since you can basically branch out. The writing can be very funny but also be surprisingly deep. When doing quests for one girl, I'm actually getting my heart-strings pulled, but sometimes just laughing my ass off.
One more thing I'll say is that the current rate of updates is one quest a month, which is kind of slow. These quests may feel grindy, but they aren't that long either. To conclude, I think Another Chance as a game is unpolished and its aspects don't really feel validated. The devs have recognized this and have plans to improve it later, although at the current rate it'll probably take a long while til that starts. In my opinion though, it's still really worth trying out due to the excellent art and writing. I don't know any other game like it.
