A very strong start but it needs a lot more work to be an effective proof of concept.
The dev has clearly put a lot of thought into this game's narrative RPG elements, the dialogue is fleshed out, there are choices and callbacks to those choices, it's all very ambitious.
The characters are well-written and interesting. I wish the dev had signposted more clearly that the bar scene was pivotal for whether or not you romance the furry girl, especially since he has multiple offroads from romancing her (choose not to go home with her, go home with her but tell her you don't want sex) but seemingly no onroad for those who make the ntr-adjacent choice of letting the other guy take the lead in the bar.
The general issue is that, when trying to make a heavily choice-based narrative, you run into a bit of a fractal dilemma, with the amount of required effort increasing exponentially as you give the player more agency in the story. The dev needs to be very clever and deliberate in order to avoid either overwhelming himself with work that can never possibly be finished or getting lazy and undermining the player's choices to the point they become meaningless. For example, regardless of which gang you decide to assist you'll be sent on the exact(?) same mission in the mountains. I get that reusing a single mission with slightly different contexts is a reasonable way to save time and effort, but this would be a perfect opportunity to invest in writing two completely separate missions. The player might not experience everything in one playthrough, but the people who really like your game will play it multiple times.
The current build of the game demonstrates that the dev can put together a linear VN experience, but he's yet to show that he'll be able to competently execute the "sandbox" that most of the game promises to be.
But, concerns aside, this is a far more promising title than 99% of the other renpy games on this site. Looking forward to seeing how it ends up.
The dev has clearly put a lot of thought into this game's narrative RPG elements, the dialogue is fleshed out, there are choices and callbacks to those choices, it's all very ambitious.
The characters are well-written and interesting. I wish the dev had signposted more clearly that the bar scene was pivotal for whether or not you romance the furry girl, especially since he has multiple offroads from romancing her (choose not to go home with her, go home with her but tell her you don't want sex) but seemingly no onroad for those who make the ntr-adjacent choice of letting the other guy take the lead in the bar.
The general issue is that, when trying to make a heavily choice-based narrative, you run into a bit of a fractal dilemma, with the amount of required effort increasing exponentially as you give the player more agency in the story. The dev needs to be very clever and deliberate in order to avoid either overwhelming himself with work that can never possibly be finished or getting lazy and undermining the player's choices to the point they become meaningless. For example, regardless of which gang you decide to assist you'll be sent on the exact(?) same mission in the mountains. I get that reusing a single mission with slightly different contexts is a reasonable way to save time and effort, but this would be a perfect opportunity to invest in writing two completely separate missions. The player might not experience everything in one playthrough, but the people who really like your game will play it multiple times.
The current build of the game demonstrates that the dev can put together a linear VN experience, but he's yet to show that he'll be able to competently execute the "sandbox" that most of the game promises to be.
But, concerns aside, this is a far more promising title than 99% of the other renpy games on this site. Looking forward to seeing how it ends up.