Ren'Py - Abandoned - Caged [v0.05] [Natasha]

  1. 3.00 star(s)

    VixnSkye

    First and foremost, the game itself worth 1 star for me in its current state, the only reason I gave 3 is because I see the dev is active here and listens to feedback.
    The game however is a disaster in its current state (0.05).
    - Sandbox: utterly useless. Nothing happens anywhere. There is very minimal interaction in the locations, and the majority of times there isn't any at all. It's the typical "figure out where you have to be at which time of the day to make SOMETHING happen at all" kind of sandbox. And since everything is linear to the point I played the game (move to the second apartment, starting the uni), only one action moves the story at all into any direction.
    - Branching: until the point I played, there isn't any. Not even during the conversations. The game is mostly about finding the ONE place at the correct time that makes the story move forward, then just watching how things play out from that point. Seriously, you have no interaction at all during the scenes. So five minutes trying to figure out what to do, then ten minutes watching how the series of scenes play out.
    - UI: it's attrocious, plain and simple. The main font is hideous, hard to read, and doesn't fit the game at all. The screen elements are awful. The phone picture is not a transparent png, so it has white pixels all around it. The location icons have a border with some pattern which is terrible. The interactions with elements are bad. Like you have to hit the "home" button to close the phone (there is no other way), but there are times, when you are forced to do something in the phone menu, so the home button doesn't work.
    - Visuals: they look seriously dated and lifeless.
    - Story: so far pretty generic, it didn't keep me interested enough to stay until something noteworthy happens. In the core it feels a typical corruption game with the typical boring, useless protagonist. I'm not against corruption games, but I'm bored with the trope protagonist type we have here.

    All in all, I can really appreciate the haste from the creator to make the game better than it is now, but to me it's beyond repair.