VN - Ren'Py - Captive Consciousness [v0.2.0a] [TinyDogStudio]

There's plenty of bad points to question but I still believe this game is going to end up good if the devs manage it well.

First the bad points - the MC and the girls says some absolutely dumb shit that a thinking person would not. Alice throws herself at you even though she should be traumatized. MC also has a cartoon penis that reeks of insecurity. Renders are decent, but could be better - the rooms are all enormous and everything is super bright. The game feels interrupted by unnecessary annoying summaries on fairly short chapters.

But what's holding it up?

First the choices in LI, they are feminine and decent so far, despite pretty short hair and weird outfits. They have decent proportions on the bodies. Maya's tan lines are a nice touch, even though the first time she mentions them is awkward. I don't love that it seems its going to be forced public sex.

There's clearly been thought put into making an interesting mystery and writing even with the clumsy things they say sometimes so the story could develop well

There's no weird UI choices and forced disabling of elements (a recent common issue)

Really like the game so far.
LI are all good and pretty diverse
Tags are up my alley

One of the only cons so far is the story isn't all that believable but Its an ero game so I dont expect much


Pretty early review but it has my interest.

When writing situations in a story you are trying to make believable you have to ask yourself would anyone do that?, if a girl you don't know just walks into your house says she has no memory but don't call the police or a hospital would your first decision be to let this random person stay, give her the run of your house and support her forever?, the obvious answer is no and once you realize that the game isn't interested in making any logical sense its hard to get invested in the story.

The girl choices are just horrible, cam-girl, angry rude girl, mystery red flag and a married woman.

None of the choices changed any part of the story, all they did do was add or minus stat/character points.

Didn't get any sex scenes as i didn't like any of the current characters.

Story 1/5 (no logic)
Art 3/5 (ok)
Sex N/A (none for me)
Fetishes 0/5 (none)
Choices 0/5 (stats?)
Characters 1/5 (poorly written)

VERSION: 0.1.0
SUMMARY: Very good initial start with good models and story
RATINGS: (out of 5):

1. Models: 4
2. Visuals: 4
3. Animations: 3
4. Characters: 4
5. Story: 4
6. Writing: 4
7. Pacing: 4
8. Content (amount): 5
9. UI & Sounds: 3
10. Lewd & Kinks: 3

Average: 38 of 50 possible points giving a 76% rating i.e. 4-5 stars.

PROS:

1. Nice looking models, love interests and MC look decent. Proportions and looks are all very good (apart from MC's junk which may be a little bit on the too large side, but we can forgive this...
   
2. Overall visuals are good
3. Animations are pretty decent.
4. Lewd scenes that are there are not bad, but because there are not many its hard to rate properly.
5. Choices seem to matter and have impact, though not sure long term as of yet.
6. Pacing is decent, at least a little happens suddenly with Alice's introduction, but generally the pacing seem what you could call normal. Fact that the story is narrated and there is a sense of more time passing than just a day, it does provide for more realistic scenarios.
7. Writing is overall pretty good also and story is intriguing, maybe not totally original (so far) but seems interesting.
8. Amount of content so far is also very good, at least for initial release, which is praiseworthy as many devs provide a thimble of content only on new releases.
9. The UI seems reasonably simplistic and easy to navigate, does have a sandbox feel to it but is not sandbox (thank goodness)

CONS:

1. Animations are not bad but they not smooth and obviously the amount of frames used to generate them are less, so not great, but not horrible.
2. Points based system is a little strange, I am not sure as to the effect here yet, though it seems if you do not go more perverted you do not get to see much of anything in terms of lewd content...which does kind of defeat the purpose IMO for adult VN. This is not a deal breaker and other content can still be good, but we will need to wait and see.
3. While there is music, I am not overly impressed by the selection. I would also prefer lewd sounds and environmental ones like door closing or car speeding away (particularly of emphasis)
4. No real kinks here that I can really call kinks, so that will be left for later review.
5. Minor reference error where Alice is referred to as Hailey in the park walk scene. Didn't notice anything else yet.

FINAL THOUGHTS:
There is not much content, at least in terms of lewd scenes so giving a proper review at least in terms of that is tricky. I will revisit this game and update my review later.

Overall its a pretty decent start, good quality content and I look forward to seeing more, which considering the amount of content there for a new release, im hoping there will be plenty more content in the future.