VN - Ren'Py - Cyberheart [v0.3.5 (Extra 1)] [DiPeppo]

Looks good and the premise is interesting, the problem (for me) is that it very strongly leans into two of my biggest pet peeves in these sorts of games.

The first problem I have is protagonist monologue. He's constantly talking to himself, a part of this is world building and another seems to be establishing relationships, (both of which could be done with conversations with the other characters and be considerably more compelling for having it done that way) but another part just seems to be waffle. I've finished chapter one and am halfway(?) through chapter two and I'd say at least half of the lines have been the protagonist talking to himself. With one notable exception I find protagonist monologue very unengaging in vidya.

The second is that I'm constantly looking at the protagonist's face, like if you count time in game and percentage of faces on screen at any one time the protagonist's face would probably be on screen a good 75% of the time, and of that something like half of it would be a case of only the protagonist's face is onscreen.

Both of these combine in such a way so that it doesn't feel as I'm playing as the MC at all.

If you can live with the two things that I can't I'd give it a go, the writing quality is reasonable, the art direction is quite good (especially for a Honey Select game) and the characters seem like they will be compelling enough from what I've played so far, but I strongly suspect you are in for a very slow burn.

What's here so far is really good especially graphically. The girls, despite using honey select, look like nothing I've ever seen done so far with honey select. Even the MC looks unique so that's a huge plus. The story is also pretty unique and interesting and that's another huge plus. The biggest downside so far I would say is that some of the writing is ehhhh. Especially around Meredith. I get that she's supposed to be kinda a tough nut to crack or whatever but it's not so awesome constantly being badgered by her. I also wish there was some choices in the dialogue instead of just going through the choices of what to do during a event. You just kinda go through the list like do this first, this second, this third etc. There's no real choice really, just a list of chores you have to do in order to see all the scenes. Other than that I also really have to praise the aesthetic of the game. It's very crisp looking and I really like the snow and cozy orphanage look coupled with the sci-fi looking city. Honestly overall a really well done game and aside from a few negatives it's really really promising and interesting.

I'm not a person who likes to flatter someone. So I will comment frankly. I will comment on each section.
First, at the opening of the game, nothing special or impressive happens. I know that opening lines are often used to introduce characters. But it would help if you still left some impression in terms of the plot. Make it engaging from the start so players don't want to take their eyes off it. To be honest, the opening made me quite sleepy. MC is awakened by a cute and friendly LI. MC goes out into the hallway and meets another LI with a different personality, then meets another LI with a different personality and age... it sounds so familiar...
Next, the middle of the game. This is the part where the story begins to develop and the relationships between the characters develop. MC and the girls' lives were going peacefully when suddenly an unexpected incident happened, a strange girl was lying in the snow. Things are pretty good when you know it's time for something to happen. This part is quite curious because I don't know what's going on with Irene. In general, this part is both peaceful and mysterious, making players want to find out what happens next in the story. Pretty good. Near the end of the game, the storyline is still slow but not too bad.
Then, other factors affect the game.
+) Art: 7/10
It's definitely good, but there are also a lot of bad renders. There are quite a few parts where you don't know how to position the shooting angle, and many parts where the lighting is not reasonable, sometimes I found it too bright in a few frames. The character design is okay for me, at least it doesn't overlap with other games' characters.

+) Music: 6/10
I like a lot of music in your game because it's very relaxing and peaceful. But many articles do not. I don't mean that the song isn't good, but that it doesn't fit the situation at that moment in the game. 1 For example, right at the beginning, the MC meets Meredith in the hallway. You're playing melodious Christmas music and then suddenly you switch to a song that seems to be suitable for a sad mood (seems like Mere is a bit sad right now). But have you noticed the fast tempo of that song? Like that kind of song is in the "running" mood.

+) Personality of each character: 4/10
Building a character's personality is not too difficult. But that's when building 1 or 2 characters. If the main character is 3 or more, each character has its own personality and makes many players like it, which is not easy at all. Let's see, you've built characters with basic personalities. Maybe the game is new to version 0.3 so the characters haven't been exploited much yet, so I understand. Because I'm not impressed with any of the characters yet. The thing I see most clearly in common among all the characters is that they are friendly, cheerful, and always help others. It seems like everyone has the perfect personality. This perfection doesn't always make a character interesting. Furthermore, in your game, it seems like everyone is perfect. In addition to focusing on building the female characters' personalities, you should focus on the MC as well. And one more thing, in my opinion, Irene's construction is not very good, I feel like Irene is Remi 2.0 (no offense intended).

+) Dialogue: 7/10
Not good but not bad either. It's okay for me

In conclusion, considering the current time, it's not bad. Certainly more than the tons of trash AVNs out there. Because I see there is enthusiasm in your game. I hope the plot developments will be more dramatic, the current plot is quite lackluster. After all, the game world is futuristic, how can it be boring, you know what I mean? I want to see the "cyber" in your world, in your plot.
Anyway, Good luck with your game! I'll see how you do with version 0.4

Nice storyline for Game, Just completed Chapter 3. Expectations have grown more from the Developer. Hope to see the update soon as i am very interested to know how the story unfolds in future. Anyways, thank you and best of luck to developer.

What an amazing game! It has it all, a nice and compelling story, entertaining interactions and beautiful visuals. I am excited to see how this game plays out in the future. I would highly recommend this game to everybody.

Version: 0.3 - 2023/10/13

Update: After talking with @DiPeppo I decided to remove some concerns from my review. Let's just say they're not concerns anymore. The rating was unchanged.

Cyberheart is off to a great start. The game's UI and general design are top tier, and its renders are detailed and smooth (for a lack of a better word). I always appreciate the inclusion of a configurable textbox, and the game's font and font size is clear and readable.

The current content is fairly short, and there are no lewd scenes yet. I suspect that it will be a while for lewd scenes to appear, so it's unlikely this will become just a porn game. Instead, Cyberheart is setting up the characters, their personalities and attitudes towards each other.

I have no idea what magic is worked on the renders, but they're absolutely gorgeous. They look much smoother and well-lit than most HS2 games I've seen so far.

Cyberheart has music. Subjectively though, I don't like vocal tracks as background music. They tend to distract me from the text and scenes/transitions, breaking immersion. The instrumental tracks are fine, and entirely inoffensive.

My biggest criticism would be that some male faces look fairly feminine. Again, this could be an artistic choice, or a limitation of the engine, I don't know.

Finally, and I hope this is a character flaw the MC grows out of. The MC is a Nice Guy. Meredith is frustrated, and the MC is patient with her. Yet, despite her verbal abuse (perv, moneybags, twerp), he'll still go and repair her box speaker (granted, the player can opt out of this entire event). Even after offering his help, she still insults him. I wouldn't have minded an option to reply with "If this is how it's going to be, fix it yourself.". It's almost hard to believe his patience with her behavior hasn't grown thin over all these years.
Another example is when the player goes shopping with Irene and Kat, his reasoning is "I should be there helping out with baggages and whatnot.". I think a better motivation would've been to observe Irene. She's strange and a little weird, curiosity is a great motivator here.
In short, I hope he becomes more assertive, more so towards people he doesn't know as well.

Call 911 cuz this shit bout to blow up!!

Pros:

1. Renders are beautiful! Like seriously massive improvement from the first release (this review is edited for v 0.3]
2. Story focused and taking time with realistic building up
3. Overarching mysterious plot
4. Music is fire and very chill
5. Writing is decent and humorous at times
6. MC acts like a normal person. Mc doesn't have constant inner monolog about banging everything that moves.
7. UI is clean custom-made to match game's theme. It also has options to view lore, gallery, character information etc.
8. Dev is super active on socials and alot of shoutouts to other games.

Cons:

1. None. Everything is really good for a game at this early stage.

Verdict:

1. Pick up if you like story infused with natural buildup. There's no lewds yet cuz the game is very much still at worldbuilding stage and slowly building relationships.

Not a lot of content so far, but what's there has the potential to blossom into something great.

Everything exhibits a high level of quality from the characters, story, renders, music, and UI.

It's left me wanting more, and it's definitely something to keep an eye on.

Review Version: v0.2

Overall Score: 97/100

Value: Infinite

As is standard with all of my reviews I will break it up into 4 distinct sections each covering different aspects of an AVN.

Note: I've purpose left out audio quality (e.g. SFX, ambience, soundtracks, etc.) due to how minor of a role it plays in a VN. While some developers take advantage of audio in fantastic methods, overall it isn't as useful of a metric when rating.

Story
“Cyberheart” is a VN that serves as an example of what a developer should strive for in terms of quality. Immediately from the start we’re graced with a philosophical question from French philosopher Albert Camus: do we like Winter? While most of the audience will brush this simple question aside it perfectly encapsulates the overall theme of the story alongside giving them the power of choosing. To put it succinctly, DiPeppo has revealed the driving factor for the story as melancholic, but we have the power to manipulate how it will end.

The plot of “Cyberheart” follows a traditional three act structure that every successful modern piece of media is built upon. To avoid spoilers, we’ll only discuss the beginning act (Act I) despite hints for the midpoint and climax being hinted at towards the end of v0.2. The key aspect behind the exposition phase of Act I is the lack of lore/info dumping on DiPeppo’s part that would easily overwhelm most of the audience as they try to commit every factoid to memory. Instead the lore of the world is given to us throughout Ch. 1 and Ch. 2 through natural methods – such as conversations between MC and Katherine that explain why the he lives with three non-blood relatives. Additionally, plots elements such as the state of technology and morality of each person are conveyed regularly in both conversation and action without the reliance on a codex to give a ten minute explanation. Overall the plot is well fleshed out and takes full advantage of the tools used by veterans in the media industry.

Speaking of level of technology, that ties into the broader discussion of the setting in which “Cyberheart” takes place in. The overall world that the story takes place in is heavily inspired by light science fiction as holographic technology and genetic manipulation are somewhat developed. DiPeppo also makes an effort to indicate that, while this tech does exist, the overall technology of the world isn’t too advanced with a scene involving a shopkeeper delivering a package to the MC. Generally, the audience will find themselves right at home as the world takes on a familiar aesthetic while incorporating realistic scientific elements. Not much else can be said as 95% of the first two chapters takes place in the same location, leaving much of the world unexplored.

Characters
This section always takes such a long time to write… anyways, enough complaining, time to discuss the five main characters so far!

The protagonist of a story which tries to incorporate player agency is difficult to get right, but not impossible as games such as the ME Trilogy and The Witcher III managed to implement this exact method of storytelling. As it stands, the choices made by the protagonist do have some measurable impact on the story as is evident by the game tracking your relationship with the other characters. The player agency aspect also means that it’s difficult to gauge the quality of the protagonist as they’re a dynamic character with wildly different personalities given who is in control. However, the MC in this case has a fleshed out background similar to Commander Shepard in the ME series, and as such will make choices that loosely follow his morality, which in this case leans towards neutral – altruistic. Additionally, we also start to see the early stages of character growth as relationships change (either for better or for worse) between him and the other characters.

The next character on our list is Remi, and I’ll start off by saying she is personally my favorite. Remi’s overall personality and aesthetic is one of innocence and kindness as she constantly tries to improve the relationship between her sister and the MC. She generally tries to see the good in people and avoids judging based on initial appearances, qualities that are typically rare due to how easily they’re exploited by less than reputability people. It’s apparent early on that Remi serves as the catalyst to a future relationship between the MC and Meredith as she typically takes on the advocate role for both. As for character growth, it’s difficult to gauge how her character will grow as the story progresses due to how early it is. My best guess is that her growth will center around the maturation process as she grows from a little girl into a young woman, which could provide a satisfying resolution to her character arc. Overall she’s a well written character with depth and attention that encapsulates the skill on display by DiPeppo.

Meredith is written in much the same way as Remi is regarding the level of depth given to her character. However, the key difference between the sisters is the general pessimism and distrust Meredith has towards Katherine and especially the MC. Her behavior is well justified when given the context that her and Remi live in a foster home wherein no one wanted to take both of them, hence their ages. Her character arc will most likely focus on her slow transition from negativity towards a more optimistic and open minded character depending on choices made by the MC. As with Remi, Meredith is a well written character with depth that makes her relatable in some ways. A genuinely great character that I can’t wait to see more of in the future.

Katherine serves as the pseudo mom of the story and plays to the whole “mom” kink that some in the audience have. It’s slowly revealed throughout Ch. 1 that Katherine inherited an orphanage from her parents and genuinely gave it her best to take care of all of the kids under her supervision. The key issue revealed is the slow death of the orphanage as the MC, Meredith, and Remi are the last of the children to live there due to lack of adoption. To make matters worse, the orphanage is only kept open at the generous donation given to Katherine by the MC via his inheritance. Additionally, it’s revealed that she overworks herself to the point of exhaustion trying to take care of the remaining orphans despite knowing it’s an uphill battle. What’s being done here is a masterful setup for Katherine’s character growth later in the story as she learns to cope with the new reality she finds herself in. How she does so will most likely be revealed in Act II or Act III as she plays a fairly large role in the story.

The final character introduced in the current version is Irene, a cybernetically enhanced human with a tragic backstory. Her character serves as the catalyst for future plot development as her very existence is a product of intervention by the antagonist of the story. Irene’s personality is best described as stoic due to her cybernetics and how she obtained them. The role her character fills is evoking emotions from the audience as she was originally supposed to die due to an accident that left her in a coma. However, she survived due to a procedure which replace much of her body with cybernetics, including portions of her brain. She is essentially the deuteragonist of the story as she is the inciting incident for the entire plot. We’ll most likely see her character growth revolve around regaining her humanity through the rest of the cast. Overall she competes with Remi in terms of who my favorite character of the story is, seriously well done DiPeppo!

Visual Quality
“Cyberheart” implements a pseudo manga aesthetic that feels refreshingly unique. Each character is given a level of care and detail that ensures each looks unique without delving into ridiculousness in design. The benefit of a limited cast results in more time invested on the fine details of each character that ensures each on fulfills everyone’s personal preference. Take for example Remi, she has a similar facial structure to Meredith, and she has distinct differences that make her unique. These two are the clearest example of the level of quality a character has aesthetically when given ample development time, and serves as an excellent reason to limit the cast of characters to a few full defined characters.

The overall aesthetic of the renders is the clearest example of the skills DiPeppo has. This is a bit difficult to explain as each render implements a method used in visual arts called “triangular composition”. What this means is that each scene is set up in a manner that you can form a triangle between each of the objects in a scene so that the audience’s attention is centered. This type of approach to visual arts ensures that the artists is forcing the audience to focus on the aspects of the scene which matter rather than focusing on the contextual imagery. More simply, DiPeppo is utilizing a technique which manipulates the audience into viewing the important aspects rather than feeling overwhelmed or unbalanced. It’s a method executed spectacularly throughout Ch. 1 and Ch. 2 that showcases the raw talent the artist has, and is worthy of the highest praise I can give.

Additionally, the UI in “Cyberheart” is both functional and fits the aesthetic defined by the them. A primary example is the choice menu utilizing a clean, geometric design that is the hallmark of sci-fi media. Additionally, menu items are animated in a way that further adds to the futuristic aesthetic between the highlighting menu text and background geometry. I could easily spend the next several hours detailing how impressive it is that DiPeppo managed to build a UI that adds to the aesthetics, but I’ll leave it short by saying that he deserves so much praise for his implementation of it.

Lewd Content
And now we move onto the section that probably 90% of everyone skips to… lewd content! To save both myself and DiPeppo the hassle, there is NO lewd content implemented as of Ch. 2. The way I’m defining lewd content is any scene which involves NSFW content such as nudity, masturbation, or generally any interaction between two characters in which nudity is involved.

Act I will focus primarily on relationship building and plot development with mild nudity. We’ll see much more in the way of lewd content in Act II.

Please avoid cluttering the thread/reviews about the lack of lewd content.

*This section, and by extension the review score, will be updated at the introduction of lewd content.*

Conclusion
I was genuinely impressed with the overall quality of “Cyberheart” as I typically avoid the type of aesthetic it implements. DiPeppo exhibits both the skill and dedication to not only see this story to its end, but solidify himself in the upper echelon of developers in the AVN space. The beauty of a VN is the hybridization of traditional media content (e.g. movies, TV series), and novellas, a fact that DiPeppo takes full advantage of by implementing the skills necessary to excel at both mediums.

I highly encourage everyone who enjoys DiPeppo’s work to support him on Patreon and/or leaving a review here. He’s fully deserving of a much larger audience than what he has now!

Score Breakdown
Story: 25/25
Characters: 23/25
Visual Quality: 25/25

Total: 73/75 (97.3333%)


*Edit: Fixed formatting at top and under "conclusion" .*

You know when you feel something was written for you? Like the author just knew what you needed, even when you didn’t.

I went into Cyberheart knowing nothing about it - I hadn’t even read the synopsis. I’d decided to try it after frequently coming across posts and comments written by the dev and thinking, "ha, this person’s cool, maybe they make cool stuff". And still, I was more than pleasantly surprised.

From the get-go, this AVN does not waste your time with overwhelming exposition. Instead, you are introduced to sparse details here and there about the world through the MC’s thoughts and his conversations with other characters. Speaking of, I can’t emphasize enough how much I liked the depiction of each character, including the main one. They all feel like real people with fleshed out personalities, and I only realized how attached I was becoming to them by the time the main character pretty much friendzoned the girl I liked best in his thoughts - and I don’t mean this in a bad way at all, it made more excited to play more of the story to see him change his mind in the future.

I am not that familiar with HS games, but I will say I enjoyed the character designs and think they’re all very beautifully done. Each of them looks and shows emotions in a different way, as it should be, which is surprisingly unusual to come across, and very much welcomed.

As for the plot, it hit me right in my nostalgic heart, reminding me a bit of Chobits, yet with enough lore of its own to stand on its own two feet. For all the wholesomeness the game depicts, the glimpses I got at a certain character’s backstory did tug at my heartstrings and made me want to protect them. All in all, I think the pacing of the game does a great job of balancing its themes.

I really have nothing to complain about here and, believe me, that’s a first. I did wish to have more of the story, but I understand developing takes time and from what I’ve seen, the dev makes excellent use of theirs.

I should also add that I just joined DiPeppo’s Discord server in the middle of writing this review and, damn. The community is just as wholesome as the dev themselves.

Reviewing a very early version of the game (0.2 as of now). Yet still, the potential of this AVN is incredible.

Nice renders, but also an engaging plot, well crafted characters, and a story that surely will give us great things in the future.

I'm usually wary of recommending games so early on their life cycle, but with Cyberheart I'm making an exception. So far, it's that good. Let's see what the future holds for this one.

Review for v0.2

From these first two chapters alone, it's easy to tell Cyberheart is being made by a competent developer. Everything from the characters, renders, and dialogue down to even the smaller details such as music and the little animations thrown in are all tying together really nicely. A level of quality already exists that you don't see very often.

I debated holding off from trying this as there is no actual lewd content present in this version, but I figured if I didn't like the story I wouldn't stick around anyway. Still it's something to note as sex scenes are a rather big part of AVN's after all. I can only hope they end up matching the quality of the rest of the game, but I'm not exactly worried.

I neglected to read the overview of the game and went in blind, so I was sort of waiting for that story hook moment to really draw me in. But it did not come in the first chapter. Honestly, it was almost strangely... normal? Which threw me off. The first chapter took it's time to sort of build up the starting characters and setting, which I didn't end up minding.

It seems a big theme of this game is finding purpose. Not only for the MC but the love interests he's living with all suffer from the same sort of problem. The caregivers dwindling orphanage, the older sister's inability to move on, the younger one growing up. You get the idea. So it all leads me to wonder what that purpose is going to be. Something that pulls them all together perhaps?

Chapter 2 is where the answer is introduced. We happen to stumble upon a girl on the run from dangerous people who has been subjected to horrible experimentation. Queue title drop.

I'm glad the game went in a bit of a different direction than another self aware android, because it has been done before. This feels like a bit of a fresher take. Now while this has certainly caught my interest, I am not yet fully hooked. This is where the missing star comes in.

To put it frankly, I need to see more of everything really. The characters have been put together well enough so far, but have yet to show me that glimmer that causes me to get attached to them. I need to see where the plot goes a bit more. I need to see how the sex scenes and the more romantic moments get put together. Which ultimately means I just need to see the game get developed more. Given some more time, I don't imagine it will be hard for me to get fully on board with the game.

This is definitely one to pay attention to. I don't think it would be a bad idea to hold off for more updates, but I can see this turning into quite a treat in the future.

First release of this game was pretty damn ambitious and unique in many ways, and surprisingly Chapter 2 showed us even higher quality in every aspect.

In terms of visuals, game is really beautiful and pleasant, pretty damn nice usage of lighting as well. There are only a few short non-lewd animations so far, they look pretty clean and smooth.

All the characters have distinct personalities, and what's very important, they all have unique and beautiful models. As a person who played quite a lot of HS games, I found characters in this AVN really fresh-looking compared to what I've seen earlier, especially MC's model.

Music, this aspect of the game is truly beautiful. The choice of songs for each scene and sound effects for pretty much everything what's happening on the screen is amazing. It perfectly sets the mood of the scenes and left a big impact on me personally, especially the last scene of current update.

The main hightlight of this game I'd say is UI. Very unique and clean UI, I don't remember seeing something like this in a long time. Slightly tilted buttons of choices, in-game "phone" or I don't know how to officially call this feature where you can see the information about all characters you've met, Glossary and list of all Music in the game, pretty much everything looks very interesting and unique. The Main Menu and Settings menu looks also clean and pleasant, you can also see time that you spent in the game, as well as your IRL time there. As I already said, this is probably the most intriguing and interesting thing in this AVN, I can only applause.

Writing feels good and mature enough, it has quite a few references and moments where you can either laugh or feel sad. I don't know what else I can add, overall Cyberheart is very promising and ambitious AVN.

I highly recommend this AVN to everyone, especially to HS enjoyers.

Not a lot of content yet but it's off to a great start.

Story has me hooked already from the cliffhanger at the end of the first part.

Characters are attractive and it looks like they'll be quite varied in the long run as well

Renders are already looking good, but since the dev is already remastering the first part I can only imagine that they'll be top tier moving forward.

5/5

Review as of Chapter 3 extra

My only issues with the first release were maybe the visuals in some scenes, all of those have been reworked and improved. The extra chapter I originally thought wasn't necessary but it was beautiful.

Keep up the good work, you've got a gem here.

Not much to the game so far but based on whats there, the plot is pretty interesting. Seems to be more going on than what you see upfront. The girls are nice, the sound work is nice too. Looking forward to more, great potential here.

Excellent presentation. The UI is super clean, and shows a lot of effort. A lot of the renders are really nice too. There isn't a huge amount of content just yet but given the effort that's been put in to basic things like the menus and ambient character animations, I expect that given time this will be something of a visual gem. (It does need a bit more content, but these things take time and this is an excellent start.)

My main point is that this is definitely a high effort game, and worth trying to see what I mean. Hard to say at this stage where the story will go, but what's there at the moment is enough for me to stick around to find out. Very nicely put together.

Unrelated to the game itself, but the dev is also a super nice guy, doesn't act like a diva, and engages with his community. Big plus imo.

The UI is amazing, I've never seen anything like it. Not a lot of content right now but I'm really excited to see where this one goes. One of the girls already caught my eye, I have a feeling she's gonna be best girl xD