VN - Ren'Py - Abandoned - DeepDown [Ch. 2] [StanLock]

The art is really great. I think the AI snobbery is ludicrous. How many people are whining when a dev uses familiar Daz models or HoneySelect or whatever? This is original, it looks good, and it keeps games in development. Would hand-drawn stuff from professional artists be better? Probably. Are you going to pay the thousands it would take, given the low sales of these types of indie games? No. Just a terrible reason to downvote games. In five years, people are going to be rolling their eyes at this kind of criticism the way we do about criticism of vertical video.

Anyway, the writing didn't seem below average at all, the tropes are familiar because that's what most of the target audience wants, and I'd like it if people trying to convince themselves that indie h-games are high art would go find some other hill to die on before they put another diverting game into the ground.

I hate to give this a low rating, as the game has some good qualities and I trust the dev genuinely wants to create something truly special.

The visuals are good and the basic premise--while far from original anymore--certainly has potential. But the story points are quite derivative of other games and I struggled to believe anything about April, the MC. Her roommate, Faith, is also her "best friend," but they really don't seem like best friends. Or rather, they don't seem like best friends the way most girls are best friends. Male best friends are often buddies simply because they enjoy doing the same things, but beyond that may not know each other very well. Female best friends base their friendships on personalities and shared stories. These two characters don't seem like best friends at all.

I think if StanLock got some writing help, he could make this into something good.

Even though it's AI, the art looks kinda nice. Mostly.

Ok, with all the positive out of the way, let's talk about the bad stuff. Literally everyting else.

Seriously, just play it for yourself, it's not that long (2 chapters at the time of writing this review). What bothers me the most is the writing. The typos i can handle, but the interactions between characters are terrible.

There's a bunch of completely nonsensical decisions and reactions, even with this little content. If i had to describe it, i'd say it feels like a non English speaker in the US, trying to wrestle his/her way through a conversation. Who's the non English speaker, you ask? Everyone.

Should the creator ever read this: fix the writing. Learn about story structure and character development. Those are your biggest flaws.

The blonde has nice titties though.

Good game, it promises a lot.
I'm surprised that there are people who rate this game so low when such games are scarce and more with good drawings as this one has, with a good story that has left me with enough intrigue so far, and with characters that although they have not yet deepened much seems that it can go far.

I really only rate games that I think are worth supporting and show the creator that he has to go ahead, especially if it is in these tags as exclusive as female protagonist and dating sim where EvaKiss has an absolute hegemony, so my full support to continue with games of this style. <3

DeepDown [Ch. 2]

I saw the characters and instantly had to play this game.
But ohh well, the excitement faded away pretty quickly.
The character models are the only good things in this VN, and they are AI generated.
But sadly, even the art is pretty half-assed when you look at the "sex scenes" that consist of 1-2 still pictures, where the models look way too inconsistent, or you'll even see a black screen like pretty early in the game.
The premise is decent, but the storytelling is just piss poor.
Characters lack depth and the writing is just bad and it all feels like a lazy porn trope.
The MC is a virgin and she can open her ass for a BBC in like 5 minutes of the game, even though the tags say there's corruption.
The girls look great, the premise is decent, but the execution of it all just feel rushed and lacks effort.

showing promise, love corruption stuff. i really hope improves the writing a bit so that there's more depth to characters and more reluctance for the MC to do naughty things. art style is great. keep up with consistent updates. long way to go but perfecting the craft pays off.

v0.1

Very solid start. The art is unique and nice, I personally love it. The faces could be a bit more expressive and poses a bit more natural but you can't have everything. AI generated art has its limitations. I would be willing to tolerate it, especially if it would mean faster updates.

The story itself has been done before, but that doesn't mean it's not good. Your typical good girl living with a roommate and going to university.

Worth trying out if you like female protagonist games.

As of version 0.1, I think this game would be more like 3,5 out of 5 stars, but I decided to round it up to 4 stars, let me explain why.
There are more and more games popping up, using AI, with very mixed results. Plus, often you can see straight away that it's AI, because it uses the same styles that are very typical and overused.

I give a lot of credit to the dev for using a more unique, cartoon-like style that is pretty fresh! And dev also clearly puts in some effort to clean up the stuff and fix fingers etc. that often looks busted with AI.
Yes the faces and postures are a bit stiff, they could be more expressive, but I don't mind it too much.
Same goes for the dialog, something feels a bit amiss there, it's not bad but not really naturally flowing (hard to explain).
However, those are all things that can be improved over time and I really hope this game will be continued, I'm curious "how far April will fall". And that other devs take it as an example that AI art doesn't have to be the same half-assed cobbled together garbage over and over again.

P.S.: I'm a boob lover and would love to see the option to "upgrade" April in the future, however it would be cool if it really is optional, as I understand that some players will prefer the more natural look

So after reading the one star review, I decided to do something I normally would not do. Give a review to a 0.1 version.

While I can understand the point of the art, it is still miles better than many games on this side. At least the body types differ and the protag has normal sized breasts. I really, really, really dislike oversized tits and around 70 % of the games I wouldn't because of that.

And why should a porn game have to be realistic? Besides I have a friend who is rather gorgeous and was still virgin with 22.
I think as long as the rape has consequences in future updates it should be fine.

So while I would normally give 4 stars for the game (it's after all a very early version), I add one star in fairness and for the normal girl body types

The problem with this game is not the AI art, because AI can create masterpieces in one click. The problem is that the dev decided to minimise the AI's query requirements and asked it to generate extremely mediocre and faceless images instead of beautiful pictures. It is decidedly impossible to understand his motivation. I can forgive if a artist is bad at drawing. That's forgivable. But I can't forgive deliberately degrading the quality of art.

Playing this game I stopped distinguishing between characters. They are exactly the same! The only difference is the colour of their hair. It's confusing, and then it becomes uninteresting to empathise with them.

The plot is ridiculous. A beautiful adult female student is a virgin. Even the incels don't believe it anymore! Her friend's behaviour is unbelievable. Asking her boyfriend to fuck her friend? This is the plot of a cheap 70's Deuchland porn movies .

Nice drawings, good figures
Story and caracteres are Excellent
It looks very promising so don’t change anything
Continu in this way
Still wainting for more And don't abandon this project
All in one Super !