- Jan 3, 2021
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EDIT: Please take this for what it is, constructive criticism. I'm not here to dunk on your work or make you feel bad, but nobody is served well by pulling their punches during honest critique. I was an Art Major in college, that's just how I roll.
Well, so far I'm up to the MC and their 'mom' together in the bath, and it's just mediocre so far. The premise is alright enough, the conceit of the MC's subconscious as an illusion that not only can they perceive, but effectively acts as their own personality, is fun. But that's really the most the game has going for it.
Besides that, the writing is fairly bland. It technically hits Tier 2 status, but largely lacks real style or creativity, while having some technical issues. I largely group the writing for these erotica games into 3 tiers, with higher tiers being generally more technically competent and typically better written and (for me anyways) more enjoyable. Tier 1 would be dialogue only, a game where almost every line on screen is someone talking; including entire lewd sequences that amount to characters just moaning back and forth to one another or saying out loud how horny/excited they are. That is the least technically proficient writing, and Tier 1 games are an instant pass for me; I don't have enough hours in the day to waste my time reading that level of drivel. Next up is Tier 2, which is dialogue plus internal monologue; you can read character's inner thoughts. This allows for more skilled writers to be creative in how they build their characters and describe situations. Like anything there are gradients, and this can be done more or less skillfully, but I do consider this the bare minimum level of writing proficiency for me to continue with a game past the 5~10 minute mark, and Depth's Revival does clear that threshold. Tier 3 would be all that, plus flavor text. Descriptions of the world, the setting or scene, actions taking place, all outside of a character's inner dialogue. Stuff like describing how a location smells, or makes a character feel, or events that are happening; basically a solid 3rd person descriptive narration. This is what you need to do to take your writing to the next level, and it is a bar that few games manage to reach; but the ones that do make this shortlist tend to be the ones setting the gold standard for this sub-genre of amateur created erotica games (I'm talking about Being a DIK, Our Red String, City of Broken Dreamers, Casting Director, Seeds of Chaos, Kingdom of Deception, Pale Carnations, Now & Then, etc.).
There are moments when some personality can peak out and make itself know, typically with Serena's dialogue and the her banter with the MC, or the maledom interactions with Imogen. But even then the best parts I saw never got better than 'great', and it often fell well short of that. There are some technical issues, where a good proofreader or editor would be helpful. Instances of repeating the same word multiple times in quick succession, things that perhaps look okay when you are writing them but just sound awkward when you actually read them back. Examples like this...
You shouldn't be repeating 'lover' like that so close together. There are a number of ways to fix this, from rewriting the sentence, to using word replacement. The simplest fix would be to just replace the second 'lover' with 'beloved'.
"It's a lover's duty to take care of her exhausted beloved."
It means the same, but changing that one word drastically improves the flow and readability of that sentence. I'd still probably opt for reworking the whole sentence, but there are instances of this sprinkled throughout where even changing just a word or two would be a noticeable improvement.
As for the overarching meta narrative, it leaves something to be desired. Prime example here is the relationship with the MC's teacher, Mrs. Bell. I don't buy it, at all. I get that you want to have lewd scenes early and often, and there are better and worse ways to do that. Creative context opens up a lot of options, including one you made use of a few times, the old fan-favorite that is the dream sequence. It allows you to do lewd stuff, with little to no lasting effect on the narrative; allowing you to show the goods for characters that are otherwise on the track to slow burn (another frequent trope used for this is the perennial flashback). The problem with Mrs. Bell is that you chose to go with a pretty vanilla love route, and it just does not work within the context. The time frame is far too short for the level of love and devotions being opined, and crucially, in our time with the MC they simply haven't put in the work for it to be believable. Our interactions with Mrs. Bell are very limited. Your first encounter is just chatting in the parking lot, then later presenting your homework in front of the class with a visible boner (to which Mrs. Bell does little else but blush). Next day she is just present to teach class, no noteworthy interaction at all. The next day you meet her in the hospital after rescuing her missing daughter. The very next day after that, you're meeting her afterschool and you are fucking her while she spills her heart out. Maybe this wasn't as noticeable in the moment, releasing updates over months of time, but it is jarringly abrupt coming at it with a fresh set of eyes.
I get that the MC rescued her daughter, so that is a bit of set-up and pay-off within the established narrative. You could still have a lewd scene here, including sex, but you can't frame it like they're star-crossed lovers when this is the sum total of their interactions we get to see in game. Mrs. Bell could absolutely be down to fuck the MC here, but context is key. This could have been a fun instance of the teacher having the hots for a student, being physically attracted, but being unwilling to cross that line and indulge in the taboo. It is then the daughter rescue that pushes her over the edge and is her excuse to act on those urges, all under the guise of rewarding the MC (because she isn't ready to just give into her lust/feelings this early). You could then keep building upon that, having fun toying around with the 'will they/won't they' aspect of their nascent relationship. Will one of them eventually call it off? Will they fall into a mutually comfortable friends-with-benefits situation? Or will one of them try to push for something more serious? If given enough time and instances for Mrs. Bell and the MC to interact and build upon, you could eventually have the foundations for going down the path of hopelessly infatuated star-crossed lovers. But in this version? You simply haven't earned it. Not only that, but because the narrative hasn't earned it, the act of turning up the love dial to 11 is itself an immersion breaking experience. These characters aren't acting like how normal people should act given the circumstances, and it jettisons me right out of the experience; and that is both bad writing and bad narrative structure.
Onto the visuals, there are a lot of games using Illusion's Honey Select 1/2 for their assets. While I have seen it done worse, I've also seen it far, far better. In general the game lacks any interesting or creative shot composition, the game is mostly flat static shots of the world from what is presumed to be the MC's perspective 99% of the time. You'll occasionally get a 3rd person shot to illustrate another character's view, but they're few and far between. There really aren't any establishing shots to introduce characters, locations, or even scenes. Such a narrative framing really limits the game visually, and the presentation suffers accordingly. Now a lot of game do this (including games that I like), but that doesn't make it less boring.
Technically speaking, my biggest gripe has to be the awful default penis the MC is stuck with. That thing was never intended to be seen without the Japanese-state required censoring, and it shows, cause it doesn't look like an actual penis. Lets be real, it's ugly and awkward even by dildo standards. I know that good looking penises exist for these assets, in the form of mods presumably. Compared to The Anomalous Dr. Vibes...
...or Pale Carnations...
...this thing just isn't cutting it. Again, it would be an unsettling looking dildo, let alone a piece of actual human anatomy.
Also in other scenes when you are completely naked, like the Imogen maledom sequence, you can clearly see that the cock and balls are separate parts not attached to the body.
Again, they were never meant to be seen without the pixilation filter overlaying them, so the developers at Illusion didn't bother to put in the work to make the genitalia all one seamless unit with the body. They're separate pieces, floating next to and intersecting each other; like a piece of plumbing coming out of a wall with a pair of fuzzy dice hanging off it.
You do however try to pose your characters and have them react the to conversations, events, and the general world around them. That's good, but it could be better. A lot of it is reused over and over again, especially that pose where a girl hides both of her hands behind her back. I suspect a lot of these are stock poses within Honey Select (and I know all of the lewd animations are). More variety would help spice things up and stop the game from looking so samey.
There are also some questionable sequences, like the fight with Toni's posse while rescuing Melinda. So you get rushed by Jimmy alone, and with Serena's prompting you sidestep to the left, with the idea being to set you up for a counter attack. Fair enough. How did you stage this visually?
What is that? Going from the first to the second frame, you wasted time and effort to square yourself up after the sidestep, which would cause you to not just lose momentum in every sense. Not only does it make little sense when you think of it, visually it also breaks the flow of the action. It's like in a movie when you have a cut in a sequence of someone shooting a gun at someone, and they are on the right of the frame while face and firing at a target on the left side of the frame. To maintain flow of the action, if the next cut shows their target, then the characters had better be reacting to shots coming from the ride side of the frame. If they were to return fire, they had better be looking and shooting from left to right. If they are ducking for cover, they better be dodging bullets coming at them from the right side of the frame. It helps you keep sense of relative positions during an action sequence. What he have here isn't quite as bad as doing a right-to-left action followed by right-to-left reaction, but its the same principal.
Things get wonkier moving from frame two to three. Jimmy whiffs with his right punch, and the MC is awkwardly twisting with his left arm raised and his right lowered. Why is this awkward? Cause he's winding up for an uppercut. An uppercut that needs to go under and around Jimmy's extended right arm, if it has any hope to connect with his face. WUT!? Dude, the MC's left arm is already raised. The thing to show in order to maintain the momentum you do have (and the smart move to boot), is to hit Jimmy with a left hook. Continue with the line of motion, follow through with the left arm being raised. Continue to twist the torso (as was shown in frame one), and use that momentum to bring the MC's left first into Jimmy's overexposed face. Frame three should be Jimmy getting laid out (face first) from a left hook after the MC dodged to the left, after having let Jimmy's charging punch pass him by harmlessly.
All in all, the visuals are adequate. They're not so bad they take me out of the experience (except for anytime the MC's dick is front and center, and the fight choreography), but there is also plenty of room for improvement.
So in summation, it's been a pretty average experience. It isn't so bad I've stopped, but I'm not sure how long it'll keep my attention, and I've not yet seen anything that would have me recommend this game to someone else. There are plenty of other games that cover these particular kinks already, and just do it better. The only thing novel going for it is the self-actualized subconscious illusion that is Serena, but that alone isn't enough to raise the experience (so far) above mediocrity.
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