VN - Others - Abandoned - Detective Maria [Ep.19r] [ADULT3D]

No idea what's going on from the start, style changes every next picture.... Not sure if it's missing text from the star, but no way to change anything (sound, etc) in the menu that only opens after the start. It's just a hot mess...

The riddles are terrible, you couldn´t get it with locig only by hit and miss...
And if you miss, start over again, there must be an other solution.
Also some pictures are from 1970/1980...
The game is only frustating, not enjoyable

Version: Episode 17 - Loud as fuck, no settings available, absolutely horrible English. No semblance of a plot, pictures compressed badly and aspect ratios mangled. Compiled as an .exe for no rational reason. Don't waste your time.

In less than 5 minutes of content i experienced 3 major flaws that made the game completely unenjoyable for me:
- Unskippable videos: always a bad choice to inflict this on player,
- Poor writing: i'm not a fan of walls of text nor a native english speaker myself, but dialogues here look like old google-translated porn ads... Definitely a downer.
- Bad UI implementation: it seemed like the intent was having the player to be immersed in visuals by clicking the right "prop" in the image, but the result was me fishing for unaccurately placed/scaled hitboxes around the pic.
TLDR for creator/s: always make scenes skippable, avoid lazy writing and stick to common softwares (like twine or renpy) unless/until you are capable of making an alternative method work.

This review is of "Episode 1, Part 1". (Because naming conventions don't mean anything and that's what comes after "Episode 1" apparently.)

The Good

There's... porn... kinda...

The Bad

Enough has been said about the filter that I feel it almost isn't worth mentioning it... it's bad though. Also the story. It's not as bad as an MTL, but it certainly isn't anything I'd call good.

The Ugly

It's disjointed, the dialogue is threadbare to the point of not being worth reading.

Technically videos load slowly and take their time to start playing, there's two or three different sorts of dialogue/modes/screens for some reason, and you can seemingly only save in one of them, in the point-and click it's hard to tell if it's actually responding or not.

Gameplay-wise there is little to no guidance as to what to do (especially in the point and click sections) and I got about 3 minutes into it before giving up (I'm at some sort of warehouse and keep dying, no indication of what to do or where to click, but it doesn't give a game over screen either).

Verdict

Not worth your time, nothing to suggest it will be in the future. This isn't novel in any way, if you want an actually working game with this "art style" (ugly filter on real porn) give Love and Sex (the abandoned one, not the Second Base version) a shot.

Gameplay:
The gameplay is a series of videos injected between still images and choice dialogs. The play is not smooth. Sometimes it responds to mouse clicks, sometimes it doesn't. Even if it does, the gameplay is still a little uneven. Seeing some old classics like the 7th guest may help you find an idea of how to better implement this kind of gameplay.
Moreover, the game stuck at the (possible) end of the content without warning nor any means to go back to the main menu. This kind of dead-end should be avoided.
Story:
While some unreasonable actions or events, or even highly convenient happenings are exected in an adult game, it is annoying in this. It seems unreasonable that a detective would question only one witness who doesn't give anything and just go home without talking to others. It is beyond belief that a detective will join a threesome with a witness and her boyfriend after they have just about four sentences earlier in a day. The list of such follies is long for a game this short.
Graphics:
Since so many people already complained about the filter, it is superfluous to complain any further. For me, the problem with the filter is that it is applied unevenly. Moreover, if the filter is used to obscure the fact that different models were used, please don't use it. We understand that you are a part-time developer with a near-zero budget to complete the game. Subsequently, such discrepancies are usually expected. Some would gladly find resources for the model you want to use if you ask.

Absolute GARBAGE....

I can get passed the art but it seems so badly coded. First time I played it, it said it was open but I couldn't actual see anything other then my desktop.

After each decision is seems like there is a good chance the game will just freeze. using auto text forward seems to get round this somewhat but its still not perfect.

As for gameplay , utter garbage. This i like something from a bygone era.