This is a review for Part 1 version 0.8.0 and Part 2 version 0.9.9. This was (a) my first time trying this game and (b) a complete play through. If this were an early version, I'd say it has promise. However, at this late (possibly final) stage, it's a mess. I'm giving it a 2-star rating, as it's not unplayable, but I would not recommend it.
The story tries to be clever with the gap in memory at the beginning, but it just feels like a failure in story telling for most of the game and the explanation at the end still has huge holes. Even as a first installment, the story is poorly done. There's also no reason for the mom to take the abuse at multiple time points.
The quality of the renders are fine, but there are a lot of clipping issues, including with clothes passing under skin in normal dressed settings.. A lot of facial expressions are weird and sometimes don't sync up with the emotions expressed in the text. Liquids (e.g. tears) look really strange. The shrink's office is labeled "Electrical Room" on Day 3. The dev also doesn't appear to understand how clothes work. The "animation" is so bad that it makes the game worse, particularly since it's hard to tell when animation is happening with half second pauses between frames or if you're just staring at a static (sometimes blank) screen.
There's very limited audio, and it would be better without.
The game play is poor, which only 2 real choices near the beginning. There are some further choices that change a particular scene, but have not impact beyond. A bunch of choices don't lead to different outcomes at all. The reduction of Part 1's free-roam around the house in Part 2 was a good choice, but there are still navigation choices that don't matter. There are also serious text issues, to the point that it's really hard to figure out what's supposed to have been said and the main character's name changes in one section. Also, unannounced QTEs suck.
The code is a mess, though not the worst I've seen. The dev clearly had a more ambitious game in mind, but the code needs to be cleaned up to remove commented out or non-functional parts, including a bunch of variables. I encountered at least 1 crash and found at least 1 block of code that was unreachable in game, among other issues.
I would hope that the dev learns from this game and the next game in the universe will be improved, but the lack of improvement between Part 1 and Part 2 does not bode well.
The story tries to be clever with the gap in memory at the beginning, but it just feels like a failure in story telling for most of the game and the explanation at the end still has huge holes. Even as a first installment, the story is poorly done. There's also no reason for the mom to take the abuse at multiple time points.
The quality of the renders are fine, but there are a lot of clipping issues, including with clothes passing under skin in normal dressed settings.. A lot of facial expressions are weird and sometimes don't sync up with the emotions expressed in the text. Liquids (e.g. tears) look really strange. The shrink's office is labeled "Electrical Room" on Day 3. The dev also doesn't appear to understand how clothes work. The "animation" is so bad that it makes the game worse, particularly since it's hard to tell when animation is happening with half second pauses between frames or if you're just staring at a static (sometimes blank) screen.
There's very limited audio, and it would be better without.
The game play is poor, which only 2 real choices near the beginning. There are some further choices that change a particular scene, but have not impact beyond. A bunch of choices don't lead to different outcomes at all. The reduction of Part 1's free-roam around the house in Part 2 was a good choice, but there are still navigation choices that don't matter. There are also serious text issues, to the point that it's really hard to figure out what's supposed to have been said and the main character's name changes in one section. Also, unannounced QTEs suck.
The code is a mess, though not the worst I've seen. The dev clearly had a more ambitious game in mind, but the code needs to be cleaned up to remove commented out or non-functional parts, including a bunch of variables. I encountered at least 1 crash and found at least 1 block of code that was unreachable in game, among other issues.
I would hope that the dev learns from this game and the next game in the universe will be improved, but the lack of improvement between Part 1 and Part 2 does not bode well.