Ren'Py - Fetish Locator: S&M Studio [v0.5.11] [ViNovella]

Content: Very little content at this stage (0.1.17).

Visuals: Visuals are up to the level we've come to expect. Stacy and AmRose both look as gorgeous as ever, and the MC still looks like a bit of a tool.

Gameplay: Absolutely rubbish. The sandbox feature is absolutely pointless - it could very easily be streamlined in to the standard VN format, and not lose anything. Pointless navigation, considering it's basically "Open map, click location, do X, open map, go home, skip time, sleep, repeat".

Minigames: Yeah, not much to say there. Minigames generally suck in VN's, and these aren't any different. Absolutely pointless, add nothing to the game, or the gameplay, and will just frustrate players.

Overall: The game HAS potential, but dev needs to rethink the sandbox and minigames. Whilst the former could be made to be fun/useful, the latter will almost certainly fall flat, and players will just mod them out.

Current Score: 5.5/10

For V0.1.17

Decent start to a new game in the FL universe. Great renders as always and the writing is good. So far there is not much story ~20 minutes I guess padded by other mechanics.

It is unfortunate that they went with a sandbox game. If they make the studio management strong enough it might warrant a sandbox but for now the story is entirely linear. So the sandbox is only meaningless clicking between story.

On the topic of pointless clicking: why do I need to press 6 buttons to start working the delivery job when it could have been done in 2 or 3. (Yes that does not look like a lot but multiply this across all locations and an entire game and you are clicking 100s if not 1000s of times unnecessarily.

Finally the game contains minigames. This is not everyone's cup of tea so a skip all would probably be good to enlarge the player base. They have been implemented well however and work without any bugs, delays or other annoyances.

Overall I would still recommend the game based on this first impression. That is why I decided to rate the game 4/5 rather than 3/5 for the pointless sandbox.