VN - Ren'Py - Fog of War [Ep. 5.5] [Story Machine Studios]

A really great demo. Render quality is good, a great variety of characters, clearly an effort has been made to make each character look quite unique. Music and sound effects are paired well with their scenes and the animations are well done and work smoothly into the story. The characters introduced so far have clear and distinct personalities and interact with each other naturally showing a nice mix of comedy and serious moments.

Its nice to see an AVN with slightly older characters who have some life experience behind them rather than some fresh faced 18 year olds. The story premise seems new and interesting. Trying to leave one life behind while building a new one is no easy task and creates so many opportunities for engaging story telling and branching.

Really looking forward to where the story takes us from here and excited to meet the rest of the cast of this story!

Renders - Very nicely done models and settings, models don't look like carbon copies as is common place in other VNs. A couple of tiny issues such as lighting changes at random but nothing game breaking in the slightest. Plus we have an MC with a decent fit look, compared to the more common somewhat skinny look.

Story - It's short, a demo as stated but it hooked me in very well, I want to know what will happen with MC. True it may not hook everyone, but it plays a nice tune that I look forward to dancing along to.

Animations - Couple animations that run smoothly, and loop nicely, nothing janky about it as is seen in some other first time devs.

Sounds - Music is fitting and worthwhile imo. Sound effects match up very well. A-10 go BRRRRRRRRRRRRRT.

Grammar - Little shaky in places but fixed once brought to Dev's attention, were they not fixed would likely be 4 star. But majority have been fixed to my knowledge now.

Dev - Dev has been very receptive to feedback, and changes tend to be made rapidly based on the feedback that is received.

Giving a demo 5 Stars, looking very forward to the continuation of the story, and to see how he improves upon the solid foundation he has built up for it.

Fog Of War by Story Machine Studios/Meat Shield

It’s just an introductory demo for now, but it does a nice job at giving the player an idea of who the MC is and the troubles he will face later on in the story.

Usually not a fan of military themes/genre but I did like how this game actually shows some of the emotional baggage that could come from military life.

Renders look great for such a new dev and will only get better as time goes on.

Overall, based on the current content and its potential, I’m giving it a 5/5 rating and am excited to see where this developer will take their story.

The art is good but for a story centred vn (as the dev says) there's nothing really interesting... Up until now it seems like it'll go a very boring and generic Micheal Bay ex Soldier movie kinda route like Jack Reacher or Jack Ryan or Terminal List or something similar in which the mc being a one man army will stop a sinister plot with a little bit of sex peppered throughout... The demo and the first episode do not really muster up any confidence in the story... The characters are extremely flat and boring... The game looks visually good but is otherwise extremely hollow.