VN - Ren'Py - Completed - Foul Play [Final] [Bandit Visual Games]

I enjoyed this a lot

Its not perfect but pretty fun little game

There will be some spoilers ahead, you've been warned.

I really liked the MC, she was super cute hehe altho way too innocent for her own good.
The art style, while not my cup of tea, was still good. The writing in general was fine and the sex scene (there is just 1 scene per route) was very hot (assasin route one less so)

Now, my main gripe with the game:

There are 2 routes you can pursue, the boss route (Cynthia) and the assasin route (Winter).

I much prefer Winter as a character (she is so fkn cool and funny and pretty and ... you get the idea) but if I were to choose a route and consider canon, i would go with the boss route.

The boss route was way better written imo, much more believable and just a much better ending.

The assasin route wasnt as well written as the boss route and it was much less believable.
Im sorry but i hardly think the MC would have done a 180 turn in life after meeting with Winter a few times. She just said fuck it to her passion being as a detective, ignored the fact that Winter is a killer (her motives matter not, she is still a killer), literally threw away what she worked for her entire life just to be with Winter ...

And to top it off, she kinda said screw you at everyone else when she left with Winter. Cynthia, a very good friend of hers got hurt in the process and she didnt seem to care all of the sudden, at least, she didnt care enough.

Its a shame that Winter route was written this way as i liked winter more than Cynthia ...

Still a great game, nice fun story, nothing complicated but a fun ride nonetheless.

Final version

A great yuri VN of novella length about a detective story and slow-burn romance with an overload of adorkableness.

The MC is an adorkable, starry-eyed, mostly office-bound detective with no sexual experience who has been transferred from an anti-drug unit to an investigation into high-profile serial killings. She ends up in budding lesbian relationships with two cynical, bibulous, commitment-avoidant but also nurturing LIs with an aversion to cuteness: her workaholic, tempestuous and irritable boss and a violent, psychotic, profligate mystery woman who is obviously the assassin. So the MC is placed between a tsundere and a snapping psycho, but the characterisation of the MC and the LIs has much more substance than those archetypes. The writing team was not afraid of building up and maintaining tension and clearly has had a lot of fun playing with tropes and stereotypes like Subarus and U-hauling. The result is an entertaining and often light-hearted but overall serious story. Plenty of other devs could learn from the competence of this team in writing and editing.

Eventually the story splits into two paths depending on a couple of obvious choices and the MC's relationship with the LIs. There is distinct difference in the writing between the boss path and the assassin path, each path has one sex scene. The former largely continues the tone and constellation of the first part of the game, with a number of very cute interactions with the LI. The latter has a split between the MC and the LI going their own way or the MC joining the NGO of woke murderous Robin Hoods led by an SJW messiah, with both having a shift in tone and plausibility compared to the early game. The new characters in this segment feel Mary Suish and the mastermind is quite similar to a white saviour except for the colour of her skin. The organisation's willingness to murder innocents, as seen in several bad endings and mentioned elsewhere in the game, is suddenly dropped when it is most relevant. I personally thought the writing on this route was of a lesser quality, for example with the assassin's sex scene having more pitfalls that are common to erotica writing. I found the sex scene with the boss a lot more engaging. The sexual content is by the way rather vanilla on both routes.

The MC's overbearing mother has also been written less well. She rejects her daughter's coming-out in a way that totally reeks of religious conservatism, but her dialogue is worded in a purely secular manner. Her text also overuses the word "stupid" that is more similar to a petulant child than to a supposed adult. As a result her presence feels strangely sterile and unreal. On the other hand she is clearly a less important character, so this is honestly not a great deal. The writers also deserve credit for not fast-tracking this part of the story into the sappiest redemption arc.

The game's art mostly uses the classic combination of busts and backgrounds. The team has clearly paid attention to stylistic consistency. The selection of music and sound effects has been done well too.

The VN is surely worth checking for yuri fans who can live with few sex scenes. Coomers need not apply. I think the assassin's endings were a little uneven, but I think the game certainly deserves 4 stars.