VN - Ren'Py - Happy Trips [v1.0] [CyberLewdStudios]

Alright, the game starts with a cute sprite of the Dev telling us to go easy on him/her(?) because he's still getting used to this whole AI art thing. Let me tell you something, you mf-er, you're doing absolutely great. That's probably the best AI art I have ever seen. All characters are looking absolutely fantastic, the art is impeccable, and you did a genius trick of blurring the background to focus on the character sprites sometimes.

Usually when it comes to AI art games, what we see is either the characters being part of the scenario, which is, no sprite, or a sprite that is more or less standard, not much movement, but different expressions. Well, the Dev managed to give life to his sprites, so that's surely a very good thing.

Regarding the story, that may be the first "negative point" I'd like to talk about. Don't get me wrong, the idea of getting fired by a running-on-red company and getting your job stolen by AI is old in real life, but quite new on Visual Novels (bad economy has been coming after us even on pleasure times), so very nice of the Dev to come up with something original. The one thing I'd like to punctuate is the absence of a narrator, which is almost vital for most of these games, and the lack of a "movement description" which is, to say what the characters are doing, where did they go, what is going on, etc. We're relying too much on the art, that is absolutely great, to situate what exactly is going on besides the dialogues. Yes, you could fill this narrator gap with art, but... isn't it too much work?

I feel like in this matter the game was a bit rushed, because there's dialogue, but there's no narration. Also, that backstory with Emily, as soon as the MC is sitting on the table with her, could be a little bit more explored. At points, it feels like we're just being bombed with new stuff with little to no context. Also, it's always nice to check the punctuations in the text. To see if there's anything missing or out of place.

But, the Dev told me in the beginning of the game that the writing part is also new to him, so we cant' dig too deep on that. What we can do, instead, is recognize the great effort he's putting on this game and surely congratulate him for the great work done so far and hope that he keeps it up!