VN - Ren'Py - Her Last Piece [2024-09-10] [SpiceMerchants]

Good art, good story, but the game is VERY short.
The total gameplay is only around 7-10 minutes, which leaves you wanting more, as there’s almost zero content to explore.

The download time itself ended up being longer than the game, which was quite surprising and a bit disappointing, especially considering the potential for more development.

Despite the quality in terms of the visuals and storyline, it’s hard to ignore how brief the overall experience felt. It’s almost over before you truly get into it, leaving much to be desired.

This is just the first chapter, but I am already quite invested. The lonely, evil and powerful queen/sorceress and the servant/underling dynamic has always been one of my favourites ever since I read the Black Company. I am excited to see how the relationship develops depending on your path.

The art is great for what it is. A detailed animated sprite during dialogue, with dedicated CG's and animations for scenes. It's a formula used in a lot of AVN's and I think it's done well here. It allows much faster development time than if every dialogue scene is getting unique CG's. The actual scenes themselves are hot and very well drawn.

The dialogue is competently written. The general writing and worldbuilding is fine so far, but we will have to wait for more chapters in order to truly judge it. This is more of an intro than anything. It will be easier to judge paths and such when we are a few updates in.

The only issue is there are some bugs. On two separate occasions making a certain choice caused the game to exit to the gallery without warning. The two times it happened to me was choosing to peek in the bathhouse, and when the Yandere path scene at the end of chapter is about to trigger. Both of these times the game quit to menu and opened the gallery. This isn't going to adjust my score because this is the first release, but if it doesn't get fixed later down the line it likely will.

Gets a point for character artwork (not the environmental art), gets another point for some imaginative flourishes.

The rest kind of sucks.

If you don't like femdom (I do not) there's nothing in this first chapter for you. The romance route has a couple of cute exchanges, but no real content. The replay screen at the end of the chapter was completely blurred out for me.

The writing is mediocre. The info dump at the start is pretty awful, I was so bored. Remember how Lord of the Rings info dumped by showing the conflicts and wars, the failure to destroy the ring breaking the trust of elves and men? Yeah, not a fucking atom of that. Just dry explanation of the history. Even the MC's journey to the castle is info dumped, instead of dramatised.

And it's so short. Unbelievably so. I was done in 20 minutes.

The voice acting is really amateurish (high quality my ass) and I just skipped through once I had read the dialogue. It was distracting, and a waste of effort imo.

The model isn't even changed to have their mouth open when they talk, it's so lazy. Environments are also extremely limited, there's very little detail, and the actions you take don't change what little you can see, despite the fact you're supposed to be cleaning things up.

This is all style and no substance.

If you aren't into femdom, there's nothing for you here. Just don't bother.

surprised this game had a VA, great story that isn't dragged out and I enjoy the mystery aspect, makes you unsure of certain actions. cant wait for act 2

The game itself has great visualizers, wouldn't mind some more but I understand that it will just increase the length of production. The main girl is very seductive, almost like a succubus.

I think they should also add more side characters that might create some interesting dynamics between the main character and main girl.

Incredibly charming art, alongside some great animations and effects. The backgrounds and character design are amazing.

The female lead has voice-acting, something that is a plus, and although there could be some improvements it is generally nice to listen to.

The story is very interesting despite the little we've been shown. The contrast between what we're told and shown leads to an uncertainty on how to progress and act.

Was faced with some bugs (mainly being thrown to the gallery after every scene), but considering that at the time of writing this was the very first public release, it is understandable to be faced with such issues. Hopefully in time they will be solved.

All in all, for a fairly short (30 minutes - 1 hour) experience, it has proven itself to be more than worth the playtime due to the evident quality of the game.

Awaiting more!

A very short experience that I'll be reviewing as a demo, but for a demo it's a very high production value experience that offers a very welcome addition to the surprisingly rare genre of romance-based femdom.

Art is probably it's headlining attribute, it has some very fantastic base art that could carry a VN by itself as just stills, but they've augmented it even further with live2D animated sprites that bring a lot of life to the game and what surely has to be at least some manually animated CG with how detailed the breast groping was. There naturally will be a drawback to this as that much production value in each CG is going to limit how many scenes the game can offer, but they've seemed to plan around this by keeping the scope of the game small and focused.

Voice acting is also quite well done and is definitely augmentary to the experience. I've seen a few other games try to hit above their league by adding voice and you end up with some girl whisper reading on a bad mic that you have to feel bad about muting just to enjoy the game. Here though you're getting an acceptably professional experience by an actor that's actually emoting to the script. My only slight gripe is that I think perhaps a bit more of a sultry mature voice would suit the character better, but that's in the realm of personal preference.

Story is a great premise, and as I said is a setup I'm a big fan of. My only gripe is that there's really not any conflict to it at all. She pretty much does nothing but be nice to you from the beginning and practically wears a sign on her forehead that she's lonely and attention starved, so there's not really an arc of warming a cold heart or anything. The protagonist literally got sent to his death by a culture he himself describes as a hellhole, so he has nothing better to go back to and there's really no reason to pick any resist or escape options other than just the curiosity of seeing what they do. Since that can't really carry a story unless they go full slice of life, this is gonna make any evil stuff they introduce later feel less like a twist and more like a bait-and-switch. Perhaps they could meld some of the yandere route's elements into the main story thread more, so there's a bit more darkness to drive some early conflict (and to keep the femdom aspects alive in a route that could easily end up so romantic that she just turns into a tradwife). Or maybe they have a really good plan here that I'm not seeing yet.

Overall though, great experience thus far. Being a demo it is very short, and it's limited scope makes it seem like even the fully finished game is going to be overly short too, but until those fears get realized I can only really review it as the demo it is, and as a demo I found the quality high enough to balance out the limited quantity. I will be watching it to see if it can keep up with it's own promise or not though.

All I can say about this one is: that's something I've always been looking for in games of this type and it has been doing it excellently so far. Exemplary promising, I would say. (ignore this part, i'm just a bit lazy rn and in need of more characters to post this, but it's real good. worth to try)

Really enjoyed this game, I'm a big fan of the cliche of "Evil and Misunderstood" Love Interest stories. I Immediately fell in love with the characters. I noticed Arvenia has two sides her"Romantic Side" is extremely cute and wholesome, you definitely get that warm fuzzy feeling while playing. Her other side her "Yandere Side" came out in a few scenes I'm interested to see how the dynamic between the two sides play out in the story.

I'm my opinion the Main Character is likeable as well the game gives you pretty much a blank character. Depending on choices though not Major choices it does give you a feel of choosing certain backstories to mold your character.

I also love the darken concept of the game, more of a goth feel if you will. The art design is beautiful as well the vibrant colors are soothing to me. Pacing of the story doesn't feel rushed, I like when games uses a smaller scope on a handful of characters to focus more on the story without having all those outside interferences (A lot of side characters, excessive dialogue, etc.)

Only bad thing for me is that it was over to soon, I got so engrossed into the story and characters i was sad to see it go. All in all great game so far can't wait to see what happens next. Best of wishes to the Dev team.

Review for [2024-09-10]

Incredible start to a project

You play the role of a poor man caught stealing, who was forced into trying to kill the Dark Queen. As you reach her castle you are captured, and forced into her servitude.

The game does a great job at making the queen's character feel likable, but at the same time manipulative and highly dangerous. The game invites you to ponder if she legitimaly craves affection after centuries of isolation, or to doubt everything she says, as she might have more sinister plans in mind.

There's a surprising amount of worldbuilding as well. The kingdom you come from, which is painted as hell on earth, blames the war with the queen for the misfortune of its citizens. As you learn her perspective, it's clear things aren't so black and white.

There are 2 paths you can follow depending on your choices: the "yandere" and "romance" paths. They work on a point based system, but you only get to see your points at the end of the chapter. Currently, only 1 lewd scene varies between the two, with the yandere version naturally being more femdom focused.

The presentation is fantastic, with great art, smooth Live2D animations and a fully voice acted queen. Good use of sound effects also enhance the experience.

The one issue this game has right now is a bug where it sometimes kicks you back to the gallery screen. Seems it's tied to the skip function. You can work around it and reach the end of the game, but if you don't want to bother, you might want to wait for the patch. It's being worked on, so I'll assume this will get fixed soon and won't deduct any points from the rating.

Overall great start, best of luck to the devs.

Excellent game for its first chapter!

Positives:
- Nice animations and art style.
- A bit of freedom when it comes to choices and resisting.
- Excellent voice acting.

Things id like to see:
- CnC femdom

Im looking forward to the next chapter!