VN - Ren'Py - I Was a Teenage Vampire Rebuild [v0.7.6] [FatalMasterpiece]

I. Love. This. VN!

I'm not exaggerating when I say this Renpy reboot of I Was a Teenage Vampire is easily one of the best new additions to F95 that I've seen in years. I'm admittedly kind of a nut for 80s aesthetic, so it's extremely satisfying to see an AVN developer so keyed into the late 80s. And make no mistake, FatalMasterpiece nails it.

First and foremost I want to talk about something that hasn't been mentioned in reviews yet...

The title screen...

Just stop here for a few minutes and turn up that volume. The title song is an original track created for this VN by FatalMasterpiece and it's AMAZING!

As for the story... Corey (mc) is a loser high school senior navigating the dramas, the pressures, the bullies, and the cliques of highschool life. Meanwhile the town is on edge due to a series of disappearances and murders. One night, Corey has a nightmare of his friend being attacked by a monster, only to find out the next morning that his friend is the latest disappearance!

I think the story is well structured and the pacing is on point. The opening scene sets the vampire mystery that builds throughout these first few chapters. Each scene feels very well planned. Characters are introduced organically and they each have personalities, secrets, and conflicts of their own. And then there's the pop culture! The inspirations from 80s teen flicks are very recognizeable. You might recognize a little bit of Heathers, Once Bitten, Teen Wolf, etc...

I do have a few criticisms though particularly regarding the visuals:

1) While I love this art style, it seems to me that the outlines are a little too blurred out by the filters. If this art style could be preserved while being a little clearer and sharper, then I think that would be great.

2) There were some animations that were very recognizeable as stock daz animations. After seeing those in so many VNs, it's gotten pretty disappointing seeing them at all. They're awkward, impersonal, and overused. So the more custom animations with more emphasis on natural movement and physics, the better.

3) Some of the sex animations feel too slow and choppy. I think they could be a little smoother and with a higher frame rate.

4) This is more a personal gripe, but x-ray shots are weird and they completely ruin the scene, imo. It would be great if we could have an option to toggle those off.

Overall though, I absolutely love this VN and I can't recommend this enough! PLAY THIS VN! Enjoy the hot girls, the vampires, the faithfulness to 80s aesthetic, and the Wilhelm screams!

I Was a Teenage Vampire is nothing new under the sun..., but what is there is done pretty well, no cloud, no shade.

I enjoyed the art, I think the dev has some skill story-boarding - which, I think, is reflected in the choices of renders that move the story forward. There's a very nice logical flow, visually speaking, which makes it enjoyable to click through.

The text box is an eyesore, though: would be nice to scale the box, or adjust transparency, even font.

Character roster seems decent (lots of attractive women), although, usual tropes can be found here. But, it's good. And, it seems you can 'chase' numerous LIs.

Lewd scenes, I thought, pretty hot. I quite liked the menu system to switch points of view, but, would be nice to have extended scenes with more s3xual positions, and also improved finishers.

Pacing in general is pretty good, although, could be slowed down a touch.

And the ending of current version (0.7.1) was a bit, eh...

End of the day, or night?! I'll add this to my watch list. It's a short list.

The game is great. The setting is nice and the story is interesting. There's a ton of decently made characters with very different personalities so you get a lot of variety in the game. The only 2 issues for me is the look of the game and the pacing of the story. I'm not really a fan of the the smudgy blurry filter. I understand that it makes the game look unique but sometimes it gets too much and distracts from the obviously beautiful character design. The other issue is the pacing of the story. I understand there's porn logic involved but even then things seem to happen too quickly and inorganically. Like for example, there's barely 10 lines of dialogue with the Ackersons before the first proper meetup with them, and on that meetup itself, the husband is like please fuck my wife and the MC readily agrees like it is the most normal thing in the world. I would have liked a little bit of foreground to this where the storyline could've been a little more fleshed out like the MC tending helping Ms Ackerson around the house or something like that before being asked to fuck her.

Feel like AVNs are starting to look the same with their Gen 8 Daz store models? Looking for something different? Well look no further!

Presentation and UI
This one is dripping with unique flair and style, going hard for the 80s setting and retro aesthetics in the music, UI, character design. It's very refreshing to see and play a game that's got such a different presentation. Very promising!

There's a bevy of babes that hit the typical character stereotypes from goth to tomboy skater, rich bitch and teachers.

Writing:
The writing is decent and competent. The story knows how to get from A to B, but wish the MC had more personality and was more compelling, rather than being the typical vanilla protagonist. The MC is a bit of a dork and is a source of comedy where you see him it with a dodgeball, but he's basically faceless as well. He even wears huge sunglasses that further obscure his face.

Also feels like the MC is getting to sex way too quick with some of the ladies and progress feels uneven. If the game is meant to be on the shorter side, then this choice might make sense. However, in this release v0.7.1, the MC is barely involved in the vampire storyline, but he's banging and creampie-ing a bunch of the ladies already.

The steady build up with Clarissa makes sense, the housewife one feels way too rushed. In this release, Savannah the goth has a lot of nice interactions and scenes to the point where you can have sex with her, but it feels way too advanced when the vampire story has barely started.

My advice to the dev: dev needs to fix up story pacing and move slower with the relationships.

Renders and Animations
Renders are heavily stylized in an 80s, VHS quality that feels nice to look at. There's minor animations with breathing, blinking and even some lip movement with low frame animation that adds to a retro videogame feel.

But there's a problem. Most of the lewd scenes have a that stilted retro game animation look to them too. And this might turn off some players.

The game has sex scenes where eventually players just choose from a menu of positions or angles to view the sex scene. The angles and close ups don't look very appealing because the animations are stilted and renders are heavily stylized. This is made worse because there's no sex dialogue at all, so it just makes the sex scenes feel stilted and dead.

I find some scenes without the menu hotter because of the situation, like the Clarissa scene in the closet where there's no menu at all. The animation is stilted, but the dialogue and scenario makes it feel hot and heavy.

My advice to the dev: go for lewds like the Side position sex scene with Savannah, which has the right mix of angles, smoothness of animation, sexy position, facial expression.

My advice to the dev: add more dialogue in sex scenes and spice up the situations and build up to them more. The scene where the MC fucks the housewife to knock her up was set up in a really boring way and was just rushed way too quick.

Rating: Leaving it at 5 stars now because it's very promising

Love the aesthetic, artstyle and setting. The writing is engaging and the characters are interesting so far. One criticism I have is that the font, especially for the internal monologue can be difficult to read.

Just played the 0.7.1 version, and I really like it. Visually the style is very unique for AVNs, and the story even though it's in a school setting is well written and interesting enough to be different. I also like the variety in character models.

The lewd scenes are pretty good. They're a bit rushed into, but since the game is pretty short currently I'm willing to forgive cramming in lewd content.

Really my biggest complaint is I wish the game was longer. I'm looking forward to seeing what comes next.

This is a fantastic start to potentially something very special. It's got that Stranger Things vibe to the story and era while having it's own style. Really enjoying this so far. Has a nice variation of characters, love interests.

I liked it a lot.

The graphics are beautiful.

MC is fitting except for the weird glasses, but since you rarely see his face, it is ok.

Beautiful LIs. Some of them are sweet, exciting, best buddies... There is at least one character for everyone's taste, I think. Savannah is my absolute favorite, but Clarissa and Lorie both are very close seconds. Can't wait to see their development.

The story is actually interesting. Nothing ground breaking, but it doesn't have to be. I'm intruiged where it goes from the last cliffhanger. There are some anachronisms, but in general it feels like there was a lot of effort put into creating a realistic feel for the chosen time.

Sex scenes are my only gripe so far. Instead of using the beautiful graphics to portray different positions and interactions, it devolves into button interfaces. Really a letdown, and made the Ms. Ackerman scene especially jarring.

The map choices with the different locations were ok. I didn't feel lost at any time and I think no event was effect from the order in which I chose to do them. It made somewhat sense to give the option to do them in my own order as well, so it was fine.

Choices seem to matter in terms of relationships to the LIs. Not entirely sure atm who is part of the roaster, but so far it seems the player has a lot of influence there. I'm not sure if it influences the story outcome as a whole.

All in all a great start. It is early in terms of content, seems the core of the story only just began, so I'm looking forward to more

People talk about the 'X' factor all the time (or at least they did in the nineties and oughts, when I was growing up). Well this game has it. It's all the little things that add up to create something bigger and better than the sum of its parts. Not that those parts are bad, per se but they certainly aren't original, especially at the tail end of an eighties revival in mainstream media.

The writing is solid, even good at times.
The girls are pretty, and i give extra extra extra points for having MALE characters who don't just immediately die, become gay or exist only to be an easily toppled pseudo rival to the MC.
The visuals and imagery are great. They really capture the feel and set the tone of each scene instantly.
The music is even better, a (fake) synthesizer tech-beat that feels very high school horror.

But the style. My god the style is fucking banger. The pastiche art work, the offset command prompt box for the text, the fucking overdone visual effects.... it's all just... (chef's kiss).

This is an instant download. Instant support.

(Review for v7.0.1)

I could count AVNs I’ve played that ooze style on one hand. I Was a Teenage Vampire is one of them. Hell, maybe it's even top of that list, if I’m being perfectly honest. The 80’s just jump off the screen at you in this game with the grainy texturing, retro music, and callback fashion and items that the characters possess. They're such great details that could have easily been not included and hand waved away but are there and the game is so much better for it.

The game itself is fairly short at this point in time, but I’m hooked. The beginnings of the story are really intriguing, even if it's not very intricate at this point in time. The girls are all beautiful, fairly unique, and have actual character to them. Even the MC to a small extent has an actual personality, albeit a relatively muted one at this stage.

My only very minor criticisms so far is with the textbox and some of the adult content. The textbox, while really cool, has a bad habit of blocking the view of some of the renders at times and having some hard to read text in certain backgrounds. Maybe a textbox resizing option would help? On the other hand, adult content gets better as you progress, but some of the earlier scenes are rough around the edges and really short. Towards the end of the update, I really thought the scenes had improved a lot.

That's all I've got for now! I'm really looking forward to following along! (Savannah best girl).

Great game, art style is beautiful and unique, all the characters are gorgeous without looking the same, and they all have their own background and personalities

surprising amount of content already even though in game time is quite short

only criticism is how hard some of the text is to read

A nice game. Not a bad story, original visual style, well-written characters and situations. Definitely worth a look. The only downside is a certain lack of real choice, hopefully for now. You can watch a scene, you can skip it, but it doesn't really affect the story yet.

Excellent art and visuals. Compared to majority of games here. This kinda feels like art if you just compared it visually.

Honestly, my only complain so far is the sex scenes. I like that we have sex scenes this early but I can't help but be annoyed for giving choices during the intercourses only for those choices to be practically useless and weird. Like it was supposed to be just camera angles but it just feels out of place ngl. I wish the choices were reserved for potential other scenes or positions instead but oh well.

I will be looking forward for more

I love characters - they are good, each has its own problems and history, they're believable. I also love setting - 80s is one of my favorite. I like the story - its good. Can't say I like sex scenes a lot - they are short and there are lots of text between them. So they do not feel like a main dish, but rather a cherry on top.

This was a surprising discovery for me. The setting, time period, art style and overall story was very enjoyable.

The sex scenes were hot on paper, but the animations didn't run smoothly and were lacking. Honestly, for me, the sex scenes don't have to be technically advanced, as long as they're hot.

I approve of the remake into Ren'Py. I didn't play the Unity version, but Ren'Py is a better choice. Visual novels, on average, are better experiences than sandbox games, and honestly, the game still had a pleasant amount of choice and different orders in which you could do things.

I look forward to the next update.

Thoughts on v0.7.1

Decided to take a chance on this one based on the unique art style. This was my first time playing the game; I had never played the Unity version.

Off the bat I really enjoyed the tone and setup of the game. Classic 80s cheesy horror/vampire movie vibes with a good set of characters and design. I am a big fan of this art style: its refreshing and has quality, despite the retro look. At first glance it seems like things might be too blurry, but after playing the current build I had no trouble with it.

I am not exactly sure why the game got ported to Ren'Py. However that's usually that's a good thing, and it probably made sense here. Gameplay is very standard visual novel with choice-based exploration, and all scenes/routes seem to be fully optional too, which is a plus.

The story so far is simple and intriguing. There's the main plot slowly building that has something to do with vampires (shocker), but there are a fairly good amount of character related subplots and stories as well. It is a bit run of the mill in terms of high school plots that this site gets flooded with, but I'm hoping things take a twist as the vampire stuff starts ramping up.

The characters in the game are well-written, albeit following classic tropes again. I give it a pass considering this is supposed to be a parody of those 80s flicks. The LIs are varied and all have their own charm/persona, so I'm sure many will have a character or two to enjoy.

In terms of adult content, this rebuild has a good chunk. I'd say the quality is slightly above average: certainly not mind blowing, but pretty decent with a variety of angles. There is room for improvement definitely, but I think even in this rebuild the increase in animation quality was noticeable as the game progressed. Also future scenes could definitely use more variety, something to keep in mind.

Overall, I am very excited to see where this game goes. There is a lot of quality stuff in here with a lot of potential, but also some room for growth. I definitely want more people experiencing and becoming fans of this game, so while I am giving this 4 stars, my fantano-style score is a strong 4 to light 5. Good luck dev! (Also Clarissa best girl)