Unity - Abandoned - I Was a Teenage Vampire [v0.0.5] [FatalMasterpiece]

Unbiased IWATV Review

Pros
- Unique artstyle and vibe that honestly is a breath of fresh air

-very well designed characters given what daz or common models we usually get in most games.

- Very Fitting music, makes the games feel that much more retro

-Mrs Smith

Cons
-Incredibly Janky controls, anyone who thinks its smooth is smoking bad zaza. You can get stuck in literally every scene and the pathing is all over the place.

-Pacing, you spend more time waiting for transitions in this game than playing the actual game.

-Incredibly lacking in the quality of life department, no music and sound adjustments, no skipping, no saving unless you've already talked to 10 different people. Just a very dated Ui


Overall Its going to take a few more updates to see whether this game is going to be a top 10 title here or just suffer from its own lack of improvement. But don't trust anyone who says they play this game smoothly its anything but.

v0.05

Pros
+ Art looks good. It looks like Daz models with AI filters to make it look hand drawn. Art quality stays very consistent even during animated H-scenes. I've only seen 2 H-scenes and they were both short loops. Perhaps the quality of H-scenes might improve with time

Cons
- Clunky controls. You have to cycle through 5 different options (mouse pointer, use, talk, look and walk) to interact with or move to where you want to go. Typically modern point and click games automatically bind talk/look/move to left click. Typically by clicking an interactable, your character would automatically move into position, then interact. If you want to use an item, you just select it from your hotbar and left click where you want to use it. Here you have to cycle to run/walk, click location, cycle to mouse button/look/talk/use and select the right one just to interact with something. To use an item you have to click your bag to bring up the hotbar, then you click the item to select it, then click the interactible. More steps to do the same thing
- Walk is the default movement speed. Can not set Run to default movement. Must double click to run. Default walk speed is snail pace
- Click boxes for items are too small or don't match up to where the item is on the screen. This seems to hold true for every item you can pick up. I've never been able to pick up an item first try. You have to spam click it a bunch and sometimes, you spend 10 minutes clicking and it just doesn't pick up
- No gallery
- Saves made on the same day all look the same. There's no time stamp or thumbnail to differentiate them

Suggestion
- Rather than Right Click to cycle through interaction options, add hot keys and/or icons (for android) on the screen to allow the player to quickly swap to the interaction type they want

Conclusion
I don't mind point and click games, but I do mind bad controls, difficulty with clicking stuff and no gallery. If these issues were fixed, this game might be 4/5, depending on how good the H-scenes are and if the story improves from the mundane day to day activities at school to hopefully focusing more on that vampire mystery

I love and hate this.

Love:

-The art style. It's so refreshing and has this really nice way of making it easy to visualize the scenes as realistic.
-Realism: This plays out so realistic that I would not be at all surprised if this was just someones memories told in a story.
-Characters: The characters all felt real and not at all likea copy paste of each other. Tropey though, yes.

Hate:

-The gameplay. While the art is great, the movement around and clicking on things was horrible. All the interactable need a bigger hit box, to say the least.
-Sandbox, with no need for sandbox. This operates just fine as a kinetic visual novel imo.
-Frequency of lewdity. The one and only even slightly sexual scene, canonically, is just a shower and locker room changing. While it was very well made and I quite enjoyed it, this was like a cup of water ina desert in terms of adult content. And no, "it'sa demo" doesn't change that. There was plenty of time spent with very little lewdness for it.
-Vampires? Either this is planning to be a helll of a long game or the pacing is just too focused on the normal life aspects.

All in all, I was enjoying it beyond the hated things mentioned.
I wish it well and look forward to a big content addition.

I was tempted to put one star more but I think that there are a lot of work to be done (v0.0.2).
I love the aesthetic and the retro ambientation , is for 5 stars.
The females model are perfets but I think that are all too similars ones to the others.
By other side the gameplay is too slow and for now the sandbox concep is zero, because the argument totaly lineal.

There's a lot to love here. It treats the source era with a ton of reverence, and tries to emulate it like Stranger Things does. There's also a lot of quality of life missing from the early releases. (Exiting the school without knowing where the click point is? Oof. I didnt notice any key that would advance dialogue. No option to allow text speed to be adjusted/skipped.) So for me this is a hard balancing act between the absolutely fantastic look and feel the dev has absolutely nailed, and the clunky painful mechanics that point and click adventure games inherently have. To be honest I loathe point and click and feel like that style of game shouldn't be resurrected, but I'll continue following this simply because the Devs done such a great job with the atmosphere.

Pros:

• Dev absolutely nails the setting he's trying to create. To the point where I'll be devastated if he doesn't slip Rhonda Shear in as an Easter Egg.
• Dialogue is good, it definitely captures the essence of the b movies of the 80s.
• The character models are attractive and well made.

Cons:

• It's unity. (Probably the best environment for this, but... it's unity.)
• Lots of quality of life issues that will hopefully be resolved as the game advances. (Make interactive points a little more obvious)
• Short. GIVE US MORE DAMN IT.
• Point and click. I'd love to see a WASD movement option. (I played Sierras games, they felt fine in the 90s, just like a Model T felt fine in 1918. Not really something that I want to do now.)

I'll update this in a few updates to try to stay current, I don't want this review to stop anyone from trying this, it really is a gem.

I Was a Teenage Vampire [v0.0.2]
The game has potential and I can see that there was quite a lot of effort put in here. But it needs improvements. It's not very far in yet, so if the issues are fixed the game can become good.

Game mechanics: The gameplay mechanics aren't very annoying. They still are to a certain extent. One such issue is that you need to move your mouse on things to know something exists. You need to right-click to choose your actions all the time. This can be improved I think.
An objective/progress tracker would be nice.

Character Personalities: The character's personality looks properly fleshed out. A bit cliche but they still feel like people.

The MC is a bland loser. Perhaps, it will change in the future.

The story: Is somewhat interesting. But there isn't much yet. But it's written pretty well.

The graphics: I like the fact that they are trying something new here. but I honestly don’t find the art attractive at all. Now that’s not the problem, the problem is that it’s done in a way where the art is hardly understandable sometimes. I am sure they took fairly good Daz renders for this. But this kind of Art is not gonna fly. They need to be less pixelated. The art is fairly good at the moment. I still think it could be improved. But I will take this over average Daz renders any day.

In my opinion, it's still a 3.5. I will give it a better rating if things improve again.

5 stars! I don't give them easily especially if it's for a debut release but for what I've seen so far, I think it's right.
First of all, let me say that I'm a GenX so this nostalgic feel hits right at home. I can't but laugh in the face of those who cry 'Mommy, these graphics hurt my eyes'. It's perfect. I really love the art.
'Mommy, the sprite is walking too slow': Well, it's a reference to the Sierra adventures sprite movement. It was called ' sprite moonwalking' and you can see it in all Sierra's and LucasArts games.
Sprites and environment: Well, the sprites are looking at each other and are not weirdly looking at the camera.
Ambientation: Everything, every detail screams 80s-90s. Converse all stars, music, cars, hairstyle, fashion, VHS effects. It's a blast from the past.

The dev must have worked a lot for this and I thank him/her for it. To me, an old fart playing in a 14 inch monitor this game was perfect. A real masterpiece!

My only concern is that this beautiful art can't be possibly made fast. So, I'm guessing the updates maybe, will not be frequent. But, anyway, it's worth the wait. I'll be waiting for more.