VN - Ren'Py - Life Is Vanilla [v0.5] [Liv Productions]

Game's prolouge is alright. Main LI is very unattractive, other girls are meh looking. After the prologue it devolves into a garbage sandbox AVN despite to Sandbox tag. Concept is there however this one needs to go back to the drawing board. Also on second playthrough skip button has technical issues of only skipping a few scenes and stopping.

A story taken from real life (purportedly) is pretty rare in the world of AVNs, and I wish we could see it more. I'm not sure who is doing the writing for most of these games, but they usually seem pretty inexperienced, which leads to artificial conversations and scenes. Not this time.

Real memories make the dialog and the sequence of events feel more authentic here. That also makes it easier to forgive the presence of the inevitable horndog comedian sidekick. Some people really are just like that, even if it's just a facade. And of course the sex is spicier, knowing that it actually went down that way, more or less.

I also appreciate how there's no pretense in the writing. It's a humble and therefore relateable story. And it's clearly written by someone who's native language is English. And the renders aren't distractingly stylized. The dev uses VAM models instead of Daz, so they aren't as detailed -- but this also means that you won't encounter any of the usual cookie-cutter faces.

But since this is a journey that actually happened to the dev, I can't figure out why it's written in second-person present tense, which also dips frequently into past tense. Then the narrator (the dev) sometimes pops in and adds commentary in first-person past tense. I really like the commentary, because it adds a layer of introspection that's pretty unique. And it lets the dev do some exposition without actually telling instead of showing. But it also makes making the shift back from past tense to present tense jarring. He's recollecting, but then we're back in the "present" which is actually...still the past. It really feels like sticking with 1st-person past tense throughout would click better overall. I want to take a star off for this, but I think I have to concede that my reaction is subjective. Some people might not even notice.