The Story. It's not a groundbreaking idea to have an adult and two young "roommates" have a story in which they bond over a clearly traumatic event. In this instance, there's a great balance between good writing and cornball dialogue/insane situations to make it feel funny and awkward - weirdly like real life. The novel snaps between vivid, emotional flashbacks and current events pretty regularly and each character in the first few chapters goes through an additional traumatic event. There's a ton of build up here and things move slowly, but you truly feel for the characters.
The main character is, as most MCs, vapid and faceless. I don't mind it too much, as it allows for more room to self insert and lean into the corny shit he sometimes says without feeling irritated by it. My bit complaint is, most of the options you get to choose from in the first half of the game come back around to the same outcome, regardless. In total, though, while playing it, I felt just like most parents feel when dealing with children: like I had no fucking idea what to say to make a situation better or if it'll make a situation worse. And that's great.
The Models. None of the women are supermodels. Several even comment that they believe themselves to be ugly - which I really like a whole WHOLE lot more than what we see in many titles. It's interesting to see the models early on and think "Eh, I'm not sure if i can manage," but by the end of chapter 1 you don't' think about it very much at all. So when a soft, supple thigh gets exposed or the main character's hands slide along someone's hip, it reminds you "this is a game with sex as an option" and it just fucking worked for me. I really appreciate that they look (more) like real people - not flawless caricatures of supermodels or 46 H-breasted alien people. I intimately knew a woman who had the /exact/ same breasts as the girls in this game, and that really stood out to me as being a good touch.
The Gameplay. It's a visual novel, so gameplay is light, but there are some systems for balancing the ratios of the girls: love vs anger, love vs anxiety, etc. I do wish there were a lot more chances to lose or gain "points" to each statistic and that those statistics would show in more interesting ways, but it's a Visual Novel, not a full-blown life simulator. It does well for what it attempts to do!
Overall. I've spent a few days with this game and really have enjoyed the first several chapters. I think it's quite good. There are a lot of moments where I'll cackle out loud, embarrassed or stressed at a situation, and the humor of the writer is actually not bad!
The weakest part of the game is a lack of variety in locations. I understand keeping the scenes and setpieces limited in number helps make the game smaller and easier to produce, but other than home, office, car, and a shopping trip - i've yet to see any big interesting locations (pool, movie theater, theme park, carnival, pier, beach, do more at the school, the diner, etc). Really hoping we can broaden the game out to more NPCs and locations, but past that - I'm loving this game. Well done.
Update: There's a whole lot of piss in the game pretty suddenly. Some o fit is skippable, some of it isn't. But it's the only part of the ENTIRE game that feels cumbersome and tacked on. Like a family member who keeps asking you if you want something to drink even after you've told them no several times. And there's several conversations /about/ people pissing, people wanting to piss, people who are pissing, people who need help pissing. It doesn't bother me all that much and it still seems UNUSUALLY PREVALANT - so if that's not your thing, you should probably stop after chapter 2-3.
