VN - Ren'Py - Mayfly [v0.2 Reset] [JasonTon]

I really like the renders, they're fucking gorgeous. The addition of curated background music is also a great touch, but it is VERY jarring when the background music cuts to silence after the very short animation it was used for.

What is also jarring, is the way the animations end, and it cuts to a black screen at the end instead of transitioning smoothly to the static render. I had very high hopes for this VN looking at the screenshots, but it was tough for me to get very far through, also due to the rough writing.

I think starting off the VN with a Dark Knight reference is...a bit overly ambitious, since even Dark Knight had Batman Begins before it to build off of. There's this weird jumping between exposition that we're supposed to care about and the bank robbery scene . Part of the reason it worked out so beautifully in the movie is because it wasn't interrupted by any other scenes.

This VN has SO much promise, but I feel like it's held back by odd creative choices.

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24JAN25: So, updating this review for 0.2 (Reset)....this game did NOT get better after the rework. Much of what I wrote above is still true. Except that now I'm even MORE lost in what or who or why is going on?

Multiple named characters are introduced, interspersed with, again, a clearly-ripped-from-The Dark Knight bank robbery scene. However, it seems there are MORE random pop culture references that don't make a lick of sense in context. There is SO much filler in between ACRES of exposition. "Show, dont tell" is blatantly disregarded, and I have literally zero reason to care about all the characters that are introduced. It's like we're starting in the middle of a movie trilogy, where the first movie doesn't exist.
Since we're blatantly comparing, The Dark Knight can even stand on its own without having watched Batman Begins, because the characters are KNOWN entities. Mayfly...doesn't have that reputation or history or backstory established, so vomiting all the exposition about this world that lis just a jumbled mess of Gotham City/Night City/Insert-random-fantasy-here/Parody-reference-central.

There are also these seemingly random "Powerpoint-esque" transitions that feel incredibly out of place with no purpose, they don't even cut to a different scene, its just a "wacky" render transition in the middle of a conversation? Not to mention we have normal transitions with full scenery changes and no indication of why we're in this new area. Random renders of locations that have no apparent connection to the dialogue on screen, are these supposed to be establishing shots? Of random other locations? They successfully establish my further confusion, that's for sure.

At this point, the quality of the renders is easy to ignore when I'm just LOST in what the hell is going on at all. There's apparently a story trying to be told here, but it's buried under heaps and mounds of exposition filler, with no lead-in or backstory that prompts me to care about...any of it. Please do not waste your time with this, as beautiful as this food may look, it has no redeeming taste once you bite into it.

Ouch, this was worse than I expected.

Let's start with first choice of the game:
- Stand up for yourself = game over
OK, off to a great start there.

Moving on, MC is cocky as hell. His social and fighting skills meanwhile...yeah, let's not go there. He's borderline useless, constantly insulted and treated like trash while doing...well, nothing really.

Story COULD be interesting, and edgy MC would be ok for the environment, if he had ANYTHING going for him. But there is 0 investment in MC when he's all talk, no action, no charisma, no backbone, no skill, nothing whatsoever.
If I get out of my chair right now, then walk to some politician and start throwing insults at his bodyguards and him, while acting like they can't touch me, it won't make for a good book or interesting events (unless looking for a good laugh).

Girls are, well, female domination tag is definitely deserved. They all treat MC like hot garbage, and since, like established in previous paragraphs, his intelligence levels are lower than barbarian in D&D, he thinks it's all cool and interesting.

There is another story beat, about missing sister, which starts, develops, something else happens...then it gets forgotten, because landlady needed to throw the trash out of the room. Sorry, she threw MC out of the room, but that's the same thing.

And if you think there are choices to make, think again. It has, what, 3-4 choices total, 1 of which gives game over on selection, 1 is yes or no for sex with prostitute, and 1 is being nice or pointlessly rude to, for a change, innocent girl.
Hey MC, how about an option to tell RUDE ones to fuck off, and not the ones actually treating him like human being.

I do have 2 positives:
- 1: MC looks genericly decent (strange expression). Model is definitely used in other similar games, but I like it here. Looks cool (shame personality doesn't match...)
- 2: Girls are, mostly, really decent looking. Some are not down my alley (huge breasts are not my thing), but there's good selection, even if there aren't really any scenes with them yet.

Overall though, it's a no for me. Reading anything coming out of MCs mouth is painful. Actually, let's extend that to most of the dialogue in this one.
There's an early scene with 2 bandits and a girl. It draaaaaaaaaags for something like 50 lines of text, constantly repeating same thing, over and over. 1 guy asks something, another corrects him and says some fact, 1st says "no way, how can that be true". Repeat for 10 different things.

Dialogue is horrendous.

Rating for v0.1 Reset

This was a big improvement. The story and MC are very different, and in a good way. The first part - almost 30% of what's there - is well written, takes it's time, but isn't wordy. MC is no longer a doormat and can actually stand on his own two feet in this. He's much more likable overall.

Some of the same characters are here, but in a different way. Some are not, and yet to be seen if they will come back.

Music is well done and fits, but the transitions can be a bit overdone and jarring. Nothing to ruin the experience, once you get used to them.

I'm much more interested in where this is going now and look forward to more.

Updated Review for v0.1 Reset (2 stars -> 3 stars)

Now the remake certainly has improved the game when compared to the old version. Where I couldn't make it past 10 minutes before, I managed to reach the end of content this time around. Thing is, this game didn't improve much in the area it truly needed it: the writing. Putting it nicely, it's extremely rough. Part of it is still due to less than ideal translations, but this is one of those times where I think the script itself is just flawed regardless. It's kind of a mess.

I think the main thing is that this lacks a proper intro/setup/prologue/whatever you want to call it that would otherwise be that sort of hook that starts to immerse you into the game and characters. I've had this problem with a few different AVNs, and I usually aliken it loading into someone's mid-game save. I feel like I'm missing context and info that the game just doesn't tell you. Mainly with the MC and love interests shown. I know nothing about our MC and his motivations, nor much about his connection to any of these characters that keep showing up. I shouldn't have to exit the game and read the overview to understand what's happening.

Half of this version is also spent cutting away from the MC to watch token thugs do a heist for a mysterious villain that the game REALLY wants you to be interested in. And man, it did not work for me. It's trying too hard I think. Bloated maybe is the word.

Then we got this bar sequence. On the way there, we are approached by a lady of the night. As she's talking to us, the girl accompanying us just randomly assaults her??? Not in like a comedic way, but more of a "hey what the fuck is wrong with you" type of way. Not sure why a love interest kicking an innocent woman in the head would make me like her? Very odd.

The strangeness keeps going too, but I'd be writing an essay at this point if I started breaking it all down. Some of the humor and the MCs macho man act is also cringe as hell, but that's a lesser issue in comparison.

Good renders just do not make up for bad writing I personally feel. And honestly the dev's shallow use of depth of field for literally everything makes me want to puke. Another reviewer said the renders almost feel overdone and I'm inclined to agree in that way.

This still was a decent improvement when you compare it to the old version, but the game still feels deeply flawed. I'll say I liked the character designs and I think there's some potential way beneath the surface, but I cannot say I'm eager to check this out again if at all. The dev seems invested in their project so hopefully time does this favors.

Oh my god the renders are AMAZING, and I love the setting and the world the game is placed in, it's EXTREMELY pleasing to look at. In fact, from the MC's design to all of the girls (ESPECIALLY NIKITA), they all look beautiful and its definitely something to take notice of.

I also love the animated/moving scenes a lot, it makes the game seem livelier, and especially in the club scene with the camera recording Gigi's dance, which is definitely a breath of fresh air having someone take the time and effort put in some moving things on the screen that are outside of the sex scenes, would love to see animated fight scenes in the future (if possible)!

Translation is a bit of an issue, but I understand that you now have a proofreader from what I've read on other sites, and from what I can tell from just reading in between the lines, the dialogue could be well written and pretty fun to look at as long as there's proper polishing and touching up on.

The only thing, and I really mean ONLY thing preventing me from giving this game 5 stars is that in a lot of what I've seen in chapter 2, the scenes become very disorientating to look at. One such example is when we're at the Stella and Luna parts of the story and coupled with the transitions and the scene changing back and forth, it becomes very dizzying and really easy to lose your place in the story. This could partially be on me for not taking the time to just look back on the previous messages to try and get a better gist of what was going on, but I genuinely felt my head splitting just from seeing the scene change back and forth only after two messages play out.

On another similar note however, while I dislike the way the scenes are constantly reverberating back and forth, the camera PLACEMENT on the scenes is actually really well done especially in chapter 2, and while the switching did throw me off, I was able to appreciate the scenes much more with how intricate the camera placement was, it was as if you really did do your homework on this stuff.

I am VERY excited to see more content from you and I'm looking forward to being an early adopter of this game and see how it turns out. I see a lot of great potential in this game and I'm glad I could be among the earlier players to experience this.

Also, love the Gundam references, glad to see there's another fan.

The graphics are very good, gorgeous renders.

I love the character design, especially Luna and Ling.

I feel invested in the game, and really want it to become amazing.

More than that though I believe the developer can grow to become among the very best.

TLDR: Great graphics, cute characters and a world filled with potential, held back a little by exposition.

Long opinion on writing and worldbuilding:

To me the writing is the weakest aspect right now. And where I hope to see improvement.

It feels like the developer has a lot of good ideas for the universe. The universe is very intruiging, and brimming with potential. However, currently in my opinion we are introduced to the world in a messy way.

There is too much exposition crammed into a fairly short story atm. There are a lot of instances of characters telling you "corporation x is this, but they are really this", "this area of town is this, and that's because of this".

One example being the whole exposition on the concept of the uppercity being rich and lowercity being poor. We didn't need to be told that.

We can experience with the plot and the visuals that when we do stuff in the undercity it looks less nice and we might have to help people who are struggling financially, and crime might be more frequent.

While we can experience that cases are usually more around corruption, or a higher class of criminal in the uppercity.

Currently we get a bit of both, but the exposition is uneccesary.
There are also a few instances of dialogue that feels a bit like fan-fiction. Instances of the MC being overly edgy without the edgyness being a joke.
Other times where characters say profound or overly deep stuff just for the sake of it, often fairly wordy and poetic and not how most people would actually talk.

Also the story feels like it's taking itself very seriously, so then it's a bit jarring when Luna and Stella are just ok with playing strip hand-wrestling right next to eachother without that much reasonable motivation. Feel like they needed a better incentive then just a favor from us. And like the main character should have had to do a bit more smooth convicing especially to keep them playing considering how hard they were losing.

The political stuff also feels a bit too on the nose. It feels like everyone is constantly telling you "we are doing x, but we are also scheming y, and in secret we are doing z for a". Instead of us more over time discovering that they might be doing "y, and eventually z before finally a".

It feels like everything is just thrown out there right away. These people are super-shady and we as the reader have to know that right away, and only the details and motivations are really left to be discovered.

It leads to way too much information in a short amount of time, information overload, and it doesn't come off as very realistic political intrigue.

Hopefully this doesn't come across as too harsh. It's great that there are a lot of characters with their own motives, and a lot of ongoing story-lines, I just think the story needs to focus a bit more on each of them before jumping between them. I hope it will get better over time, and the potential is very big.

In fact I think the story's ambitiousness is probably what has lead to what im talking about, there are so many pieces to set up, that I think the story would be better off waiting a bit to set some of them up.

At the end of the day I am very excited to see where this goes. All the best of luck.

NOTE:
The writing might actually be perfect and the translation is the issue. That the meaning / tone of stuff is translated poorly. Grammar seems okay most of the time, but could be the meaning isn't always translated optimally. Hard to know without playing it in Chinese, which unfortunately I wouldn't understand.

1 star for now, the dialog at the start is very jumbled, hard to understand whats going on, typos/grammar mistakes everywhere. will re-evaluate rating after digging deeper into the game, but first impression is terrible

Good graphics. Fresh storyline. I will follow the development of this game from today onwards

This is a review of version 0.2, in my opinion this is a very good start for the game

Translation is rather wacky but otherwise this is one of the most promising game in this forum. In short there are superpowers and MC has lot to do, renders are good and music is great, and then there is a lot of sex.

I rated this game highly before the remake, and honestly not quite sure why it was rebooted instead of continued. The art is better, but it was already great. The story may be a bit better paced, but I'm not quite sure as the original went two to three times as far. I remember the original had a much better introduction to Ling I thought as you were strangers and began to build trust with a new police commander or something, now she starts out with you. I remember it had went a bit weird suddenly in a club with elven mental magic, but rather than sorting it out we're restarting. Ok, maybe it'll be smoother but I'm still not sure what required a re-write. A lot of other games needed a re-write before this one, which I thought was top tier to begin with - but if the author is that keen on quality I'm game to encourage him. I like the main character, and his potential companions, and so far interested in getting the villains on his side too. Cyberpunk references are nice and I'm happy to have them. Seems a bit Shadowrun and Earthdawn with old elves, and I appreciate that. It was weird to see so many downtrodden yet ridiculously hot hookers if anything... kind of a waste of models better used else where, but whatever. Would prefer not to spend a lot of times with hookers when there are so many gorgeous options available. I seem to remember a cat girl who was borderline in the original, who I think was your first scene, but you get that visiting family now. Nice to meet the family this time. Probably better than a club.

The art is great, the story and setting are interesting, the girls are desirable, I will look forward to more. I was before it started over again too, but whatever.

JasonTon is the rising super creator of 2023, with a rendering ability comparable to Eternum and an extremely rich plot performance. There are only a few games on the market that can match MayFly, so I look forward to your continued updates. Let's finish this masterpiece of MayFly!

Mayfly is an exceptional Visual novel game that truly captures the essence of mystery, magic, superpowers, all wrapped up in stunning graphics that are sure to leave you spellbound. intricate storylines, and complex characters that are sure to keep you on the edge of your seat.
One of the things that sets Mayfly apart from other games is its incredible attention to detail. From the beautifully rendered landscapes to the intricate character designs, everything in the game is meticulously crafted to create a truly immersive experience. The graphics are top-notch, and the game's visual effects are nothing short of breathtaking.

This game gives me a feeling that is different from other SLGs. In terms of single image quality, it is itself striving for excellence. The author is committed to the ultimate pursuit of game image quality and is committed to presenting the most perfect works to players. Of course, the plot is not bad. The author hides many colorful eggs in the plot waiting for players to explore, and in terms of dialogue, there are many up-to-date memes for everyone to entertain. Final conclusion: I would like to call this work one of the masterpieces (which still needs to be optimized in the future) and it is very worth playing!

A boy who get superpower working for Vigilantes . He lost his parents and sister in the past and only remember someone take his sister . While encountering his first case . He faces strong girl who uses somekind of fog that make him unconscious . After recovery when he goes to bar . He met some strong people who said they know who take his sister . Now i am waiting for what will happen next . Very good game and characters are also very good . This game comes with mystery,magic, superpower,action . You enjoyed it a lot .

ITS AN ELF!!!!!
That it thats the whole review overall 8.1/10 ELF

Okay serious now, First i wanna start off by saying this game has one flaw, and that is the Translation, this game was originally in Chinese and the translation isnt the greatest, some things simply don't get translated very well.

Story 8/10: However this is some great potential here, You've got Superpowers, Vigilantes, Government Corruption, Fantasy Races in a Modern World, and a Tragic Past. What more could you ask for in a story. It honestly gives me a Manhua feel which is nice and familiar for me

Sexual Content 7/10: Not a lot of SC yet but that's to be excepted for a first release it did have one scene and the quality of said scene was good.

Renders 8/10 : Im kinda conflicted on the Renders though it seems like they are high quality however it seems like the Dev added some blur or filter on purpose to the renders which for me personally im not a fan of but its something that can easily be overlooked.

Character Models 10/10: Now the Character Models oh my god, we got a big tit elf in fantasy clothing, who might as well be a literal goddess. Then his boss oh lord stomp on me. Gigi, Jimin, and the Police Chief again each one is beautiful.