Ren'Py - My Pervy Poltergeist [v0.7.1] [Poopcicle]

This game nearly instantly became one of my favorites.

The first dozen lines of self-deprecating monologue from the MC almost made me groan, but (abruptly) Libby (blue/purple hair), hijacks the sour mood.

The interactions amongst the cast all feel "realistic" and natural.... Like an honest group of friends.... Like "did the author just regurgitate their college experience but add a ghost?" (ironically) popped into my head several times.

It handles switching between serious moments and humor Extremely well, allowing both the space they deserve. It touches on some heavy topics (suicide, abuse, etc.) but not in a way that feels forced, preachy, or overly dismissive.

The renders are obviously done in koikatsu, but it doesn't feature any glaring issues or poor looking scenes.

Other stuff, quickly:
* songs & sounds: used/selected well
* each love interest route gives some unique events/story (I don't like replaying VNs but found doing so for this one very rewarding)
* harem route doesn't include any of the main LI's (yet?)

(based on version 0.7.1)

Story 3/5
Started out alright but turn to shit after a short time when game forces a girl on you, sure shes a ghost but i couldent really care less i wouldent want to touch her what so ever yet MC is all over her and its all out of the controle of the player, so that means you cant play any kind of faithfull route in this game, to make it really stupid MC will "break up" with the ghost at some point but waaaaay to late in story, it should simply never had gone sexual at any point, it wasent even needed for story its just idiotic.

And yes i know the ghost girl is only a BJ but at the point i would consider them in a sexual relationship.

It also has some kind of relationship system but it feels pretty pointless when game already made the choice of who your going to be with and without harem tag game its unplayable when your forced into a relationship from the very start be it with a ghost girl or not.

Normaly i would never give a game like this such a high rating which i do consider 3 stars to be for that start, but the rest of the game isent that bad although there are very very few choices in this game, proberly less then 10 in total and its only to deside who MC will be with or what side girls you will see.

Girls 4/5
I liked the girls and theres a decent diversity in builds as well.

Animation 3/5
Pretty standard stuff that you have seen a million times before.

Music 3/5
Average background stuff, nothing special.

Choices 2/5
Some might matter but game will always feel out of your controle when it starts forcing ralationships and girls onto the player and being a none harem game it should never happen.

And heres a hint, if you dont pick the one of the 3 main girls you can find other routes but dont expect the sex scenes there to be animated? dunno why feels a bit stupid but there are other girls besides the ones you see on front page.

The game is pretty fun. I liked the characters and their interactions are cute, although, kinda cheesy sometimes, but the story and the graphics could use some work.

Graphics: Just regular koikatsu graphics. The character models are really good looking. Each one of the girls look different from the other and their personality and charms are visible from their design, the face expressions are another highlight from the game, I don’t remember when was the last time I saw character so expressive in a Koikatsu game, which then brings me to probably my biggest problem with the graphics. Although they don’t look bad, the CG’s could look much better, considering other games that use Koikatsu as a graphic engine.

Story: Each one of the LI’s are well written and charismatic, which is probably the biggest highlight of the whole game. All of them are pretty cute and likeable but the real problem with the story and writing is the pacing. Is hard to tell how much time has passed from chapter 1 to chapter 7. Even thought the MC mentions “fooling around” with the ghost, you only get to see like, 2 H scenes with her. In the other routes, the MC also gets called out for having some kind of sexual relationship with her while dating one of the girls, but the problem is that, for the audience, she haven’t had a H scene in a good long while. With all of that said, I really appreciate the dev writing different versions of dialogs depending on which route you’re on, and, although I imagine this isn’t specially hard to do, it must be pretty annoying and something that they could easily ignore, but the fact they didn’t is pretty cool.

Overall I think the game has a lot of potential, especially if the dev fix the small, but noticeable flaws the game currently have. Seen as I imagine this game is still in an early version and there’s still much to be done, I can see it becoming a really good game in the near future.

Basic VN, basic koikatsu graphics, basic characters.
The "poltergeist", supposedly the main attraction of the game since it's named after it, is barely window dressing and has nearly no impact on anything at all, an afterthought to try and set this apart from other romance VNs but failing utterly at the job.
The writing is disjointed, the narrative is unfocused and the passage of time is so poorly defined, it's impossible to tell if it was a couple of days or a year has passed with the way the characters interact, which is not aided by a complete lack of transitions between scenes.
At points you are treated like you have constant sexual interactions with the ghost, but in game you like touch her once.
Apparently, there is a harem route planned, that for some reason will be added retroactively, which only shows poor planning from the dev, not a good sign to a project this young and short.
Little hope this will shape up to anything.

Game has great potential, though still is pretty early in development. The basic premise is pretty cozy - MC attends college, joins a group of good friends, discovers he can see and interact with a ghost girl, and decides to help said ghost girl figure out what is going on with her situation when he has spare time from general college-life. The game is fairly light-hearted and has a good sense of humor all around, though there is enough personal drama in each character's situation to keep things interesting.

The character writing stands out heavily in this one, with a unique and diverse cast of characters - it is enjoyable getting to know each one. There are routes for each heroine, and there is implied to possibly be a harem route, though currently (as of update 0.5.1) the "harem route" consists purely of flings with random characters outside the main cast, which makes it the least interesting route (aside from "no route", which I don't usually test if it's possible). There hasn't been a hard branch off the "common route" yet, but there are fairly significant scene differences depending on who you choose. Tiffany's route is currently my favorite - she's adorable, mischievous, and has a very sweet dynamic with MC, but again, it's still fairly early in the story.

The Koikatsu models are well made, unique, and cute for all the characters, even many of the side/one-off characters - no issues with aliasing or awkward positions like some Koikatsu games. Background selection is fine - I recognized some, but overall the characters are placed into them well, and there's enough customization for most to be visually interesting. If you like Koikatsu, this is well done, if not, you probably won't be playing this anyways.

H-scenes are decent enough for Koikatsu - they're not as well custom animated like the best-in-class Koikatsu games, but they use a solid mix of still shots and decent animations with well-chosen camera angles.

Music selection is good - no over-used recognizable tracks, and it all sets an appropriate situation for the given scene.

Overall, I like it more than I expected going in, and hope the author keeps it up - looking forward to more content.

Review as of v0.4.1.

Pretty solid so far - I like the writing, the girls are cute and interesting, and the story's actually moving along at a good clip. I'm not sure how it's going to work structurally - at the moment, the routes seem mutually exclusive but you still seem able to earn affection with everyone? Maybe these will combine, but the way it's set up presently you miss out on pretty important content (and fuckin'). Base Ren'py, which this mostly is, doesn't really suit replaying games in progress because your saves get all fucked up, so hopefully something gets figured out - at the moment it's in a weird kind of limbo between harem and exclusivity, without the system to properly enable either to be a smooth experience. Keeping an eye on it anyway, because it shows a lot of promise, and what's there is worth four stars.