VN - Ren'Py - My Sister & I [v0.8b] [Tortilla Dreams]

Review of v0.5d

Hey there, I've played the game up to the current release and decided to leave my two cents on it. It has some spoilers just in case anyone cares, you've been warned.

>Dialogue:
>Story:
>Decisions:
>Inconsitencies:
>Renders:
>Transitions:
>Models:
>Animations:
>Music:
>Sounds:

In short, you can see effort put into the game, and it has improved from the first release, you can see it while playing, but it doesn't deserve a rating above a 2/5 at the moment. It's impossible for me to like it in it's current state, the devs promised things that were not delivered at all, smashing my hopes for a game, that now I can't understand how, is somehow rated at almost 4.5/5 when writing this.
I'll also add that you should set your priorities right, divide the time you put into the game into advancing the story and fixing the early versions, because they're honestly bad, and I doubt there're that many people who would endure going through them to reach the slightly improved recent releases, you'll only end up losing audience.
The incest plot is nothing new, but the monogamy is as close of a breath of fresh air you could get at this point, for me at least, and I really liked this, it's what made me download it in the first place, to see how it played out. Aside from that, it has very clear flaws, the writing quality is above the average stuff here, but it's mostly unoriginal, and the maturity level of it is disappointing, which in my opinion is the worst of its issues. Being honest, it took a good deal of effort forcing myself to play due to cringing so often, the dialogues felt like a gruesome attempt to keep a porn game G-rated.
Got a strong feeling the game was written imitating animes and their relationships, and the bad ones at that. Really, how the story developed felt like a bad romcom, all the common clichés like non-stop stuttering included, with some +18 sprinkled over it.
The animations and transitions are pretty bad, and the renders don't deserve any kind of praise, they're average in the best of cases. Models are absolute beauties in the case of women, or really lame, in the case of men. Music is overall fine. Sounds need fixes.
It'd be sad, and above all, very disappointing if this is how the finished product is expected to be. It strongly deviates from delivering the promised, and I quote here, "realistic incest dating experience, as realistic as such a thing might be of course." This has potential and I hope it is properly exploited.

As an ending note, I think it's pretty clear by now, but there's honestly nothing compelling nor worthy enough for you to invest your time on playing through.

I'll be back for the next update in hopes to see a much better product, and edit my review accordingly, of course.

Short Version: If you like wholesome vanilla love-stories with nice graphic and funny banter, this game is what you're looking for

The Good
- The Graphic is superb, the dev clearly put the effort here
- The Banter between Mc and Claire is funny and fresh

The Meh
- Grammar needs either a good proofreader or programs like Grammarly
- The animation during sex-scenes don't match the characters' intentions
- Nitpicky but: How fast MC and Claire get over the whole "it's incest, society won't like it or understand it" which is a central point in most of the incest love-stories...but considering their personalities, it's something we can close an eye about it.

The Bad
- I'm reviewing v0.5d and personally there is nothing that can be considered bad, annoying yes(but that's for the Meh-section)


Conclusion: Honestly i feel it's a bit early to review this game, but still wanted to express my opinion about it and the game is very good so far ^_^

I never rate the games I play but I felt this one deserved one. I don't know why people say the reletionship between the mc and his sister feels rushed, to me it felt really natural and they both feel like believable characters and lthey have great chemistry together.
Sorry if it came out hard to read, english isn't my first language c:

good vanilla love story AVN to try, the sister so cute but wild-inside such fascinating partner to stick in haha. Can see this game now have many improvements about graphics, light, animation not the best but seen acceptable, could be redone any time, good job Tortilla.

Great graphics and developer does not waste players time. Only a few updates for the first real sex scene which is extremely quick. Hope to see more updates and games from this developer, this review was for update 0.5D.

Decided to try it out even though I saw some impressions which were left sour due to the way the game develops the taboo between the two.

Though, actually playing on, I was suprised to find a game that I think is made by someone who appreciates the taboo nature of these relationships.

The two do come onto eachother pretty fast, yes, though if you pay close attention to the authors story telling you'd actually find that this story focuses on an already built upon relationship which grew between the siblings during a young age. In this case, the author can focus on the two exploring their desire between each other from the moment the girl moves in with the MC.

From what I've seen this is definitely a game I can get behind and hopefully see the day it get's completed with the authors full vision being met.

Good luck!

This is a review for version 0.4 of the game
Please take any negative marks with a grain of salt, I'm not a huge fan of VNs in general.

It's really not as bad as I thought it was going to be. The writing is... okay. I'm not saying it's bad, it's just not shakespeare. For example every time the word "In" should be used the word "on" is used instead. Like, "You look great on that dress".

It's not just typos or grammatical errors, the way the MC and his partner talk sometimes just feels, robotic. Ending every sentence with "Brother" or Sister" instead of ever using "Bro" or "Sis". Again, I don't want to be too harsh, it's not bad, just not really natural feeling either.

The story is VERY cliche. Big brother and little sister crushed on each other as kids, big bro moved away, they meet later in life and old feelings start to be brought up again. It's almost a Hallmark movie. Despite not being particularity original, it still manages to be sweet and illicit the occasional "awwww".

Art in any form is a subjective deal, but I like the art style the game has going on, though that's a personal taste thing, to each there own.

As for adult content, not a whole lot currently, just a couple scenes, but it gets a pass on that for being V0.4, obviously it's unfinished, so I can't exactly judge on that.

My final impression of the game is that it's cliche romance novel with incest. Which hey, there's nothing wrong with that. It still manges to be cutesy and tug on the heartstrings a bit, and I recommend giving it a shot if you're into the VN style romance stories.

I like the style and the speed of the story. Claire is very beautiful. I do not know about the results coming out of the choices i did so far, so let's see, what the future brings. A big thank you to the game developer!

I wanted it to be good, but its not good enough, it has good things though.

I would personnally remove at least 75% of the "brother" and "sister" ending phrases thing. Nobody talks like that, for me its more cringe than anything.

The first scene with the dress, it is a missed chance to make something good to relase that buildup, but it was a scene with a lot of description text and a still image, a really missed opportunity. The text is good, but the image should go with it, otherwise if they dont have contact there is no wholesome.

And then the circular motions thing. I get that that is the animation that you can use, but who the hell does that? Standing, and to a person that is way shorter than you. Its impossible unless you crouch.

And then they go to bed and dont even cuddle? The disclaimer said this was supposed to be wholesome, but it is really failing and im disspointed.

Maybe it will get fixed eventually, one of these days. lets see what more is there, but i fear this is gonna be like this for the rest of the game.

As of right now, I think this game doesn't deserve more than a two.

So, pros?
Decently attractive characters.
a lot of dialog (this is a plus for developing plot/setting/characters)

Cons?
The whole "we are attracted to each other and maybe that's weird but when have we ever cared what people think?" thing comes too soon, too easily and too underserved. Part of the appeal to incest games, to me, is the idea that at least one of the characters is fighting with "i want it" versus "this isn't right," and waiting to see how passion, lust, or romance, pushed the, away from "this isn't right."
When a game allows for things to advance too quickly, it seems the high stakes with the relationship are lost.

No choices that mean anything. I wanted to check for sure, so I turned on dialog skip, and held down control until I got to the end of this version. maybe 3 dialog options, and nothing is affected, really.


So, between the MC being pre-written and thus we can choose none of how he thinks or feels, and the rest of the story being pre-written so we are experiencing a kinetic novel, essentially, I feel, as a GAME, this falls short of the mark.


I don't hate it. It has some promise. Writing is already better than a lot of other games here. But I feel that the experience people are looking for when playing a VN just isn't here. Everything is too linear.

So, I'm going to give this a very basic review as I have not gotten very far into this VN yet.

First, I'll say I like the sister model. I don't think I've seen this model before, but it feels like something you might would see out of the Honey Select catalogue. My only issue has nothing to do with the selected model (unless it's a limitation I don't know about) and everything to do with expression: There seems to be very little of it. Happy looks the same as mild irritation looks the same as curiosity looks the same as disinterest. Her brows are mostly hidden by long bangs and her smile only adjusts very slightly at the corner of the mouth. Only her very annoyed expression showed a whole lot of change, but it wasn't anything extreme.

Second, I love some of the scene backdrops. I've not seen many of these before, and you have no idea how happy I was to see an actual market for once instead of the same damned convenience store posing as some sort of grocery store. I'm not sure what developers have to do in order to see some other assets for scenery, but you keep on doing it, I appreciate it and I'm sure others do as well.

Writing seems okay so far, I have neither problem nor epiphany provided by any of the writing, but as I said I've not gotten very far into this work yet. I really just wanted to jot down a couple of notes in review and give some cheers to the dev working on this.

E#1: Not the biggest fan of some of these animations. I really didn't understand what Magyarfi meant in review by animated scenes have the "mouse stutter" to it until just now. There are two or three scenes where the camera doesn't seem to pan smoothly, but rather it meanders in a general direction, almost as if someone were to attempt drawing a straight line with a mouse pointer: You just can't do it, the mouse is going to veer side-to-side as you drag it in the intended direction.

E#2: This isn't a major problem across the entire work, but there is one animation that is pretty hard to watch. Not a fan of the animation where the sister and MC kiss after a night of drinking and truth or dare. Actually, the half of the animation where the sister is looking up at you and slowly blinking her eyes is amazing (it feels hopeful and loving), but the animation continues into what looks like a weird attempt at drunken kissing by the sister and it just looks awful. At best, it simply isn't a smooth animation, and at worst the sister's movements so over the top that it's cringe-worthy.

E#3: Okay, I've finished through the end of version v0.3h. The quality was much improved through to the end, and I have to say I greatly appreciate the work put in. My initial, way-too-early review rating was 4-stars and had it not improved (especially in the animation department), I likely would've come down to 3 stars, but I was pleasantly surprised. If I come around to update my review in the future and the quality continues, I might bump that to 5 stars down the road.

Quite a promising story. From the gameplay side I like how the choice to include incest or not (relation to the main girl and the MC) is given to the player.

The artstyle is your run of the mill (maybe modded) Honey Select one. The camera work needs some improving though. Some animated scenes have the "mouse stutter" to it. Other than that I like that it's truly a POV style game, so the MC's face is never seen, so you can immerse yourself if you want.

The writing is good sofar. It's more of a dating sim than a "here wank to it" type of adult game. I personaly like the gradual build up, than a "quickly get into bed" type of setup.

Now my only issue is the conversation between the characters. I set it up as this was intended, so "Brother & Sister" type of realtion ship. Unfortunately, every 2 or 3 sentence contains a "Brother"here or a "Sister" there. Now I don't have any siblings, but I highly doubt that they call one another "Brother" or "Sister" every two sec. Maybe a "Bro" or a "Sis", but most likely they will call each other by name.

TLDR.: So yeah, all in all have potential, but the many "Brother" this and "Brother" that, makes me feel like I have "Stone Cold" Steve Austin as my sister rather than a cute ravenhaired girl. Other than that a great game so far.

Has this VN got some teething errors? Yes!
Are some of the dialogues messed up? Yes!

But what you will take away from this game even in it's early stages is a beautifully written story about pure love, romance and a connection between two people that are now on a route to discovering pure happiness!!

Will revisit my review as time progresses after many more updates but I don't see the rating score ever dropping Give this a game a go if your like me and love a wholesome romance story without the need for anything else.

I'm updating this review.
The dev has worked to address the save issue that I mentioned in my previous review.
Renders 4/5 because of the smooth transition
Models 4/5 because I haven't seen the female used before
Overall
The story is something I've come across before. Just new models are used.
Saying that, it's not a bad start. It's an intro. I have the feeling that it's going to be a slow burn VN. Lots of conflicting emotions straight out of the gate. Which makes it more interesting and easier to invest in. Writing isn't bad, and the grammar is decent. Good luck with future updates. Give this one a try.