One of the best games I've played on the site. I haven't enjoyed an adult game this much since MGQ or What A Legend.
The thing I appreciate the most about the developer is his attention to detail. Everything clearly has a great amount of thought put into it, even the tiniest details like characters referencing something that had happened, wording in the dialogue, the way scenes are directed. It's great, and it makes everything that much more engaging. The manipulation of camera angles, scene cuts, etc. It really paints a picture of the world and helps set the mood for the conversation the dev is trying to tell, or even create an atmosphere for a specific setting. Tension, suspense, fear, arousal, comedy. The tools at the developers disposal for creating scenes is all done extremely well.
But, most important, above all things,
I just really enjoy when devs have fun with their game. And boy oh boy, this developer had lots of fun with theirs.
One of the biggest gripes I have with adult gaming is with developers sticking to their comfort zone. It leads to writing thats unorganic and completely bland, or scenes that are completely lifeless. You'll have characters that have no soul to them, and everyone except the MC is just another cardboard clone of another NPC. Instead of trying to mix in different ways to tell a story you'll have writing so serious you'd think the author is submitting it to an academic journal.
You're an adult game developer for Christ sake! Feel free to live a little!
…That said, a major highlight within this game was it's humor and comedy that was ever present throughout the game. Some of it is subtle, some of it is quite blatant, but the subtle things within the game are really what make it special to me.
For example, though they may only make up a small portion of the game, during some conversations and dialogue, the most absurd, hilarious, and entertaining events can be transpiring in the background. It doesn't take anything away from the dialogue, and serves as a way to become even more engaged within the game.
Often times the things happening correlate to events, conversations, etc. that had previously taken place. Using handcrafted background visuals as a way to tell a story and deliver information instead of having every character have a line of dialogue to convey their thoughts, or even have a dedicated spotlight to them is really important and I'm glad this is something the developer did throughout. Sort of like 'Show, don't tell'. I just feel huge amounts of love whenever I see stuff like this within the game, and I appreciate the developer more because of it.
Aside from it's comedy and usage of background visuals to deliver story and narrative and the way the 'camera' is directed, I think the way side characters within the game are handled excellently.
Often in many games you'll encounter characters and you'll never meet them again or they will serve no other purpose than acting as a one off plot device to advance the story. But in Once in a Lifetime, it's clear the developer has put some love into making these side characters.
You'll have these initially briefly known side characters making appearances many times over again within the story. Sometimes it acts as a running gag, but other times they can act as key parts to the main story. And that right there is something that is lacking in both adult games, as well as in even many AAA non-adult games.
There is often such a strict and heavy separation between "side-content" and "main-content", that it almost feels like two different games. But here they are both interwoven very well, and the side characters being as captivating as they are, especially a specific someone, its always a joy when you get to see them again. It's never too much or too little, its always just right. I think that this, on top of how the characters are designed, really makes them memorable and allows for more of the game to be enjoyable. You don't just have the main cast to look forward to, with everybody else in the backdrop. The side characters within this game add just as much, if not more, value than they do.
I really love Mike, I'm sorry.
Thats my brief albeit difficult to put into words 'take' on my feel of the game.
Are there elements within it I'm not a huge fan of?
Sure.
The supernatural fictitious story can seem out of place at times, often contrasting very hard with the softer elements of the game.
The villains of the story, in my opinion, aren't all that memorable and didn't seem to have as much effort put into them as the side/main characters within the story. This is a bit unfortunate, as I think the developer could have done a great job fleshing them out more. They also dont recieve much screen time and individually, aren't all that present within the story for very long. They act more as a plot device for certain events to take place. These events are often very interesting, but I do wish they functioned as a bit more than just a way to push the wagon forward.
Initially they are built up as mysterious unknowns that the MC needs to be careful of, however, at least from the players perspective, a lot of this mystery is thrown away very quickly with reveals being given early on or made quite obvious. I understand that this isn't some sort of detective thriller story, so I can understand not wanting to delve into that if that isnt your objective. I just would liked to have seen more come out of these villains is all.
The ending as well left me with mixed feelings. Writing and setting up the ending for a story can be difficult, but I believe it could have been handled better. It felt rushed I suppose? There were still many questions I was left with after the game ended. A lot my problems have to do with the overarching story within the game, and I think part of
that problem just falls on the fact that the villains dont really have much story to them. If they did, I think it would be a bit easier to connect the dots. I don't really want to spoil anything.
Those are really the only cons I have about the game that I can readily think of.
Aside from story and gameplay (it's a VN with choices and it's not sandbox so there isn't much to talk about here) the lewd scenes are done EXTREMELY well.
The animations are superb, the visuals of the game and design of the girls are fantastic, but the scenes. Oh man. The developer does a good job creating sexual tension between the MC and the main characters in the game. The way the scenes are done really scratch a certain itch.
And, to make matters better, the scenes aren't just single animations with just a few lines of dialogue, but often various animations packed into one. Many of them each with ways to change scene perspective and progress it in some sort of way.
I think this quality always ensures you have something to look forward to when you're not being entertained by the nonsensical (but still somehow sensible?) dialogue, writing, and story within the game. You aren't wasting your time, if thats what you want to know.
These are my rough thoughts, though I feel I may rewrite my review in the future so as to emphasize a bit more on what I enjoyed about the game, and perhaps make it more concise as well. This will likely have to wait until I perform a second playthrough of the game, which will probably be done around the next time additional content is added to the game.
In Summary:
If you enjoy something a bit more adventurous than what you typically experience on the website, something with clever and cheeky writing, scenes that are directed extremely well, visually appealing visuals with well animated and high quality h-scenes(given the engine), well written characters, side-characters that actually matter, and set piece story events that are more captivating than entire games, then perhaps Once in a Lifetime is for you. The MC is also really well done, it's never quite boring through his eyes.
Great game, please give it a chance.
Note to the developer: Here are some things I would love to see in any future updates you might add to the game..
- Fleshing out a bit more of the villains. Perhaps retrofitting lore and narrative with the story having concluded might come off a bit poorly and possibly unreasonable given the games scale, but it's something that would make them a bit more interesting as well as help answer some questions about what exactly happened in the ending(as well as what happens after).
- Adding a bit more content and closure to Carla's path. As of right now
