Ren'Py - Onhold - pic_intruder [v0.1.6 - RE:BUILD] [LUNA]

(v0.16)
The game feel like its missing something, every character has a progression encounter that you activate by selecting them when in the sandbox part of the game. the problem is, the meetings between the characters are just 3-4 lines of text and then it skips forward, you as the player don't actually get to read what happened on that event, the MC says "i had fun" and that's it, this happens even on second progression points, the MC gets a date, goes to said date and time skips ahead, you don't know what was said or what happened during the date. this feels so bad, you just grind points for nothing to happen until you get to the end of the "storyline" of each girl where you get a very small event. but to be fair, after you finish each "storyline" you do get into a bunch of dialogue, i just think things should get more smoothed out so the sandbox doesn't feel so out of place.

I really like this game's story even though it's very short in v0.16, it has potential to be a really engaging story if the dev keep it up. i'll just overlook characters for now because i can't make out anything of them, you get so little information or dialogue with any of them that you really can't tell if they're good written or not, but the koikatsu models do look great, so that's a plus.

The sex scenes feel bland and it just feel like the main character is having sex with a doll, pretty sure the fault falls on the pic intruder app, but maybe that may be fixed as you can see eve move in one of the events inside the app, so who knows maybe we'll get real sex scenes inside the app, where the female characters actually move and feel something, looking forward to that as well.

Also, that can't rollback choices thing shouldn't be so forced onto the player, most players will just savescum to bypass that anyway. i know the game's trying to make choices "matter", but it shouldn't be about removing player input on if they want or not to keep their choices.

Though, even if i hate some aspects of this game, i also feel like i could love other things, like the story and characters in the future when it gets further developed, it's just not there right now, it's a 4/5 of hope for the future, looking forward to this.(excuse my grammar, i'm not a native english speaker)

English:............6/10
User Interface:.....8/10
User Experience:....6/10
Art:................8/10
Dialogue:...........7/10
Story:..............7/10
Opinion:............3/10................
Avg:..............6.43/10 [3.21/5]

Initially I was just gonna do a playthrough to see if I'd want to review this in the future. Upon startup, I was annoyed that it starts in fullscreen, but that's easily dismissable. I was also greeted by a full custom setup for the UI, I'm here for it. Sure... It's odd the main menu and in-game UI are VERY different than the pause menu. But something was done with most parts of it. I will give the benefit of the doubt that the game may EVENTUALLY tie the themes together. What little I've seen so far maybe does that. Moving on to the subject matter, I REALLY want to ask all these KK devs, WHY? Why do you all think it's so original and subversive to have the happy-go-lucky technicolor smiles of KK but the plot is "I'm depressed, she's depressed, that guys dead, BUT WAIT MC IS PROBABLY JUST DYING"? The first time it was done was fine. But the amount that do it now is the majority. And this just feels like 13 Reasons the porn game, as of the beginning of the story. But the BIGGEST and MOST ANNOYING thing about this, that spurred this review, is the extra dev insert that NEVER shuts up. Opening to a sandbox that isn't tagged. I don't need to be told "Being nice to a character means they'll like you more" or "You'll need to uncover the more serious story" I have a fully developed brain. Not to mention the fucking phone. You know what I need? A shitty phone emulator where you ACTIVELY have to WAIT for a reply. N O B O D Y wants that. I read very quickly and to bring the flow of the game to a grinding halt for something other than a cutscene is ridiculous. Also, the game does not allow you to change text speed. You have to actively take that out of the menus to get rid of it, which screams "You're gonna play the game the way I want you to." Talk about unfriendly. So obviously, I added it back in because screw that. Off the rip, I will say the dialogue SEEMS alright, the story COULD BE interesting. But I'm barely past the beginning of the game, they could get lazy.

The story opens up to MC narrating his life before now. About him and his... Life partner, his dad? I've NEVER heard of a parent being called a life partner. Just an odd choice of words. Anyway, speedrun. Dad died out of nowhere, months later gf killed herself, MC shuts himself away. A few months after THAT MC gets an email saying "Try our app" and suddenly he can inject himself into a picture and do lewd things to someone that is no more than a sex doll. So immediately the tone and premise are at COMPLETE opposite ends of of the spectrum. "But that's the point" is what you might say to that. But why are we forced to go from depressing subject matter to sexually assaulting a brainless fuck doll? Is that supposed to be hot? Is that appealing? Not really. Each aspect active works against the other. And all to come to a halt at the sandbox intermission. "Get relationship points with the girls before you move onto the next story beat." WHY? And to have no directions on what to do? Great! I get to click the girls' faces until something happens. That's awful. Anyways, MC decides "Lemme open a picture of my dead ex" And he's gonna piece together why she killed herself. Luckily the app recreates the WHOLE room the people were in. Which even suspending disbelief, doesn't make sense, but it'd be harder to only make an environment that only has what's in the picture so don't think about it too much. That's the pivotal part of the premise because MC finds a note by the ex that says it was his fault. I'm calling it now, negligence or not accepting of the other girls' feelings. I HOPE I'm wrong, but my god if it's that maybe MC should off himself. And the devs annoying insert when MC is told to tell Ayla about dinner when she's in the bathroom. So you think "Okay let's go to the bathroom, this isn't a pervy game, don't want to snoop in her room, knock on the door." Nope. Dev chimes in with "Way to be a perv, try again loser." Why was the option there? I don't understand what the aim of the game is.

Just as the sandbox worms it's way into the game, Luna, dev insert, tells you either do the thing the game was named for, or follow the severely depressing themes of the main story. And I'd be all for the latter if that was the only point of the game. But read all I've written before this to understand why it's hard to get into that. DDLC was the worst thing to happen to VNs ever, in my opinion. They also tell you save scumming might cause a bug, but that is almost impossible unless the game is made so poorly that previous choices actively bug out later ones. And in between every idea, Luna's ellipses have three interactions as if you're stupid and need to take in the information or bad joke. Great. Then you get into the terrible game loop, that is now popularized, of "Click on the character to get +1 to them until something happens because this throwaway event will have NOTHING interesting." You're supposed to feel like you're getting close to them, but then when you DO get the fabled "unique event" they act like they killed Eve or they don't want to tell MC the truth about whatever it is they will contribute to the story in 12 updates time. And it's to the point where I'm not picking any of the lewd options because I don't want to assault a sleeping drunk woman and free-use isn't appealing. And after the first story thing the English nosedives. I legit thought this was written by someone that speaks English until this point. And the timeline is messed up too. The story STARTS by saying we are a few months after Eve's death, them MC says he tried dating a few months ago? So right after the love of his life killed herself? Am I the only one reading this? Hello? Then MC is pushed to date Lara because of one date? He says they went on multiple dateS but you the player see one, and then an image of them sitting in the park 12 times with a line akin to "You spent the day with her, it was so much fun, you really shoulda been there!" You get to the first major story event and know NOTHING about the characters. You only know MC has the potential to warp into pictures and molest their brainless husks. Is this not supposed to be an emotional thing? Or we leaning into the poorly executed horror? I need to know. And then the game ends abruptly. I'm supremely irritated.

This game is a LOT shorter than I expected. Maybe it's because I didn't use the phone for the 6 loops of MC fucking vegetables. But still, it just ends in the middle of the FIRST story beat? Are you serious? I'm not excited to move past that one story section, to have to grind +1 updoots until something else happens. And the main menu has a gallery button, click on that? "Sorry not here yet" Then don't make the button. I was hoping for more. Especially with the darker story elements, but they feel like they're there to add shock value and nothing more. Will I come back to this and try again? Probably. The English starts perfectly fine. A few phrases worded weirdly, but fine. Then suddenly sentences that read like shit. Consistency is key. The UI/UX is better than most, like I said. But the phone thing needs to be able to be clicked through, and put the text speed BACK in the menu. The Art is above average KK models and the males don't look like the shitty worms from Men in Black this time, I'm shocked and happy for that. The dialogue is good, for the most part. It's not robotic, people don't declare their innermost personal struggles as soon as they walk into a room, and they seem like actual conversations. I still don't see individual personalities poke through yet, but I guess it's early. The story COULD be good, I'm on the fence. If it just turns into "MC was a dick and just didn't notice it, so Eve finally did it" That's lame on so many levels. If it's "MC tried to kill himself and this is him on the border of the afterlife" That's also dumb. My only other theory is "Eve possessed the phone and spooky stuff happens in Nowhere, it's up to Courage to save his new home!" Which would be weird but slightly different. I'm frustrated with design and UX choices, the "You spent time with X" model is so overdone and boring, English dropping off hits you like a brick, and I honestly don't know how I'm supposed to feel in the game. Luna chimes in and calls you an asshat if you choose one thing early on, and alludes to the app being negative. But MC's trying to deal with stuff, and instead of trying the app more often to find things out, he talks to everyone and they say "I don't wanna talk about it..." Cool. So if you just want to have MC have sex with a lifeless sex doll, here's for you. If you're like me and want to know the story, too bad, so sad. Hope you enjoy cliffhangers.

review as of 0.1.6

An interesting idea and decent looking characters (not particularly interesting or memorable, but at least non-generic, with some work put into them), participating in rather unimaginative, but animated, vanilla sex scenes.

However, it is also one of the worst and user unfriendly executions I've seen in a renpy game.

The text speed is set to a crawl and the basic renpy option to set speed to instant is disabled. As such, I decided to skip all the dialogues instead of waiting for a minute for every phrase to show up. If the dev does not respect my time, I have no intention on respecting their writing. So can't comment on story quality.
Rollbacks disable some choices you didn't select (thankfully, saving/loading still works). Again, all this does is add some work on the user side.

There's not much to talk about, until this is fixed, I can't recommend this game to anyone. If it is fixed, there are some potentially interesting mechanics to explore, and who knows, maybe writing is even good.

This is a pretty good title, its an interesting concept, but going forward, you've already had sex with all of the girls, they just haven't been participants. Its kind of strange that you're approaching it from this angle. I would definitely like to see some advancements with Madalyn, I was kind of hoping that she would get scared in the movie and reach out for my hand or something. As I said, an interesting start, having written science fiction myself, its an interesting perspective, but I'm not sure where you go from here. Very good renderings.

Too many games are all too similar in story, so it's exciting when someone thinks outside the box. Jumping into pictures through a phone app to both have sex and solve a murder mystery is certainly a unique concept, compared to all the "Living with your Hot Landlady while going to Horny College U" games out there.

However there are a few issues. The game is new so I'm cool with the sandbox elements being a little grindy for very little content, for now. But 1. There should be clearer indicators of when you have seen all the new content besides a quick text popup, and 2. why are all the characters sending my photos if I can't use them with the Pic Intruder app? The concept is very interesting, but loses all steam when you can only use the app on photos of random women.

Also the writing is pretty subpar. Most characters talk super generically: "How is your job going, working on good projects? I have to go shopping later." Either get more specific and interesting, or cut those lines out. Make characters talk with purpose: teach us more about their lives, or make us laugh, or give us stakes to care about. Just having them ask the MC questions about their birth months or whatever is really boring.

So yeah this is honestly more of a ~2.5 star game but the premise and potential bump it up to a 4. Hope things improve as the game continues to keep it at that 4-star level.