Played through the game.
My review:
(I'm too stupid to figure out how to leave actual reviews so just dumping it here if the devs care to read it)
Pros
- Art is very well done, great shading and color palette use, love the spine-esque animations, handles the different arm motions pretty well.
- Love the setting / tone, it's very grounded, no weird over-the-top things, everything is a slow burn with very believable characters, sprinkled with a little humor & lot's of thirst
- The 'story events' are very interesting, whether it's shopping or overhearing your boss on the phone, there's a 'taken seriously' vibe to this game's story and characters, it has charm and feels coherent, it's not just a lewd game.
- The writing is very well done, it's not too short, not too verbose and I find myself wanting to learn more about these characters just as they exit a scene. The games leaves me wanting more instead of having me slam the skip button through essays of bad grammar and uninteresting dialogue.
- Character creator with really good options, there are no "ugly" throw away appearances and the randomize / switch back / appearance modifier options are all very intuitive to use. Very much appreciated the effort for this.
Cons
- After the first 6 or 7 days, unique content begins to dry up.. you enter this sort of boredom death spiral where your repetitiously doing the same things grinding for an hour, slowly.. trying to pump up a single integer value - just for a tiny 'progression event'. I don't think this game is grindy actually.. Doing the pizza game is insanely enjoyable when real story NPC's show up to interact with, or really just any NPC's that have a personality beyond "Give me a four seasons and beer please!". When the game runs out of unique things to throw at you, whether they are events or plot hooks or conversations, that is when you start feeling the 'grind pain' and it starts to become very hollow and tedious to play.
- The "Side View" only perspective does suffer a little, this is a pretty unrealistic ask but I think a 3/4th view would of been better, you still only have to animate one walk / talk / action / etc loop that can be flipped but showing more of the characters face and torso generally offers a slightly better aesthetic IMO.
- Clothing seems to have little effect beyond aesthetics. I hope that clothing with higher Exhibitionism requirements offer some tangible changes or reactivity for events or otherwise, give players opt in mechanics to spice up repetitive daily events.
Closing Thoughts (That nobody asked for )
- Really love this game.. the potential is huge. If this game had consistent story events and avoided the bus > pizza > massage > bus > kitchen > sleep loop for 10 or 15 days straight.. I think this game is possibly one of the best in this genre. Between the art, writing and game design features - it's really amazing.
[controversial]
- I would be interested in supporting it but one issue for me is the initial release was 2021.. The developer says they work on this game every day as a full time endeavor but I would expect a bit more content after ~2 years of development. This game essentially only has 6 days worth of events before you are just looping.
[/controversial]
Really excited for this game to grow and develop and will likely check back at a later date and see what and where it's going.
Thanks for reading.