Review as of v.0.3.1
Pros:
+ Great music.
+ Awesome writing... for an eroge.
+ Has a lot of potential in terms of story and choices.
Meh:
~ Visuals could be better. Could be worse too. More on that below.
~ Technically a bit sparse on content, but compared to the other games at the similar development stage, there's actually quite a lot.
Cons:
- I'm not a fan of some characters visually, but that's mostly a personal preference.
- Having multiple projects in development at once is always a worrying tendency.
In-depth:
Hell yeah! Goodbye streak of bad games I had and hello streak of hidden gems and pleasant surprises! And boy is this game one of them.
Yes-yes, TL;DR - you can skip to the last two paragraphs.
Didn't like the characters at first, to be honest. At least the models. But they grew on me.
Naomi looks constantly pissed, which really confused me at first, but then started to look so fucking adorable, that I just love it.
Lyanna... I... I honestly feel that her roles with her daughter should've been switched. I understand, suspension of disbelief and all that, and I'm a big proponent of that myself, but still, I'm not believing for a second that she's around 30. Nope. Other than that though, she's fantastic.
Mel is the best kind of dork and I absolutely love her as well. Not sure if need to protecc or fuck. Probably both.
Didn't have much content beyond introduction, but I'm looking forward to Sonya, Chloe and Valerie. Jasmine and Lucia also surprised me. But then again, the characters do tend to surprise me in this game, in a very positive way.
But Fufu is the best girl. Just saying. Not only does she seem to be a rather unique archetype, but she reminded me so much of a childhood crush I had (uhm, no, I didn't have a girl in my basement, I'm talking about a cartoon character, shut up!) and completely forgot about for all these years! I'm happier than I should be about this right now.
As far as the rest of the cast go, nobody really stood out in a bad way in my eyes. Except maybe Ada and Elly, they look way out of place, but... that also makes sense, considering their origin. Same goes for Lilith, but she seems to be a bit better, both visually and in terms of writing. Still, too early to say for sure. We'll see how they develop in a few updates.
The close-ups are genuinely nice, maybe even some of the best I've seen, but the game could definitely use some HD textures. And not just on the skin, the backgrounds also often look blurry. The lighting in some scenes is a bit odd as well. It even manages to make some scenes look creepy for no reason.
The animations are generic and not perfectly looped - you can clearly see the cuts. But as I keep saying in every one of my reviews, I don't particularly care about animations, so that's not much of a minus for me personally.
And with all that, I really like what the author does with the facial expressions and general camera work. So while not without issues, overall the visuals leave pleasant impressions, if not on a technical level, then at least because there's some life in them. You can feel that the author tries to put thought and care into every scene.
The writing is surprisingly solid. In fact, I got more invested in stealing Mittens than actually getting the girls. I could do with a bit less of character thoughts and narration, but it's not a deal breaker.
I enjoyed the humor, which is a rare one for me in these games. But I seriously laughed my ass out at some of these jokes (intentional or not; the comment about Naomi being a squirter... "like mother like daughter", almost killed me).
Some choices feel a little too forced. Probably necessary for the story, but still leave a bad taste. I also hate the single choice buttons, especially during the sex scenes. Completely unnecessary.
That said, other choices seem to actually matter. Even right now you can see the differences they bring to the story, and I'm really looking forward to seeing what they do in later versions and if the developer can keep up with their own ambition.
The music is... I don't know what the right word would be... atmospheric, I guess. It's not something that I would listen to outside of this game, but otherwise it did fit the situations perfectly. Which is, a nice change from whatever audio mess you usually hear in these games. I never had an urge to turn it off and in fact, this is that rare moment where I would say music actually did enhance the scenes, so I'd definitely recommend keeping it on.
As far as UI goes... there's not much to speak of. But I wish there was.
What I mean is - there's really no UI during the gameplay. Instead you are getting a relationship update at the end of every chapter. While this is nice for your first playthrough (and I highly recommend you do one without walkthroughs this time around, it really feels rewarding and actually feels like you're making the characters your own), I still wish I could see these changes in real time via some UI element within the chapters. Just for the sake of less frustrating replayability. But once again, this is a very minor issue, barely worth mentioning.
You know, with any other game, I would probably give it a 4/5, just because of the aforementioned visuals - bad textures, animations, even a lot of characters not being up my alley in terms of looks. But honestly, the writing kinda makes up for this. I meet a new character and think to myself "meh, I kinda don't like her visually, so... skip!", but mere moments later I'm already interested, if not invested, and want to know more about them. In fact, for some time it felt like the author was one-upping himself and every character I met, I liked better than the previous one. So just for that, any complaints I may have had with visuals are forgiven.
And look, I'm not saying the writing is flawless, or that there aren't tropes or things you need to overlook. Yes, ffs, it's an eroge, of course everyone wants to get into MC's pants. But that's kind of a given. It's not a flaw, it's just how this genre works. What happens around it is what matters though. And what happens in this game is that I have yet to find a character that I don't like and I'm actually interested in seeing where the story is going.
I feel like this game has a great potential. And as such, with my best wishes to the developer, I also give it a definite recommendation. This is a game worth playing.
. But as a whole I really like the animations.
