I don't know how to explain it, but this game gives off such a different vibe today than when it did when I first played it back in 2020, and read it again in 2022-ish.
It's like it originally started off as a genderbender fetish thing with the sex game and all that, and while it did admittedly have some tones of finding yourself and et cetera, it did not feel like it was the focus. Then, with how the author evolved to discover their own identity, this has then become the equivalent of... an exposition of what trans people feel or go through when they realize they're trans, particularly in the mom route? Or a trans daydream at points? I don't fucking know, man. And it's weird, because the main aspect of the game which otherwise previously existed (Everything with AI and the sex game) just feels so distant in so many ways. It's like it changed from a hentai game to the personal letters, thoughts and feelings that trans people go through? And it's weird because despite that (or perhaps because of that) reading through the long dialogues of the mom route still feels engaging and keeps you hooked because it feels like you can feel the author behind the words.
On the other hand this also means that I can barely call this an HGame anymore and also with the number of days progressed and everything else I can't see this ever ending on most routes (though the Mom route is divorced from Ai's game so that one might end), and it definitely makes some scenes (such as a Day 1 handjob on Keisuke route) feel very divorced from the remainder of the game, where it feels more like the daydream part I said than an exposé of feelings like in the Mom route.
I don't know, maybe I'm rambling or something. But reading this for the first time in a long few years the difference is notable and it's really surprising. It's a game that started as something and became something else, and it's not bad writing, it's just... I don't know. This is one of the few games where I think I genuinely feel like I'm peering into the author's mind or soul or whatever people call it behind the writing and it's weird I'd find that on a fucking genderbender 18+ game of all things.
I may just be crazy and talking out of my ass here. Heck, I don't even know why I'm writing this. Either way, there's something special here for sure, even if I for the life of me still wouldn't be able to tell you what the fuck it is.
Thank you for the long message! I'll try to cover some of the reasons behind what you mentioned, but in a somewhat redundant forewarning given you reading the VN, I tend to be rather verbose.
Honestly, the biggest reason behind the shift in tone is that every step of commissioning art and putting it into the game is a process that takes at least 4 months and often more. That's not something I can necessarily change the speed of given how few artists I have found which are able to match the game's extant art style, and it has very much skewed the ratio of CG sex scenes to writing more than I was expecting; and given that this game is in the process of being made, I still have to charge ahead with story even if I don't have the all of the parts I was expecting to work with.
Zach's weird start to their very active college sex life is always going to be important in this game (excluding the mom route, which I was paid to expand and which exists in its own weird hypothetical scenario). It is
the core event of the story, but I realized could make those focal point sex scenes better by letting them be important character growth moments (such as learning to trust a person to let yourself be so vulnerable and intimate around them in a situation where you are forced to be honest about who and what you are in what is a safe place place to do that, and showing the elaborate routine of mental gymnastics Zach puts himself through to avoid reaching the very obvious conclusion that he is bisexual and into his best friend because of his own rather prejudiced views that thinking being into (other) men is emasculating to the point that he might find gaslighting himself into thinking he's a bisexual woman to be preferable).
In my opinion, that context is what makes gender bender
be gender bender and not "this is just a heterosexual/bi/lesbian woman with extra steps." You need that context of who the hell this person is to make the events have any meaning, and that becomes a far more interesting story to tell (and hopefully read) when I lean into the fact that Zach might not truly know who he is and he's only now letting himself ask those questions when he's in this weird situation that is similarly shaking Zach's perception of the world and not merely his inner perception. I don't think Zach is necessarily destined to be a repressed trans woman, but there have been some very important parts of himself he has been so desperate to run from that he did something as stupid and batshit insane as burning a full-ride scholarship, taking out a $100,000 student loan, and traveling the world without a plan in hopes that he would stumble upon an answer from somewhere that wasn't from inside of himself.
Zach is stubborn as fuck. It's close to his single most prominent personality trait (which he doesn't realize is undiagnosed OCD because his view on what that is has been so warped by his insane mom's far more obvious case of it). If this person is going to change, he needed to be put into something as monumental as "I ended up in a female body as part of a magical bullshit reality-altering sex game and my life has just been completely derailed, and the only way to get things back to 'normal' in six months is to participate in that game with a close friend, hide my female body from the world, and get let around by the nose of an artificial intelligence who has her own hidden agenda."
My own mental health (and neurological health) is kind of infamously shit in multiple ways, and while it wasn't intentional, I did end up putting the closest thing an unfortunately edgy atheist views as my soul into the story. Zach is not my self-insert, but it wouldn't take much effort to convincingly argue that I put parts of who I am into this story and its characters.
Is it weird that this is happening within a pornographic gender bender visual novel? Yeah, I think so. Did the game exceed my wildest expectations of how impactful it could be on myself and other people? Very much so.
Do I think I can stick the landing on making a visual novel that is simultaneously full of erotic gender bender scenes that are actually hot and which does this genre/kink/fetish in a way that I want to do it because I am fucking sick and tired of how mediocre this genre can be and how often it fails to "go the distance" in just how profound and human a fetish about change and contrast can even be; sharing a deeply-held belief about how messy identity can be that doesn't try to push any answer on anyone besides being themselves and that you are never wrong for being yourself; seeing just how far I can go with doing the exact opposite of most visual novels by creating such a thoroughly-individualized and unique protagonist with such excessive depth and detail that the volume of their eccentric quirkiness wraps back around to making them more relatable than a more run-of-the-mill black canvas; an interesting character-based story with a small cast, a somewhat unique setting which I
swear is there beyond justifying the Japan-America hybrid setting, and themes such as generational trauma as show through a very dramatic parental foil, the bullshit inherit to any thoughts of personal predetermination and being locked into who you are from factors decided at birth while also accepting that the only person you can ever be is yourself, the idea that personal growth is achieved from the wisdom of reconciling important yet contradictory values with each other, and pointing out the harm caused from rigidly gendering quality of character and even how conforming to what are commonly seen as positive gender stereotypes is a crutch of scaffolding that can limit who and what a person can be; and just continuing to have fun with a passion project I am lucky enough to do as my full-time job with a less-common form of media I think is heavily underutilized and disrespected in English spheres?
Well, fuck, I sure hope so!
