Review for Rebounding Life [Ep. 1]
This is undoubtedly a fantastic 0.1 version. Writing, story, characters, visuals, it passes with an A-grade. Are there issues? Kind of. They aren't issues currently, however there are things that can later become issues.
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So, initially I was actually surprised about how much was actually in here. Not particularly in terms of sexual content (there's two scenes if you play your cards right, and they're easy to achieve), but in terms of writing. Each character has a clearly defined personality and understandable goals. You can see the MC's future goals, you can see the steps that (you assume) will be taken. That's a good set up. The dynamics are there. Are they kinda cliche? Yeah. Some cliches can be beneficial in immediately getting an audience comfortable in the environment quicker. The difference is whether we ONLY get further cliches.
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The visuals are great. Really no question here. Models, lighting, water reflections are all great, backgrounds are well done (a few things are a bit off if you pay attention, like the idea of a giant carpet with the school's logo in the middle of the college entrance instead of being in the floor), really nothing additional to mention. Although, I WILL say I hope we get some more diversity in terms of female love interests. I may be in the minority, but I like seeing women of different ages that LOOK like they're different ages.
Now, I wanna side-track a bit to ages specifically. The ballpark retirement age for an NBA player is their mid-30s, so that's the age I'm ASSUMING the MC is in, and that leaves some room to have an 18-year-old kid if we assume the MC retired in his late 30s. Nasira and Faith look quite young, so I first thought they'd be in their late 20s, but then they have older kids so you'd assume they're in their late 30s? This can work for rich people where you assume they get all this skincare done, but I want to see some older or older LOOKING people. Obviously a bit of a nitpick, just I'd like to see older women to help make the world more believable, whether it's the principal or Auri's mother or someone else. A whole game without a woman with a grey hair would be crazy.
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An issue I see possibly appearing, is the lack of choice. An intro being largely kinetic is forgivable, but there's a lot of stuff which restricts the player. An example is the MC wanting their son Troy to play basketball. What if, perhaps, I don't want to be fucking LeBron James making sure my son plays? The MC acknowledges his son has no desire to play, he acknowledges his son has skill in art (one we don't really see atm, more told), but we don't get a choice. If I have to sit through 10 episodes of the MC figuring out the son doesn't want to just do what his father wants and the MC accepting that, I will go insane. That would be intensely reptitive. If we get the choice to either push him or accept his choices, at least that'd give us the ability to just focus on other things.
I'm also curious how much time will actually be spent with the sons. I like that the MC has more supporting characters, but keep in mind an NCAA team has 15 players. FIBA has 12. WNBA has a minimum of 11 on a team. How many love interests will we actually have? It worries me that the story might bloat like numerous others and we'll lose focus and/or it'd be absolute essays between sex scenes.
