VN - Ren'Py - Reconstruction [v0.2] [Rebelion]

This is promising, but it has a few problems.

The first issue is the UI.

The developer is flexing with custom elements, but ignoring the user experience. Every thing you need to do requires guess work, using icons can work when they are clear, but the only clear ones here are the roll back and save icons. There's even an "X" in the save screen that could be either close window or quit game, and when I assumed it was close window... It quit me out of the game.

The second issue is transitions.

There are a lot of fancy ones that call attention to themselves. Some work, others feel egregious and take me out of the story.

Which makes it baffling as to why there are so many straight cuts for character movement. It makes it incredibly jerky, and would be served better by dissolves for the smoothness.

The third issue is story and writing.

While the concept is interesting, execution of the small things is not great. There is not a lot of conflict in what we have so far, so the characters are not being revealed very well. This is compounded by all of them sounding the same (aside from Max, who is a very basic archetype, but at least has some differentiation from the main character. The girls could all be swapped with each other and their dialogue would still fit.)

All this leads to a sense that nothing is happening.

The fourth issue is framing.

There is one particular scene of Max and MC in the cafeteria that "crosses the line" where we see shots of them both looking at each other, but because it crosses the invisible line between them, they end up on the same side of the frame, which breaks the sense of space. This is a pretty easy fix.

And a taste thing:

I don't like the desaturated look. The game appears to have a grey filter applied across the camera, dampening the vibrancy of the colours. The lighting also relies too heavily on the environment lights and there aren't enough character lights to make them pop from the backgrounds.

Otherwise this game has a lot of style and potential, but I'd be lying if I said it had even come close to realising it in what has been released so far. It's one to watch, but the deveoper really needs to focus on the basics more than trying to be flashy.

Review for v0.2

This is a game to keep an eye on, more than most new AVNs that pop up. I don't know the dev's background but this is a rare case where I'm actually surprised this is assumedly their first game. It's pretty high quality and actually has a bit of a unique feel to it, which after going through so many AVNs over the years, is a very big positive for me. It's engaging.

It's a very show and not tell type of experience so far. To be honest with you, after sitting down and running through this for an hour thirty~, I actually have no idea where the story is going or what this game is trying to do. Which surprisingly is kinda fun when the game is constantly keeping you on your feet and leaves you guessing in a way. It seems like the narrative right now is that the MC needs money to pay off a debt and he's going to win that money through prize fighting in a world where crazy psychically enhancing drugs are a thing. I have a feeling it's going to get deeper than that though.

Now that being said, I'd argue the game overuses that to a degree as well. The biggest issue I had was that I felt lacking in context with a lot of the characters. This doesn't really tell you much about the MC's past, doesn't tell you how you know any of these characters, or much of anything about his current situation either. You can certainly infer things, but I wouldn't mind knowing how the MC knows/met Joy, a love interest, as an example. I actually had to read the overview to understand some things because it doesn't tell you that stuff in game, like Clara adopting you. Since the game moves around a lot and hardly stays on one scene for very long, it can be a little easy to get lost on what exactly is happening. The game has a love interest codex and I think it would be a nice addition to add some of that info in there.

Characters have a lot of personality so far which has been great. Like I said, the game has a rather unique vibe to it and they certainly contribute to that. I really dislike the overused comparison to a certain highly popular HS game on this site, but I think this is a rare case where it fits in some ways. Renders and environments are great, lots of good animations, has some nice music, and the story has been interesting.

I'm not without critiques either. For one, The game lacks moments where it really sits down and breathes. Almost like it's afraid to have longer story scenes in a way. It's a very fast paced VN and because of that I think it's losing some of the would-be small details. We don't get a lot of long conversations or deeper thought with most characters again partly because this game is trying to show and not tell. It's got me hooked enough to want to learn about them all, and now it needs to actually deliver on that.

I'm also not a huge fan of the first lewd scene with our adoptive mother(?) of all people seemingly being a drug fueled whim type thing? I feel like it's a porn plot device to just skip things like relationship buildup and tension, which it does. It doesn't convey that drugged up part well either tbh. It kind of builds into my bigger issue of the pacing being a bit too fast overall. There's a couple rough edges too, like that fight scene missing renders and some dialogue reading a little funky, but that can be fixed up.

Overall though actually a very solid start. Think this might be a sleeper hit. Needs to find its ground a bit more, but I'm honestly surprised it doesn't have more attention right now. Looking forward to further development.

Solid 5 Stars! Great Story, great models, great environement! Great Humor! The only thing i could improse is the skin of the models which is a bit..weird..Could be improved there. I understand that the objective to be be more real, but ends up being like scales..Other then that, it has everything to be in the top 10 of this site! Thank you for this game DEV!

Really excellent game, even though it still has very little content and I'm looking forward for the next update even though it's been a while.

If assuming the girls we've seen up until now are potential LIs, they all look very good, the dialogue flows well and I don't think I've noticed spelling mistakes so far, music is good and the world seems to be pretty interesting. Very nice job with renders and posing too.

As of v.0.1.5, still not much content but it certainly has potential.

I really like this game, hope it will become more known. When I first started playing I was really attracted!!. The plot is very engaging and the character images are really great, the game's graphics are really appreciated. I hope everyone will support this game more.

I really like this game seems like its gonna be a underrated gem but a great start in my opinion. The story is pretty well written and I also like the character. I can tell it was made with charm in it. I hope it get more updates