VERSION: 0.2a
In a market inundated with Poser-based, Ren'Py visual novel titles, the developers behind Shameless released an early alpha build with the apparent intent of creating no waves whatsoever. Every possible step was taken to adhere, stringently, to genre specific tropes while simultaneously portraying their characters in a singularly unflattering light.
Our protagonist is a young man, ostensibly in his early twenties, returning home after an extended period of residing with his aunt. Naturally, his mother is delighted to see him, as are his two sisters of vastly distinct ages and builds. The protagonist is immediately seen as a viable sexual candidate by all the women, pursued in spite of his numerous flaws and generally met with the sort of cavalier attitude toward incest seen, ironically, only within incest games.
The issue, however, is not that Shameless relies on these tropes to establish its narrative, but that it does so in such an awkward manner. Flaws abound throughout every conceivable facet of the game, with graphics falling well below the standards established by similar titles, dialogue that is so heavily laden with typographical errors as to be laughably obtuse, mechanics that fail to provide anything more substantial than the illusion of choice and continuity errors ranging from specific characters to the very setting itself.
Beginning with the most egregious: the dialogue.
There's no debating that the author lacks any semblance of an education in linguistics and, in all likelihood, is a non-native English speaker as their grasp of syntax and the general rules of grammar are woefully inadequate. While typographical errors can generally be forgiven, even by the most pedantic of readers, the careless formatting and perpetual misuse of the ellipsis throughout are abhorrent. Take, for example, the following lines copied verbatim.
It's not upto here
I'm not a little kid....
You and Jessie leaves home to go see Karen.
Her saloon is only a few minutes away from your home
you and Jessie decides to walk there.
You and Jessie heads back home!
Well not anymore...My father doesnt like tresspassers..
He will blow up your head if he ever catches you...
Anecdotally, I snorted aloud when considering "You and Jessie" visiting her "saloon." One can only imagine how this rather effeminate boy and his little sister would fare surrounded by grizzled cowboys sipping whiskey. All such jests aside, however, the errors are overwhelming: misspelt words ("tresspassers" and "saloon"), shoddy grammar ("You and Jessie"), poor conjugation ("leaves home" and "decides to"), bizzarre typographical choices ("...heads back home!") to say nothing of the ellipsis bombard. Indeed, every other line of dialogue features an ellipsis and, quite often, any given line will be comprised of several.
Oh... That!
You could have asked Mom for help....Until you get back on your feet..
Even in this respect, the author is incapable of avoiding an error: some ellipsis have two periods, some four, several five. Rarely do they manage the appropriate three and, even then, they capitalize the next word regardless of context. Again, I couldn't help but laugh aloud at the thought of this script being performed, wretched grammar intact, the voice actors constantly forced to undergo lingering pauses.
Yet, the calvacade of flaws continues with continuity errors.
Any work, no matter how diligent its editors, is prone to a few continuity errors, yet the majority are typically restricted to minor gaffes and go unnoticed by all but the most astute of its fans. With Shameless, the bar is set much lower. Take, for example, the introductory sequence: our protagonist is being driven to their destination in a hired vehicle, clearly helmed by an elderly man that is entirely bald. The driver's face is clearly seen when he turns to face the player and in the bust that appears during their discourse. After a brief interlude, we return to the car only to discover that the driver is now a completely different man: heavier build, different clothes and with a full head of hair.
There's also a number of sequences in which the protagonist, who may be ascribed a custom name by the player, is refered to as "Tom" by the cast; Tom, as you're informed at the start, is the default player name. One might also note the scene in which you may refuse payment from a cougar-type character for a minor task, only to find yourself speaking of "being paid $50" even had you refrained (and, consequently, would have no idea what she offered as no amount is specified in the dialogue).
Most jarringly, however, are the following two scenarios in which the developer failed to consider the onscreen images when preparing assets for other elements.
1) The player is forced, via some inordinately contrived steps, to visit Marie, a "witch" who operates the local coffee shop as a front for her drug dealing. A fourth-wall breaking notification appears to spare those who are skittish about interracial or GILF porn, the merits of which are debateable, but viewing the scene leads to an image of a relatively mature woman with dark brown hair being railed by a fairly muscular black man in doggy style. The woman is seen screaming at you to observe their copulation, despite any protest, yet the image of Marie that appears in dialogue is of a distinctly elderly woman with stark white hair.
2) At night, as is customary in these games, the player may stride into their family's bedrooms with impunity. As expected, they will consistently find the women asleep atop the bedding in a somewhat revealing pose. Par for the course, naturally, but despite the readily apparent presence of said women a notification will always appear in the upper-left of the screen reading "There is no one in here!"
This haphazard adherence to the continuity established by their own art extends even to the setting itself: early on the protagonist mentions returning to the "city" where they live, ventures into said skyscraper-filled city on a trip with their younger sister, is shown views outside of windows of an urban nature... yet, they are swiftly thrust into the search for a missing cat that is found in "our barn." Now, I can't speak for everyone, but I've yet to visit a city in which any middle-class family maintained a barn; after all, the rearing of livestock is typically restricted to a more rural environment.
Overt though these mistakes are, even they might be excused had the game provided some novelty via a branching narrative. Sadly, the choice-and-consequences mechanic, a mainstay of both the roleplaying and visual novel genres, are the next victim. In that respect, quite often Shameless fails to provide any choice whatsoever.
A) After awakening on Sunday, having fallen asleep alongside their fully-clothed sister, two options are presented to the player: "Jerk Off" or "Get up." Selecting the former leads to the protagonist noting that they shouldn't masturbate with their sister present and immediately prompts the player to click a new "Not Today" option. This, of course, has the exact same effect as though they had clicked "Get up" initially.
B) Immediately after this sequence, the player must click through the various rooms in their home until they chance across one that allows for some progression: the front room. On doing so, knocking is heard and the player disovers their neighbor, Lisa, is eager to treat them to a reward for locating her cat. The player may select between the options of "Sure, why not!" or "Not interested." If, like myself, the player finds they are genuinely uninterested in pursuing a relationship with Lisa, thus opting for the latter, the protagonist will find themselves back in their home with no other interactive choices. Visiting other rooms yields nothing. Indeed, you must return to the living room, where the exact same sequence will unfold, unchanged in even the slightest regard, prompting you to choose once more between the same options. This loop will endlessly repeat until you relent and click "Sure, why not!" as the developer demands.
If your game is so rigidly linear, just whom do you imagine you're fooling with this pitiful illusion of choice? Actually, I hesitate to dub it even that, for here we do not have distinct paths that merge into the same outcome but, rather, one choice that must be selected and another which effectively reads "try again."
Graphically, Shameless also fails to deliver: the models are clearly derived from an older generation, appearing both less detailed and somewhat "puffy" in their dimensions, for lack of a better term. Worse yet, the models and their environments don't mesh naturally, appearing more often like cutout dolls placed atop the scenery rather than integrated elements. Speculatively, I imagine this was a deliberate design choice to mitigate excessive rendering time, employing pre-rendered backgrounds and overlaying the characters as required. The unnatural contrast of characters and their environment is most readily apparent in scenes that feature multiple light source, as in the bathroom, where the cast are clearly neither illuminated nor casting appropriate shadows.
Even more niggling details abound, such as multiple scenes in which one sister or another is seemingly absorbed in activity on their laptop, yet the player can clearly see the electronics are off as the screens are entirely black. This wouldn't be so jarring if the developer hadn't then proceeded to demonstrate that they can, in fact, overlay a blurred image atop the static model to feign activity in a later scene.
Finally, the scripting itself is marred by the same deficiencies as every other facet of the game, leading to multiple freezes that necessitate rollbacks along with a single crash after repeated "exception" errors when attempting to enter Maisie's room at night. This, for me, is a first among games based on the Ren'Py engine that has otherwise proven itself to be resoundingly stable.
GRAPHICS ---------------------------------------------------- 4 / 10
+ Relatively unique cast, given that the women boast hairstyles rarely used on Poser models. The added highlights in their hair also serve to further differentiate the family members and are a noteworthy inclusion.
+ Employed some non-standard body types such as older women, a heavyset MILF and a rather pear-shaped waif.
- Renders are of low-to-middling quality, particularly when compared against similar titles. Quality varies from scene to scene.
- Animations, what few exist, are inexplicably short and low-resolution. Motion is janky and robotic.
- Characters often appear to exist on a separate layer from their environment, typically as a result of mismatched lighting or shadows.
- Details, such as active laptop screens, are neglected and break the sense of immersion.
DIALOGUE ---------------------------------------------------- 1 / 10
- Grotesquely rife with errors in every conceivable regard. Grammar is poor, typographical mistakes abound, punctuation is sloppy and misused, while the formatting serves most often as a detriment to its legibility.
- Characters converse in strange, choppy and often irrational manners. The author appears to have a puerile fascination with the term "bitch."
- No semblance of a genuine personality nor any eccentricity that would serve to distinguish between characters is on display.
GAMEPLAY --------------------------------------------------- 2 / 10
- Environmental interaction is at a bare minimum, most events are triggered merely by clicking a random room button.
- No agency is permitted to the player, the illusion of choice negates any selection that is offered. Clicking the wrong option, as dictated by the developer, forces the player to repeat sequences endlessly until they choose appropriately or voids their choice entirely.
- In-engine exception errors abound, forcing rollbacks and resulting in crashes.
INNOVATION ------------------------------------------------ 2 / 10
+/- Fourth-wall breaking warning about content is provided, enabling players to avoid material they find offensive, but should be presented prior to beginning a game rather than mid-sequence.
- Tropes abound and with no apparent attempt at subversion nor lampshading.
- Continuity is not a suggestion.
SCORE ========================================= 9 / 40
DEEPLY FLAWED, REQUIRES A RADICAL SHIFT IN DEVELOPMENT QUALITY
Unfortunately, Shameless squanders any inherent potential with subpar graphics, tedious dialogue and a premise that has been executed with far greater sophistication, deft and artistic skill elsewhere. Provided the developers are willing to learn from their contemporaries, they may yet be able to craft this into a decent game; for the moment, the best I can say is that it's a
shame less effort was put into making
Shameless a worthwhile experience.
CONSTRUCTIVE CRITIQUE: Hire an English-speaking editor immediately. The unrelenting cascade of errors, from grammar to syntax, typographical to parsing, dramatically disrupt any attempt to glean a coherent sense of the narrative. Consider the addition of further frames in your animations, to create more fluid movement, or further static images to flesh out a scene. Eliminate the illusion-of-choice scenarios; if your intent is to create a linear progression, do so rather than inserting frivolous "choices" that fail to alter the outcome. Check your script for continuity errors and revise the pertinent scenes accordingly.
