This is a review of 0.2.3-p
The first thing that might stop people is AI art, AI writing, and possibly AI code. You now know what you're getting into, here's the state of it.
The starting exposition is a fine length. It's not very efficient but it's not wasting a bunch of time, not what I'd call rich story-telling and comes off a bit generic. Still, "ok" and short is a pretty good combo in this space.
The AI writing has a tendency toward pretty constantly adding adjectives and qualifiers to whatever it says. In the current version, there are sections of prose so terribly rote and excessive that it becomes parody. I posted this in detail in the thread and the dev has supposedly extensively rewritten a lot of the text within 24 hours of that post. I'm not paying $15 to check, but with that speed, I have some assumptions. We'll move on from it.
The game is somewhat inconsistent in its writing style in terms of formatting. Parentheticals could be with open-spaced em-dash or closed, and uses em-dash all the time too, way way way more than a person does. Commas, colons, and semicolons be damned. Descriptive non-dialog is often in (parentheses) to set it apart from speech. This is how it's done in second-person narration, first person narration, and first-person thoughts, which I think should be set apart more visually than all being the same formatting. Characters whispering may be done in parentheses at times too, which completely shatters the one merit to formatting it this way, as now there's in-universe speech styled like out-of-character narration.
Which I'll note is not good for skimming. A bunch of people don't care how well smut is written, but if you want writing that is largely a thing to gloss over to get to the gameplay or smut, it needs very clear, very consistent formatting so you know without a thought what something is. I'm saying whether you care about the writing or not, there's going to be something here that affects you.
My favorite part of the writing is when the speech said
Astrid: Screaming!
Hero: Filling you!
Why are you yelling what you're doing!? And no that isn't narration, the player is Hero. He is yelling "Filling you!" at her in response to her saying the word "Screaming!" in between her moans.
Clearly this dev isn't always taking the time to read what the AI outputs before putting it in the game. So let's talk about the code.
I cannot say for sure AI did it. But he spends less time coding than writing, and we know the writing is AI. And if he doesn't reread the writing, he might not audit the code. That would explain stability issues.
It's an early version, there will be bugs. It's pretty easy to just crash. Not even the normal ren'py way where it gives you an error screen and asks you to rollback to earlier, it will crash the entire program back to desktop. And doing so will lose the data that tracks what messages you have read, so anything after your last save will not by skippable with CTRL.
The combat system is fairly simple so far, it's not deep, but it's giving you the jist of what he's going for. Select which party member to act as. No visual feedback about which is selected for now. You gain 2 AP per turn and start with whatever your vitality stat gives. Targeting is not well-conveyed but not really of consequence for now. If you rapidly click after the enemy has fallen, you can spam attacks just to hold combat from ending. Also little consequence.
The dev didn't think to put a stopper on text rollback for combat. So after combat, you can scroll up and crash to desktop. This is an easy fix and will probably be fixed next update. I imagine.
The ART is what you see in the previews, I would have trouble giving useful information about it. In the Astrid quest, it comedically mismatches the text, but that'll be fixed next update. Will this be a recurring issue? Who knows. It isn't full of visual nonsense. The consistency of characters and style isn't amazing, but it's not bad for AI. Didn't see random extra fingers or things blending into each other. It works for what it is, I guess. Look at the pictures and you decide what to feel.
As a whole, I have to say, this is not ready. If you have other things you want to try out, go try those first. There are other games, and if you don't mind the design philosophy on display here, you can try this one after its had time to flesh out more. Maybe a year.
The first thing that might stop people is AI art, AI writing, and possibly AI code. You now know what you're getting into, here's the state of it.
The starting exposition is a fine length. It's not very efficient but it's not wasting a bunch of time, not what I'd call rich story-telling and comes off a bit generic. Still, "ok" and short is a pretty good combo in this space.
The AI writing has a tendency toward pretty constantly adding adjectives and qualifiers to whatever it says. In the current version, there are sections of prose so terribly rote and excessive that it becomes parody. I posted this in detail in the thread and the dev has supposedly extensively rewritten a lot of the text within 24 hours of that post. I'm not paying $15 to check, but with that speed, I have some assumptions. We'll move on from it.
The game is somewhat inconsistent in its writing style in terms of formatting. Parentheticals could be with open-spaced em-dash or closed, and uses em-dash all the time too, way way way more than a person does. Commas, colons, and semicolons be damned. Descriptive non-dialog is often in (parentheses) to set it apart from speech. This is how it's done in second-person narration, first person narration, and first-person thoughts, which I think should be set apart more visually than all being the same formatting. Characters whispering may be done in parentheses at times too, which completely shatters the one merit to formatting it this way, as now there's in-universe speech styled like out-of-character narration.
Which I'll note is not good for skimming. A bunch of people don't care how well smut is written, but if you want writing that is largely a thing to gloss over to get to the gameplay or smut, it needs very clear, very consistent formatting so you know without a thought what something is. I'm saying whether you care about the writing or not, there's going to be something here that affects you.
My favorite part of the writing is when the speech said
Astrid: Screaming!
Hero: Filling you!
Why are you yelling what you're doing!? And no that isn't narration, the player is Hero. He is yelling "Filling you!" at her in response to her saying the word "Screaming!" in between her moans.
Clearly this dev isn't always taking the time to read what the AI outputs before putting it in the game. So let's talk about the code.
I cannot say for sure AI did it. But he spends less time coding than writing, and we know the writing is AI. And if he doesn't reread the writing, he might not audit the code. That would explain stability issues.
It's an early version, there will be bugs. It's pretty easy to just crash. Not even the normal ren'py way where it gives you an error screen and asks you to rollback to earlier, it will crash the entire program back to desktop. And doing so will lose the data that tracks what messages you have read, so anything after your last save will not by skippable with CTRL.
The combat system is fairly simple so far, it's not deep, but it's giving you the jist of what he's going for. Select which party member to act as. No visual feedback about which is selected for now. You gain 2 AP per turn and start with whatever your vitality stat gives. Targeting is not well-conveyed but not really of consequence for now. If you rapidly click after the enemy has fallen, you can spam attacks just to hold combat from ending. Also little consequence.
The dev didn't think to put a stopper on text rollback for combat. So after combat, you can scroll up and crash to desktop. This is an easy fix and will probably be fixed next update. I imagine.
The ART is what you see in the previews, I would have trouble giving useful information about it. In the Astrid quest, it comedically mismatches the text, but that'll be fixed next update. Will this be a recurring issue? Who knows. It isn't full of visual nonsense. The consistency of characters and style isn't amazing, but it's not bad for AI. Didn't see random extra fingers or things blending into each other. It works for what it is, I guess. Look at the pictures and you decide what to feel.
As a whole, I have to say, this is not ready. If you have other things you want to try out, go try those first. There are other games, and if you don't mind the design philosophy on display here, you can try this one after its had time to flesh out more. Maybe a year.