VN - Ren'Py - Supermodel: Defenders of Desire [v1.0.0] [Belle]

You know what this is? It's a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

It's like a mix of AVN, a collectible card game and a tv show script. And like a peanut butter sandwich, it depends on how well these parts are put together.

If you're not allergic to any of those elements, then here's my impression of them:

CARD GAME (10/10)
The card game minigame is good and hasn't bugged out on me yet. It's got several difficult levels and plays like a digital collectible card game. It's optional and becomes skippable if you fail enough times.

STORY (8/10)
If you're one of those people that 'play for the story', well there's an actual story here. None of this landlady nonsense.

1. It's very well written, and reads more like an actual novel or tv show script. I say that because so far, there have been zero choices and I do not think the dev intends to implement many. Expect a kinetic AVN and very little choice in the direction of the story.
2. However, it's told in a non-linear fashion, where players choose a character and see the story from their point of view. But don't expect this to affect the story.
3. The story takes place in New York and there's real fly by footage of the city that's been included to add to the feel of the story. The music really adds to the feel as well.
4. However, I'm not really into any of the characters. There's not much established about them yet and it's still very early in the story. They could all be killed off in the next episode and I wouldn't care.

Overall, it feels more like one of those superhero tv shows from a small streaming service.

VISUALS AND UI (7/10)

1. The menu and other interfaces look nice and work well.
2. The renders are ok. The lighting used is sometimes way too bright in the renders, like the janitor replaced all the lightbulbs with 100000w super LED bulbs. There's also very noticeable noise in the renders as well.
3. The developer also presents most of it like a Japanese VN, where the renders are just characters standing like a floating sprite in front of a background. It feels like there are less renders than the usual AVN.

WHAT ABOUT THE LEWDS?...WHERE'S THE A in AVN? (2/10)
Nothing worth writing home about on this. And don't go in hoping for a dating sim or romance either, given the lack of choices in game.

1. Currently, there's just one showing one of the ladies masturbating. The animation quality was ok. The lighting was more subdued and natural looking.
2. But there was no money shot, no actual footage of the kitty being pet. Instead, a tasteful angle was used, like this was a tv show produced in LA and the actress had a 'no vulva' clause in her contract.
3. Given the story's focus, I'm not keeping my hopes up for this area to ever improve.

The developer describes the game as a intricately crafted erotic thriller. So far, I'm just not into any of the characters.

You may find that disappointing, but ask yourself this: would you event want to jerk off using a peanut butter jelly sandwich?

tl;dr Play for the card game, avoid if you just wanna fap. 5 stars because of card game.

(v1.0.0)
Excellent first release. A few rough spots, but the card game mechanics are solid, the writing is good (other than a couple odd word choices that stood out to me), and it's a decent amount of content for a first release. Definitely worth playing, and with the dev's pedigree I'm pretty confident this will get even better with updates.

Review is for the first "proper" release, v1.0.0. I've played the snapshot before.

Maybe, like me, you have played Long Live the Princess which is Belles previous game. I absolutely loved that one. I believe Supermodel has the potential to live up to its predecessor.

This is of course a very early release, but the parts for something good are there. At the moment the game plays either as a stock standard VN (without any choices as of yet), with a card-game in-between.

I'll talk first about the VN. The models are really high quality and, what I really like, each have an unique flavor (when it comes to looks). At the moment there is only one sex-scene in the game, which is fine, so I cannot comment on that front. In general the story and game overall are not very spicy yet, but that will surely change.
The story itself seems interesting. It is told in different small episodes, which change the protagonist and the time. For example we may meet one of the superheroines from the perspective of the male MC and can then play through an episode from her earlier life. I really enjoyed this, especially when these episodes intertwined with each other. I'm not sure how it will be going forward, but I guess that most of the story will nevertheless play itself out mainly from the perspective of the male MC. As to the contents of the stories, again one can only comment that all seems promising. Some designs are innovative, for example one superhero from the past had as his superpower an extraordinarily strong empathy - which comes with its own problems.The only thing that was off-putting is that That just came very much out of the blue, but maybe we'll get more explanations for her motivation.

For me the main selling point however is the card-game, which already seems pretty fleshed out. For me personally it is super fun, especially when you are initially getting new cards and beating higher difficulties. I think it will be interesting to see how it will be integrated into the main story throughout a finished game. You can choose your own difficulty for each match, which has advantages and disadvantages I feel. For the final game I'd prefer to initially set a difficulty and then get progressively harder matches as the story advances - to get a sense of progression. Moreover it'll be interesting to see how Belle can individualize the battles with e.g. more custom super-heroine cards or different challenge cards, such that everything stays fresh.

I'm giving this one 5-stars not for whats there, but for whats hopefully to come. At the moment I'd recommend this mainly if you are a fan of Belle and/or you wanna play around with the card-game. Everything else is just at its beginning.