Review until incl. v0.21; note: suggestions are done reasonable, ofc I could always ask more ...:
Positives / neutral:
For future stories (this story is too far advanced to change this, but what I would have done regarding the too many main characters):
Positives / neutral:
- The fundamentals of the game are in essence great for VN
- The story is interesting, the interactions are decent-well told and somewhat emotionally connecting (until somewhere around episode 15-20)
- The graphics are (on average) good (that said there are sporadically scenes where it is clearly low effort, like where they visit that "party"; the building looks from the outside like shit, missing set dressing around building)
- The animations are at first mediocre but later get a lot better
- The music is befitting most of the time
- I like that there is a codex and scene gallery! I suggest also to integrate a cheat menu in the future, optional ofc. for convenience
- Consider explicitly allowing to disable pissing, futa and gay stuff, so users that don't want it, don't accidentally trigger it - as a game start question & preference option.
- Consider asking the user if he wants to save at the end of a chapter; saw this in another game, mighty useful
- I wish longer animations with a bit more variety (reasonable) and an updated to the first episodes' animations that are clearly of lower quality (shorter, less variety).
- I wish there would be fewer characters; clearly too many females and the quality suffers a lot as a result - you could easily delete 2 characters from the crew.
- Male side characters are barely of relevance. What is the point of them being there? You could easily narrate the whole story without them. Rather delete 2-4 females and make the males relevant, i.e. invite them more to tag along (xxx) or hook them up with other females, do friendship stuff (like get shitfaced) etc. etc. etc.
- The many characters kill pacing of the story
- The overall story starts suffering past episode 15 - a phenomena called "escalation" kicks in. There is always a bigger threat and it gets more and more ridiculous. After the first big threat is defeated, you should have ended the story, rounding it off. Instead, invest the time to improve the first episodes (bring them standard wise in line with the others) and finish the game. You can always start a new story (same universe or something completely new, also economically makes more sense).
For future stories (this story is too far advanced to change this, but what I would have done regarding the too many main characters):
- Main characters: Eva, Nadya, Kit, Celine, Vess/Jade-merge!
- Persistent side characters (no romance with MC): Thim, Thyia (maybe you can have a sidestory where you hook them up
)
- And if futa/gay is a must: Merge Raene/Ziv into 1 character where there is a choice if they stay Futa or becoming Gay through a story event (dev happy, players have choice).
- Since you would have fewer characters to take care of you could instead invest the time to polish game better, improve existing characters or add more options like hooking up your fellow friends; like imagine you hook up Kit & Eva, when dating Nadya yourself. Or Kit/Thim and possibly others can be taken with you for more group action, experiences like getting drunk, etc. It would increase immersion/ variety and thereby story & gameplay quality a lot.