While I am intrigued by this project, I do not have a lot of confidence in it. There's a distinct lack of polish here that leads me to believe there isn't much reason to follow this game that closely.
Instead of using still frames, every character is animated when you talk to them. That's neat, except for the fact that none of the MP4 files loop well. At all. It's extremely hurky-jerky, even when they were clearly made to be looped. Even the more "seamless" transitions have awkward gaps as the file plays from the beginning again. Some aren't meant to be looped and have text with them, but since you cannot account for the users reading speed, the effect is wasted. I always end up reading far faster than the animation, effectively skipping it. Additionally, there's a black screen that pops in between each new video file, further distracting from the story. They should all be deleted and replaced with static images. It's far less effort, and will look infinitely better than these terrible loops and nonsensical lip flaps.
Bad looping aside, the koikatsu models used are all high quality and look great. I will note though that in certain lighting conditions, the models can stick out oddly. There's also the occasional clipping the koikatsu engine struggles with, but I shan't hold that against the devs like I will the poor looping.
There's a good number of sets beyond your usual default locations you see, which is a big plus. Although again, the lighting is suspect in a few.
However, the characters are pretty bare bones and don't have a lot going on for them, including the main three girls. While the writing is good, there just straight up isn't a lot of dialogue. And I don't feel it's because this is an early build. It feels like this is the starting block for the project, rather than just a proof of concept or vertical slice. But back onto the writing, because what is there I heavily suspect was machine translated. Many female characters are referred to as "he" or other male pronouns. I only speak two languages, but my second does not have pronouns. I've noticed that when it gets run through an MLT, it fucks that part of specifically more than most anything else. Either that, or the dev is ESL and their mother tongue also does not have pronouns. However the grammar and syntax is mostly solid, outside of it angering HeelvsBabyface. Either way, I think this game could benefit heavily from an editor more familiar with English.
The gameplay is also similarly bare bones. There isn't a lot of direction, and I thought I had glitched the main story for a few minutes before attempting to raise all my stats. The daily grind is interesting, with each job raising a skill by 5 but lowering another by 5. You can offset this by spending money at another location, and assuming you didn't clean the temple as your main job, you'll have plenty of cash to level your skills to be equal. The amount paid is roughly equal to the amount required to level a skill, and leveling a skill this way gives 10 points. I just spammed the same job, with the skill it lowered not decreasing beyond 0. That allowed me to purchase enough gifts to raise the girls affection, and have enough to level everything to parity. What do the skills do though, beyond allowing me to pass an arbitrary stat check once I had raised them all to at least 100? No clue.
After you've hit whatever the required amount is, you can continue the story. The current version has something about your grandparents having passed recently and spirits, but theres nothing else to that plot thread. You're introduced at the start to three girls from various aneems with ghosts inexplicably habitating this world. They're really isn't a lot to them, even as crossover fanfiction versions of themselves. You raise their affection with gifts, "texts", "conversation", or "dates". All of which are just a dialogue box stating you did that action, and nothing else. There is also an actual date called "Special Events" you can do with each girl. There are three for each, but they're all barely two minutes long. During the date, you can sabotage yourself for no reason other than your own amusement. It doesnt seem to lower the girls affection points, so you'll just have to repeat the event. After those, you can progress straight to the repeatable H scene. Even though there's absolutely no romantic attraction or reason why these girls would suddenly want a piece of your emo wang.
It's worth noting, you need each girls mega gift to unlock the H scene with them. Nothing in the game tells you you need the mega gift to progress. I found this out by reading a reply from the dev on the itch.io page for the game.
However, that brings me to my final point. I have a sneaking suspicion this project is DoA. The initial release was on May 5th. It is now October 6th as I am writing this review. There has been utter radio silence in the week following this on the devs patreon and itch.io page. They have a discord, but I'm not invested that much to continue digging.
Even if they had posted updates though, I wouldn't spend your time on this one. It's not promising enough to warrant keeping an eye on.
Instead of using still frames, every character is animated when you talk to them. That's neat, except for the fact that none of the MP4 files loop well. At all. It's extremely hurky-jerky, even when they were clearly made to be looped. Even the more "seamless" transitions have awkward gaps as the file plays from the beginning again. Some aren't meant to be looped and have text with them, but since you cannot account for the users reading speed, the effect is wasted. I always end up reading far faster than the animation, effectively skipping it. Additionally, there's a black screen that pops in between each new video file, further distracting from the story. They should all be deleted and replaced with static images. It's far less effort, and will look infinitely better than these terrible loops and nonsensical lip flaps.
Bad looping aside, the koikatsu models used are all high quality and look great. I will note though that in certain lighting conditions, the models can stick out oddly. There's also the occasional clipping the koikatsu engine struggles with, but I shan't hold that against the devs like I will the poor looping.
There's a good number of sets beyond your usual default locations you see, which is a big plus. Although again, the lighting is suspect in a few.
However, the characters are pretty bare bones and don't have a lot going on for them, including the main three girls. While the writing is good, there just straight up isn't a lot of dialogue. And I don't feel it's because this is an early build. It feels like this is the starting block for the project, rather than just a proof of concept or vertical slice. But back onto the writing, because what is there I heavily suspect was machine translated. Many female characters are referred to as "he" or other male pronouns. I only speak two languages, but my second does not have pronouns. I've noticed that when it gets run through an MLT, it fucks that part of specifically more than most anything else. Either that, or the dev is ESL and their mother tongue also does not have pronouns. However the grammar and syntax is mostly solid, outside of it angering HeelvsBabyface. Either way, I think this game could benefit heavily from an editor more familiar with English.
The gameplay is also similarly bare bones. There isn't a lot of direction, and I thought I had glitched the main story for a few minutes before attempting to raise all my stats. The daily grind is interesting, with each job raising a skill by 5 but lowering another by 5. You can offset this by spending money at another location, and assuming you didn't clean the temple as your main job, you'll have plenty of cash to level your skills to be equal. The amount paid is roughly equal to the amount required to level a skill, and leveling a skill this way gives 10 points. I just spammed the same job, with the skill it lowered not decreasing beyond 0. That allowed me to purchase enough gifts to raise the girls affection, and have enough to level everything to parity. What do the skills do though, beyond allowing me to pass an arbitrary stat check once I had raised them all to at least 100? No clue.
After you've hit whatever the required amount is, you can continue the story. The current version has something about your grandparents having passed recently and spirits, but theres nothing else to that plot thread. You're introduced at the start to three girls from various aneems with ghosts inexplicably habitating this world. They're really isn't a lot to them, even as crossover fanfiction versions of themselves. You raise their affection with gifts, "texts", "conversation", or "dates". All of which are just a dialogue box stating you did that action, and nothing else. There is also an actual date called "Special Events" you can do with each girl. There are three for each, but they're all barely two minutes long. During the date, you can sabotage yourself for no reason other than your own amusement. It doesnt seem to lower the girls affection points, so you'll just have to repeat the event. After those, you can progress straight to the repeatable H scene. Even though there's absolutely no romantic attraction or reason why these girls would suddenly want a piece of your emo wang.
It's worth noting, you need each girls mega gift to unlock the H scene with them. Nothing in the game tells you you need the mega gift to progress. I found this out by reading a reply from the dev on the itch.io page for the game.
However, that brings me to my final point. I have a sneaking suspicion this project is DoA. The initial release was on May 5th. It is now October 6th as I am writing this review. There has been utter radio silence in the week following this on the devs patreon and itch.io page. They have a discord, but I'm not invested that much to continue digging.
Even if they had posted updates though, I wouldn't spend your time on this one. It's not promising enough to warrant keeping an eye on.