It’d been a while since I played a VN that grabbed me this much and made me feel so emotionally attached to the various characters. The amount of tension I felt for Beth’s tryouts (so much so that I actually got pissed at the protagonist during Kate’s scene because, like, screw the sex lol, go do your duty as moral support ò.ò—even though I adore Kate, she’s one of my favourites) and the happiness I felt for her when she made it, are perfect examples of the emotional pull these characters can convey. In short, it’s a slice of life centered on characters that’s really well done, with excellent writing (and thank god a non-American setting, which is refreshing), truly sublime character growth, and perfect pacing—not too slow, but not too fast either. Also, hats off to the author for managing to make the characters’ ways of speaking subtly distinct from each other (sweet). It’s rare to nail this detail, but it goes a long way in preserving suspension of disbelief and preventing you from forgetting that each character in the story is nothing more than an artificial construct of a single person. Oh, and I also loved how all the characters have realistic proportions! Hallelujah. It makes them far more attractive than the many blow-up dolls that are so common on this site.
If I have to make a couple of small criticisms, I’d say: a) I really don’t like Sophie’s and Grace’s hairstyles at all, especially Sophie’s, with that half-shaved side. As teenagers they were much cuter, while still keeping the goth theme. b) Even though I’m enjoying the criminal subplot, especially the potential tie-in with Kate, I think it’s been handled a bit poorly. It doesn’t create enough stress and tension considering the seriousness of the situation, especially after the job offer as a mule, and the phone conversation with Mick was surreal. What kind of hardened criminal openly talks about drugs on the phone with a complete stranger? c) Honestly, the animations feel like a bit of a waste of development time. The sex scenes are very well directed and executed, but the animations feel completely out of place. They’re not integrated into the descriptive narrative of the scene, so as you keep going, they end after the first click, and even though they’re not bad, they still look pretty stiff. It would be much better to replace them with a few more renders, imo. No shame in that.
Anyway, I can’t wait to see how Jay’s story will unfold going forward, because so far I’ve been enthralled. Good luck, dev!
