V0.3.1
The visuals are the reason you downloaded this, and with respect to this you won't be let down. Ashley is downright fucking adorable. Head to toe. I'm pretty sure I've seen her face elsewhere, but I don't care. It's an adorable character model. Her breasts are small enough that you really do feel like she's younger, but where she really shines is in the way dev decided to make her hips, ass, and legs. She has thicc thighs for a girl presumably still a teen, and she almost has this pigeon-toe thing going on where her knees point inward and it all just makes her look more youthful despite her obviously matured curves. Great balance, and I can't enough of her.
Obviously MC's ma is hot. I'm surprised there's such little content with her up to this point; you get a lot of "click here for alt image with alt outfit/no outfit" and
, but it would be nice if there were more between them.
The other girls are pretty cookie-cutter in terms of appeal. This isn't bad. After all, if they're hot models with good renders and good lighting who cares, right? They just don't have any unique characteristics.
The story is OK, though I do get awfully tired of the "MC returns home after a long time away" narrative. It's just boring. I say if you're going to do this particular taboo you don't really need MC to have gone away in order to be missed upon return. You can just pick a random point in his current life to start telling the story, even if introducing some new changes to his life. Tl;dr - don't pick this one up for the story, you won't be wowed.
The dialog is pretty bad in many places, and with it being ESL I try not to judge too harshly. Still, there are things that even if you're not a native English speaking individual, you'd have seen in movies or TV shows, heard in music. Examples like "ye" where I assume "yeah" or "yes" are meant is just weird. It's not so cringy that I can't play, but yet another in the pile I wish dev would work with a good translator on. Also - and I think this may be unintentional - when MC's sis refers to the idea of him being gay vs "normal", this is pretty offensive. Gay people aren't abnormal, and straight people aren't normal. I say this as a straight person. Should probs fix that choice of words, dev.
Dev needs to include dialog box opacity setting. This should be in EVERY game in Ren'py. I hate having to hit H when I want to see what's obscured from view. Dev note: "text seed" is misspelled; should be "Text Speed".
Overall, 3 stars for me. SUPER average storyline with no unique arcs or qualities whatsoever, and mostly uninteresting dialog means the player is most heavily focused on the visuals. Were it not for these being so impressive, I'd say to pass on this one altogether. We'll see what future updates bring.