VN - Ren'Py - Welcome to Vaniar [v0.4] [UAB Productions]

If I'm rating this purely as "would I recommend this to people", I don't think there's a single person I'd actually point to and say "you would like this".

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Without a doubt the worst aspect of Welcome to Vaniar is the writing. In almost every aspect, it fails. The set-up is decently interesting, but the actual premise is quickly lost in the totally idiotic attempt at storytelling on display.

The dev has decided that literally every single choice provided will give you a wildly different story thread by throwing you with another woman. I don't think I've ever seen a story be this segregated by player choice, and there is a REASON for that. Literally every thread is almost totally unrelated to the other. This isn't about picking a love interest, because it is IMPOSSIBLE to know who you'll interact with or what their story is.

The closest I can think of to this is this niche Japanese game "Michigan: Report From Hell", which (if you know the game) shows just how ridiculous the AVN is for picking completely random women for each choice. Not only that, but it also cuts off ALL other content.

Then for dialogue, the dev has decided that "thinking" (a.k.a the inner monologue) is actually narration, which really says a lot when the dev can't distinguish between first-person past and present tense. I mean this is like middle-school English stuff. Couple that with some totally obnoxious descriptions, bloated text, blocks of poorly-written dialogue that fails to resemble a human, copious amounts of info/lore dumping, I mean it's a mess. It has the appearance of competency, but when you actually read it, it's just garbage.

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Visually it's the only reason I'm giving it 2 stars and not 1. It's not bad, it's still got several instances of that glossy fake look to people, but overall it looks pretty good. There are animated sex scenes and they aren't awful, just pretty generic.

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Right now I'd rate it maybe a 3/10. It's an AVN that's failed at storytelling on a fundamental level and cordened off every woman for some inexplicable reason. Honestly, I'd like to see the dev just start a new project and attempt to fix their mistakes, as I can't see how you'd be able to achieve much here without a total rewrite from beginning to end.

v0.4 Review

Honestly this game is pretty confusing. The framing of the story being about a lifelong need for revenge and deep hatred of vampires falls off extremely early. I didn't find a single route in the game where that remains your goal after being at the university for a single day.

The way it plays and handles the choices it gives you is not intuitive at all. I can't knock it for having choices that don't matter like some games, here every choice matters just maybe not how you may want it to. From the very first choice you make the game splits and puts you on a path of one girl or another, then after interacting with them for like 2 minutes you make another choice. From here you either stay on that girls path or you move onto another girls. It's really quite odd and not very satisfying. I didn't even manage to find all the different paths to the different girls mentioned in the changelog because I found myself getting bored. Even when I found a girl that was quite nice ,Faith, I found myself at a End Of Content screen after like 2 scenes, not even sex scenes just scenes talking with her. Again just not satisfying.

As for the sex scenes they aren't anything to write home about, literally just default HS2 animations that play for a few seconds and then they end. The camera angles and framing are okay I guess but nothing new. Except for one that uses the Godawful HS2 "POV" camera that just bounces around a bunch and makes it near impossible to see anything. For real I don't get motion sick but I can see that making some peoples stomachs upset.

All in all I had higher hopes going into this. The premise seems rather interesting but it gets thrown out the window immediately leaving me feeling like it was just a lie to lure me into playing a game that I wouldn't have otherwise.

Also another small annoyance is that the game doesn't launch in english, but in spanish. So to even play you have to navigate through settings that a person might not understand and swap it to english.

Review for Version 0.1 From what I've seen so far, the game is pretty decent for what it is. I'm a fan of vampire stories, so I was not disappointed with the setting. However, there are definitely some areas that could be improved in future updates.

1.The main character has a solid backstory that sets the tone for the game. It's a revenge story with the protagonist gaining new allies and uncovering mysteries. His personality is understandable, but it's a bit strange how quickly he goes from not trusting vampires to befriending one and sharing his life story. I think the developer can work on improving his character development and goals.

2.The story itself is interesting, with the main character attending a vampire school to become stronger and seek revenge. There are some intriguing elements that I won't spoil, as they could potentially be developed further in future updates.

3.The pacing of the relationships in the game is quite fast. One of the girls the main character meets on the first day already wants to sleep with him, which is a bit unrealistic. However, since this is a sex game, I suppose it's not too surprising. It does move the relationship forward quickly though. The dialogue is engaging and I didn't notice many spelling errors, so kudos to the developer for that.

Overall, this is a promising start for a new game. I'll definitely be keeping an eye on its future development. Good luck to the developers!