by thundergod » Sun, 13Feb17 07:51
Well, I enjoyed the branching outcomes, and thought it was an elegant way to get extra gameplay from a narrative that, on the surface, looked and felt like it was going to be both linear and very much in the expected "virtual date" mold, albeit with vastly better writing. Usually, the only option is where you're gong to end up having sex (if you're going to get to have it at all), and those variations are your "endings" based on your score, which is usually hidden. Or how much sex you're going to have, as in Chaotic's most recent game. In this game, however, the branches actually had a root in the story and the characters and required thought behind the gameplay, and I thought that was very well done. It was linear, but it added value to the linearity. I suppose I could quibble with some of the specific dialogue choices and their outcomes, but the game makes so much more sense and is so much better written than almost anything of its specific genre, I'm disinclined to complain.
I agree that the existence and form of the various paths was a bit opaque, but only on first playthrough. If you can get to an ending, the game gives some hints. I actually appreciate that it's not completely obvious how you might approach either (Keisha) ending, because that's more realistic if what you're doing is going on dates rather than trying to tally endings in a video game. In any case, the score isn't the only feedback. The facial expressions are almost always useful.
Terrific art, by the way.
My primary complaint, I suppose, is very specific to this forum and not actually any sort of complaint about the game at all: tlaero's "voice" comes through very clearly, in a way it hasn't before. It's not something that anyone who doesn't participate here would ever know, but there's enough congruity between what she writes here, on various subjects, and what Keisha and Keeley say, that I quite frequently hear her rather than the character. Which is one thing when the matter under discussion is relationship theory and practice, but another when things...develop. There have been moments of this in other games, but it's much more sustained here.
I do kinda share EL's questioning of the epilogues. It was not obvious, at least to me, that choosing one over the other should lead to a different future until the game told me so, and it still doesn't make sense to me. I mean, Keisha seems very much into both paths as they're happening. Preferencing one over the other reduced (slightly) the joy in the path with the (slightly) less desirable epilogue. If that still makes sense while being vague enough to avoid spoilers. It would make more sense to me if the final outcome of a relationship -- being vague to avoid spoilers here -- wasn't based on the personality path but just on points. So that you could, for instance, be as naughty or as nice as you wanted, but how things ended up in the distant future would be on how well you played the game within that branch.
All minor stuff, though. It was a terrific game, and thanks so much for sharing it with us.
Last edited by
thundergod on Sun, 13Feb17 18:18, edited 1 time in total.
