I've got some very mixed feelings about this one! I'll start with the positives. For one thing, it's one of the nicest Ren'Py games I've seen on Itch so far. There's a bare bones combat system implemented that shows promise for the future. The sound design is very top notch, I thought all the foley and sound effects were very nicely chosen. On the other hand I do have some criticism's... The scope of the plot is kind of strange and all over the place, imo. Can spot clear plot inspirations from Attack on Titan & Game of Thrones and even Starship Troopers of all things. In fact, it's easier to think of this as some kind of erotic crossover fanfiction spinoff than it's own thing. I don't want to criticize the combat too much as it's clearly a prototype and the creator is working on making it better, I imagine. They've said something about an overhaul of the whole game so I imagine a lot of the issues I mention are already on their way to being fixed. My other biggest problems would be the shortage of romance options in the game. So far I'd say there's about two and a half that I've found so far. I'd like to see more variation in the romance options as well. I don't just mean personality's of the women, I also mean body types. Make the women more distinct as the current 3 options are all... too similiar. The art style isn't consistent. This is being worked on and fixed, I've read. But it's quite jarring. I started the game in Not-Winterfell and got sent to the wall to fight the not-white-walkers, grumpkins and snarks, only to wind up in a strange bootcamp mashup of Starship Troopers and Attack on Titan, maybe a pinch of full metal jacket. Got sent to Klendathu where Dizzy gets killed by an arachnid. Then I found the titan serum which, ended up transforming me into a marvel universe symbiote. Which is aight because it made my character more handsome and chiselled and stuff. But man, this paragraph should paint the idea of all the clashing art styles and ideas going on in this game. As well, more complaints about the women. I just didn't find any of them particularly attractive. Should definitely spice them up a lot more. Your scout-wife looks very unattractive in her full combat getup and when she loses the clothes it doesn't have enough of a "Grand Reveal" feeling to it. Maybe hide something under the clothing like interesting tattoo's with backstory's or scars or something, so we can learn about the female character by romancing her. As it stands the sex scenes feel entirely arbitrary and have little impact on the plot. It's also really silly to mention this, especially since it's something being worked on, but during combat, when my character attacks, his foot lifts off the ground and points towards the enemy, very strangely. It almost makes me laugh which is, again, jarring, given the setting and general atmosphere of the game. I want to finish the review strong though, and mention how I have high hopes for this game despite the initial awkwardness you can find in this beta version. It seems to have a strong artistic vision it's moving towards. The audio is very good. As well, I haven't mentioned at all how much I appreciate the solid writing of the game. I poked fun at the plot structure, but when interacting with NPC's, I noticed no spelling mistakes, or sloppy amateur sounding writing like in several other erogames out there right now. I even enjoy Markus as a Deuteragonist. He's fun. None of the characters speak in an unbelievable way and I'm thankful that this game holds back on spewing paragraphs of author tract at you like most erogames and visual novels tend to do. Every visual novel or erogame tends to have a lot of rambling about inane subects nobody cares about somewhere in the game. Whereas, in this game, I only ended up skipping some of the combat scenes that didn't involve actual combat. The battle between the dwarf dude and the Balrog for example, felt a bit long winded, over the top, overly long and overly detailed. He wasn't exactly a memorable character to begin with (he looks like he walked off the set of the Warcraft Movie) and so when he began to face his inevitable demise I kind of rolled my eyes and began double-tapping my spacebar like a paintball gun to slog through all the dialogue. And whence he was dead I didn't really mourn him in any significant way. It didn't effect the plot too deeply. It was just a semi random event that went into a deep description of the gorey battle between the two.... for some reason? Besides looking like a dwarf out of World of Warcraft, he wasn't a very compelling character. As well, it feels somewhat out of place in a comical way, yet again, that your drill instructor is basically a brawny midget who dies anyway shortly after you bother remembering to memorize his name. Also, having watched Starship Troopers, I'd say your scoutwifes death is entirely too predictable. She even dies, almost shot for shot, the same way as Dizzy did. You know damn well what I'm talking about lol. I don't mean to shit on your project, I just mean to say her demise was very much seen coming by me a mile away, you need to work on that, maybe make it less predictable that she's your Aerith. All that being said, I still really enjoyed this game, especially considering I didn't drop a dime on it. (Sorry! I'm broke as a joke!) If you could like, expand upon the content by like 14 hours and VASTLY improve the combat, I could see myself really sinking my teeth into that as a satisfying experience. For some suggestions on how to improve the combat: -Shaders, shaders, shaders!! -Attack/spell animations besides rotating arms and a sound effect -Screen shakes/Screen Flashes -Don't let me see my characters health fall into negative values. Markus got struck and his health fell all the way to -24, then he died. It works good for debug purposes to see this, and see how the attacks are working "under the hood" but don't let your player see this. It comes across very amateurish. Once the value hits 0 it shouldn't fall any further. It breaks immersion. Anyway, I loved the game. I hope to see much more of it and I'd love to see how it expands and unfolds as time goes on. One final note, maybe try and change the art for the players transformations. As it stands the two of them remind me of Venom and Carnage and... blegh. It clashes really hard with all the allusions made to game of thrones and attack on titan to have these spidey-verse characters flying around in the fields like that. It's extremely odd. I can't understate how jarring and strange it was to see my characters final transformation. They don't look like they belong anywhere in this game. You really need to fix that, lol. Anyway, good luck, I'll be keeping a close eye on this one!
-Sen/CK