Neat and occasionally amusing visual novel, full of detective and criminal elements, with a lot of yuri and cute girls!
Quick summary:
❇️ Perfect: ✒️ Main Character, ✒️ Yuri / h-scenes, ✒️ Character's relationships, ⚙️ Scene variety & CGs, ⚙️ SFX, ⚙️ Animations
*️⃣ Good: ✒️ Story & Events, ✒️ Supporting Characters, ⚙️ Visual quality, ✒️ Visual design, ⚙️ Language, ⚙️ Music, ⚙️ Interface, ⚙️ Engine, ✒️ Story progression, ✒️ Visual style
✴️ Neutral: ✒️ Setting & world
💢 Vexing: -
💥 Vile: -
There is always not enough yuri in this world.
It is genuinely good and enjoyable visual novel, I deeply love Cynthia's route. But I think it can be even better.
[hr][/hr]✒️ Visual style ▫️ *️⃣ What's going on❔ ▫️ 🟧 Significant influence
It is important, and this VN certainly sometimes do not follow anime style even it partially, gladly that our lead and Cynthia are less affected by this inconvenience. On some sprites, especially Winter's ones, you can definitely see details more common to comic style.. and for side characters this lack of anime appearance can get dramatic. Gladly, CGs do not have such an issue.
And I am not talking about personal graphical touch, there are straight out non-reworked visual aspects of humans, on which anime industry has been working for years to make everything appealing. I hope that Studio will learn a [strike]bit[/strike] more about anime drawing techniques and next project will gratify my eyes with my only favorite style in its proper form.
✒️ Female protagonist & Main Characters ▫️ ❇️ Great positive trait ▫️ 🟧 Significant influence
She can be really smart and astute when she wants. And she is cutie, sensitive.
✒️ Primary female cast & Supporting Characters ▫️ *️⃣ Positive trait ▫️ 🟧 Significant influence
✒️ Character's relationships ▫️ ❇️ Great positive trait ▫️ 🟧 Significant influence
Our female lead will be able to involve herself into relationships with 2 partners.
Cynthia is your boss at detective agency, she has pretty a fiery character, but under layers of defense you will find gentle and affectionate woman, she really does care about her employees and aims at the best possible outcome. Girl has quite a guts, you can feel yourself over her back like behind a wall. Because of her qualities and prettiness it is really easy to fall in love with her.
And Winter is a person in question, she is wild... even savage. You will learn a lot about her secrets and the past, and maybe you will like it, if you wanted to completely change your life and make it more spicy, but I DO NOT.
It is first time when I see so disproportional romance routes in visual novel. And even good endings with Winter looks like drama (and from MC's point of view), because you need to left behind Cynthia.
✒️ Yuri & Yuri h-scenes ▫️ ❇️ Great positive trait ▫️ 🟧 Significant influence
[i]Free uncensored patch full of beauty are awaits for you to install.[/i]
2. There is 2 scenes, not 4, this is 4 CGs. Even in game files they are named c_hscene and w_hscene. And one with Cynthia is particularly enjoyable, even delightful, blissful, cannot say say such about Winter's one, still it is hot.
But we do have a lot of cute yuri scenes: hugs, jokes, kisses and more (with Cynthia for sure, at least), some of them are emotional, but every single one is pleasurable.
I do not get a point of such an accent on hardships that people with "nontraditional" sexual orientation can stumble upon, because for average enthusiast reading yuri visual novels homosexual female relationships had became more traditional than heterosexual ones. Well, still it was a good experience, do not often see events like this.
And I know that it is correct to call lesbians "gays", but it sounds really weird. What even the purpose of word "lesbian" then, it is first letter in notorious abomination of a abbreviation. I prefer to use something less screaming and tender: "into girls".
✒️ Story & Events ▫️ *️⃣ Positive trait ▫️ 🔶 Average influence
On Cynthia's route you will see detective story, not very convoluted and complicated, yet solid and enjoyable. If you will choose Winter... oh, what a madcap, it is less grounded and feels surreal sometimes, even if plot here is sound everything just not feels serious enough... probably it is even good, just not to my taste something silly like [i]Lycoris Recoil[/i].
✒️ Story progression / Routes ▫️ *️⃣ Positive trait ▫️ 🔸 Minor influence
There is not many routes and endings, choices are usually affect your relationships or lead you to a [strike]dead end[/strike] death, well, it definitely brings some variety to the story.
⚙️ Visual quality ▫️ *️⃣ Small positive trait ▫️ 🔶 Average influence
Sometimes lacks in resolution, you just can see pixels during magnifications scenes. Everything else is fine.
⚙️ Scene variety & Backgrounds, CGs ▫️ ❇️ Great positive trait ▫️ 🔶 Average influence
CGs look gorgeous, style is okay here and detailing is brilliant.
✒️ Visual design ▫️ *️⃣ Positive trait ▫️ 🔶 Average influence
Everything is up to our world standards (meh, oke), but some clothes looks excellent, like MC's casual outfit with black hoodie or Cythia's home clothes or tuxedo (it only looks good because of Cynthia's beauty).
⚙️ Language ▫️ *️⃣ Positive trait ▫️ 🔶 Average influence
No mistakes, great vocabulary. Write style is not boring and everything you can read easily.
⚙️ Animations ▫️ ❇️ Great positive trait ▫️ 🔶 Average influence
There are a lot of cool face expressions. Every line there is some activity and movement, novel looks very lively.
⚙️ VFX ▫️ ❔ Not present
⚙️ SFX ▫️ ❇️ Great positive trait ▫️ 🔶 Average influence
[b]Ambient sounds are just top notch[/b], city at night, wind behind a window, birds in the morning, I have no modern fitting words for them, they help a lot with making an atmosphere of the place.
Sound effects are generic, there is a lot of them, even if in a good quality.
⚙️ Music ▫️ *️⃣ Positive trait ▫️ 🔸 Minor influence
Tracks are really fit into the scenes, and there is even catchy ones, you can hear a lot of cool free music.
...Still, it is really hard to impress me with these.
⚙️ Interface ▫️ *️⃣ Small positive trait ▫️ 🔸 Minor influence
There is a some text visual enchantments. Contrast is great, but I think interface looks chunky.
You can load only from main menu.
⚙️ Engine ▫️ *️⃣ Positive trait ▫️ 🔸 Minor influence
What's with texture / pixel fill rate? Sprites are not so big in size. There is some problems with optimizations so it can stutter or lag rarely, skips not really fast.
Everything else is great, it is Ren'Py, every tool for VN is here. You can unpack assets and transfer saves easily.
Oh... Steam integration, achievements are broken. To fix: [url=https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=889624474]download[/url] older [url=https://steamdb.info/depot/1600931/manifests/]version[/url] of Foul Play from 2021 and copy "steam_api64.dll" and "_renpysteam.pyd" from older version to current in "lib/windows-x86-64", for other systems these files are called similarly. Or just copy it folder to folder, skipping every replacement, to add missing files.
[hr][/hr]Absolute must-buy for every yuri appreciator and primary female cast visual novel enthusiast.
[spoiler]А. Чё? Fool Play? В дурака играем?[/spoiler]
A morally conflicting visual novel that portrays realistic coming-out experiences, women dating women, criminal situations, and facing the consequences of your decisions.