I haven’t delved into the workings of draggable Ren’Py objects, but according to the people on the stream, it’s quite the coding feat! This is a very creative way to frame your story, and the fact that we’re looking at the dad’s computer despite him not showing up in most of the clips is an interesting story hook.
Other than the framing of the scenes as the videos on a computer, they’re somewhat lacklustre in presentation. It’s nearly entirely silent, and I think that audio would be a good way to sell the setting (and the low-quality video feel) even more. Shots are mostly static for the duration of a scene (when the video format is more set up than traditional visual novels to take advantage of camera motion), and there isn’t much of the character movement or changes of expression that I’m used to expecting out of visual novels.
There’s so much we don’t get to see between scenes, so I went looking for pointers of the missing parts, which is a way to keep engaged with the story. The big question of “who is the purple text character?” is something that the presentation lends itself to since the camera can obscure the person behind it. The answers aren’t here yet, though, so I can’t say that certain aspects are foreshadowed well or even if they’re meaningful in the context of the whole story.
I found that scenes often were too long for their own good. The vows are really long (particularly with the repetition), and don’t tell us that much about the couple making them. They’re standard wedding vows delivered in an expected way. I think the point of that scene is to contrast the couple’s wedding happiness with the following (offscreen) divorce, but I wasn’t getting that much happiness from the scene, or what makes this wedding happier or different from any other wedding. It’s a missed opportunity for characterisation.
I don’t know how much of the information in the birthday scene is going to come up later, but that one also overstayed its welcome or could have started later in the scene. It’s a pitiful birthday—no one else except Cole’s mother is here, and the presents are all unexciting. It goes on for quite a while, though, before moving onto the subject of his dad and his feelings towards his parents.
The characters are a highlight of the writing. Other than the wedding scene not telling us very much about the people involved, we see a lot of the characters’ personalities and relationships in the video clips. The birthday scene between Maia and Cole isn’t just a loving mother and son, but this particular loving mother and son. Their banter was interesting to read, and Maia, Cole, and the dad all have distinct voices.