I want to be upfront that I really tried to love this game's demo, seeing the hype and enthusiasm of the developers and fans alike. I played through the demo three times: First subjectively, second objectively, and then finally a third to make conclusions.
To be sure about what I am talking about, I researched a little as well, listening to an interview of the devs talking to an otome influencer I follow and even watching a few streams by Vtubers and other otome streamers I saw pop up on my Twitter feed.
But I just cannot support this project in its current state.
I love the concept and the art certainly drew me in, but the actual content was not as advertised when I followed it back then when the two devs were just starting out with it. It was at first an Isekai Villainess murder mystery, which yes, that's what I looked out for. But after playing this demo, I began to feel that the devs maybe aimed for too much from the sources they were inspired and compared themselves to (such as Terry Pratchett, Agatha Christie, Code:Realize, Knives Out (?) and an obvious Villainess comedy, HameFura. There might be more, but I cannot remember all of them). Suddenly the game was marketed as comedy satire after the beta phase, which OK, I can try that, I also like humorous dark comedies after all. But even then, I couldn't really laugh at the jokes or humor. A lot of the jokes were drawn and dragged out, overused and it exhausted me to read the same words again and again (the cushions, wainscotting, bushes, pricking...). I know not every type of humor is for everyone, but this seems so niche and specific, I can't recommend it to a general audience or my friends.
The writing was very "telling", describing a lot of details that felt like padding out a word count. And some of the deductions just felt like I was being babied or stupefied instead of getting my brain cogs turning. I overheard in the podcast how Jane's traits are modeled after one of the dev's neurodivergent traits(?) which I could get behind if I didn't feel like Jane is written very childish? This not an insult to the dev in any way, but I just began to dislike her character the more she interacted with the LIs, I couldn't understand her thought process at all (even with insight into her very thoughts) and I'm also neurodiverse (but well, it's called neuro[diverse] for a reason). The other characters also greatly disappointed me when I finally interacted with them. The servant I feel most neutral about, they seem to be an interesting enough character, as for the other three, I couldn't bring myself to like or care for them. I suppose the meta narrator, who I assume is the "patron", is also an interesting enough character, but that's sadly it.
I would also like to note that the long tutorial is also a pain to play through and it definitively could have been presented in an easier way, maybe making the player discover it in the menu to add to the meta narrative. Like you're stuck until you open up the menus to find the tutorial and get a clue. In general game design, a long tutorial like this can easily lose a lot of interest in players with less patience than me. It feels very forced to me and there needs to be a balance between intention and user experience here.
The art and backgrounds certainly are gorgeous, it's one of the things that made it stand out to me. Though, now I'm wary of it, worried it's being too heavily relied on to deliver the story. The animations are very accessibility-unfriendly, giving me a lot of nausea and headaches, which is why it took me longer than needed to finish the demo (approximately 3~4 hours?) and I'm usually a very fast reader. Knowing what I heard from the podcast, this doesn't seem to be Live2D at all, since I worked on some before to notice the difference. I'm guessing it's coding related? Out of curiosity, I looked at the files and saw that the art archive is the biggest file in the game folder, making me wonder if the art wasn't optimized for all the animations. Overall, the many transitions and animations are just too much and should be peddled down or come with the menu option to turn them off if you want a bigger audience to enjoy this with similar symptoms to mine. I know there is a lot of passion and work behind it, but at some point you have to admit that there is a player base for whom this game becomes unplayable.
Before there are any comments about it, I would like to note that the gaming laptop I play on fits the minimum requirements (even higher than that) and it's just three years old, running games like Dead by Daylight or Phasmophobia just fine. This is definitively not an issue with my laptop, as I also see the same issue repeated across different social media and in this comment section as well, thinking it was just me at first. I seriously advise taking a look through the assets / coding again to optimize it, because the lag can get so terrible that it randomly crashes when I click too fast to skip transitions and animations.
The music well, the intro is certainly leaving an impression with the singing, but the in-game music just doesn't fit what's happening on the screen for me. It doesn't sound bad, just based on the scene and atmosphere, I expected more suspense and variety, it needs more appropriate direction.
So after all these thoughts, I looked up other people's opinions, including asking my friends about it. Apparently, some of the issues I mention were brought up in the beta test, but were not acknowledged enough to consider changes? The entire reason for a beta test is usually to find issues and change things to give the player a pleasant experience and improve on the product while still maintaining the original vision, in my opinion. I don't want to delve any deeper than that because my comment is already getting too long and seeing comments that are less than positive feedback and critique, I can also imagine this comment getting downvoted, but I just needed this off my chest since I comment very rarely if at all on games (mostly on Steam as reviews, but kinda hard to do that for demos) and want to support through giving an honest opinion.
Again, I really tried to love this work, but the expectations and hype created around it (by the devs and fans) instead heavily disappointed me. I do hope the devs take more diverse feedback to heart to improve on this game that has so much potential. Since I know that ratings on itch.io can get brutal for indies, I'm also writing my rating of the demo here instead of the rating system: 2/5 stars