Yeeeesh, I just checked out the character page on tvtropes and
The character art is NOT good. I knew instantly the dev had to have to a tumblr or deviantart or both. It also suffer from "danganronpa 1 stance syndrome" where the artist can only draw character front facing because the moment they try something different the necks look fucked up. You can see how the designs try to mask the necks as much as possible too.
But the UI artstyle is good, it's flashy and very obviously danganronpa inspired. And i didn't even register about troon dev possibility
That's rough. I like to think I have a pretty good tolerance, so I'll still give it a fair shot, and I'll do my best to keep an open mind as I'm going through it.
Episode zero / demo is free so you can check it (or pirate it) but that has few characters and a great ending twist that sells the game pretty well, to the point i don't know how the hell the dev expects to follow it through.
It's borderline told to you in the trailers but the main unique thing of Of The Devil is that the main character is (episode 0 spoiler)
an actual serial killer who killed dozens of innocents for no apparent reason other than boredom. It shocked me and i was excited to see where it goes, but after a little of ep 1 i got the vibe the creator just wanted an edgy start and didn't really plan this through so they're making it up along the way.
Wait a God damn second, if "of the Devil" uses a lot of purple prose, that is explaining/describing something in an overly wordy way that could be summed up in a much simpler sentence... WHAT THE FUCK JELLO!?!?! WHY THE HELL DID YOU KEEP COMPLAINING ABOUT HAJIME DOING THIS!?!?!?!?
It's prosy in the sense that it goes on and on about terminology in this cyberpunk dystopia they worked so hard for me to not care. The game loves long inner monologues and dramatic pauses into reaction shots (must be a death note thing) and when i quit there were literally 5 women on screen talking about nonsense. It's not unreadable but it gives amateur fanfiction.
Jello would probably say it doesn't count because "thats good writing, it's how it works, i'm a graphic designer btw" while danganronpa is repeating the same thing is dumb, without understanding that this shows completely different design philosophies.
Dangan is a portable visual novel with some non linear exploration and introduces a lot of stuff at once, so it has to be aware that the player might take a break at any moment which makes it difficult. You also don't know how casual a player is. Ace Attorney, Gacha games, rpgs etc do it too. When a game is ported to a portable, it tends to switch it's save system and potentially fuck up it's pacing like stardey valley.
This is something you see often in amateur indie games, they just go on writing and don't think about this stuff. Jello can't comprehend this, his dunning krueger effect only understand "good writing is when tumblr tropes and lesbian".
Jello's way of playing games isn't the "intended" one either. Repeating stuff is fine when you're a single person in your room trying to absorb the story, characters and world. But when you're a narcissist streamer with a bunch of friends and internet strangers chatting, you want to be a "professional performer and voice actor" and call everything peak cinema or garbage.