The Thought Police Hotline: Episode 1

[url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/34294631/] Follow Far2close - Visual Novel Playthroughs Curator Page [/url] The Thought Police Hotline: Episode 1 Developer: Voonle Publisher: Voonle [b]Pros:[/b] 1. The story does keep its merits as sci-fi with interesting inclusions such as the government taking over privacy and tracking emotions, calls, and other activities. I could see the inspirations if this was inspired by Minority Report or the anime series PSYCHO-PASS, or just the outlook on real life itself. [b]Cons:[/b] 1. The key to a character for a story is to make the audience care for them. Especially when it comes to a comedy focused game, because the characters are absolute necessities for something to be comedic. For this VN, it felt incredibly challenging to care about the main character, as he didn't really possess traits that are worthwhile along with a backstory that just doesn't hit the mark in the way it's shown. You could give a character the most tragic backstory, but if it's just told through a paragraph then there really isn't much to make us feel any strong empathy. The best course of action for these is to at least include a dedicated scene of the protagonist's trauma and then a time skip to present day so we can have some sort of connection. 2. The other characters don't really have anything to them either except for maybe Donna being John's childhood friend, but she doesn't provide much to the table at the moment. Everyone just lacks substance, nobody really stands out. Even the animal characters that stand out physically but character-wise are just plain and uninteresting. Maybe with a little more time, the characters could develop, but since this VN is quite short, further releases will be necessary. 3. The comedy aspect (for me) is questionable. Most notable parts were the puns and the one Lamey Coomer (Amy Schumer) joke, but nothing really stood out. The puns did feel overused though and it did get exhausting quite quickly by the rate of how many were displayed. [b]Conclusion:[/b] The Thought Police Hotline Episode 1 doesn't hold up with its weak uninteresting characters but also the dull overused humor. Playing this felt like a challenge to connect with the characters despite their backstories as the way it's shown just doesn't feel like the right choice if you wanted your audience to have a chance to gain some empathy for them. Despite this, it does possess some neat sci-fi elements that may remind you of other media. Overall, Episode 1 feels like a rocky start to the series but hopefully in later installments, things can get smoothed out or have some more thought put in. [b]Score:[/b] 2/10 NOT RECOMMENDED