A short hairstyle will catch my attention better than long hair, but at the end of the day, it's just not a huge deal as long as the hair is well kept.
I'll give them a try, as long as the content aligns with what I'm into, and there's enough there that the playthrough lasts longer than the download time. I'll usually check the changelog and see if it was a single alpha release, or something that got some love before fading away.
My issue is that my bar keeps going up. The bad new games are easily forgotten, and the good new ones just keep raising the average in my selective memory.
A Petal Among Thorns is the start of a F/D trilogy that starts strong, but loses steam in the third game IMO.
Christmas Eve follows in the same vein as Petal (with help from the dev) but continues in its own direction in a sequel and a prequel/spinoff with the same tags.
You must be registered for see element. and You must be registered for see element. are both small-world sandbox VNs with a hotel management game as their core. I replay them more for the management games than the scenes these days.
Pacing out the content/mechanics helps to keep the player engaged without getting lost in a sea of options. Also, progress feels earned rather than just feeling like a gallery with a poorly laid out UI.
One of my gripes in games with AI images is the consistency not just scene to scene, but image to image. It makes the whole thing feel like it's just a bunch of unrelated images chained together without a cohesive narrative to the scene. And even if I like how a character looks, they could look...