Visual Novel / Acting Lessons

Life can take unexpected turns

"I want to tell you the story of the time I met a girl named Megan'"

— Jonas Redfield

Acting Lessons is an episodic adult visual novel developed by solo developer DrPinkCake.

The game follows you, a young man who lives alone in an unspecified town in the United States who has made enough of a living trading cryptocurrencies to essentially retire. You often spend time with your best friend Liam, and just enjoy all of the spare time and freedom you have due to not being pinned down by a normal day job.

However, not everything is sunshine and roses. It has been some time since you broke up with your fiancée, Ana, with whom your relationship and life together could have been beautiful, had she not cheated on you and blamed it on you not having enough passion and not keeping the spark alive.

Although some time has passed since that day, it is still in the back of your mind, and even now you don't quite know what to make of love in general. In any case, you go about your life, until one day, you decide to go to a different store than you usually do to buy food. There, you meet a young clerk named Megan, and from there, your life begins to change in ways that you couldn't have anticipated.

The author and many fans describe the game as a long-form story for adults that doesn't shy away from heavy topics. The author even advises players to not begin playing the game if they are currently in a dark period of their life, as there are no holds barred when it comes to the general subject matter, the specific situations that the story depicts, and any musings about life in general that come to be as a result of the events depicted in the story.

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This game provides examples of:

Tropes A-F

• Alone with the Psycho: You and Megan/Melissa/Rena with Leah at the end of the game, after finding that she was the one who set your house on fire and that she had taken pictures of every sexual encounter you've had in the game.
• Anyone Can Die: Played With. There are a handful of characters that you can explicitly choose to kill or save from death, but most of the characters cannot die no matter what.
• Art Shift: Inverted. The game retains the exact same, realistic art style throughout the entire story, including the sex scenes.
• Babies Ever After: Explicitly part of the marriage ending with Megan or any ending with Rena. Implied if you end up marrying Melissa, due to the ending of her final scene.
• Battle of the Still Frames: Played With. Most of the story is told through still frames, with the changes between frames being pretty obvious. However, some of the more action-oriented scenes have the frames change in a way that makes it look like the characters are moving. Inverted with most of the sex scenes; almost all of the sexual acts done in the game have animations.
• Bottle Episode: With a few exceptions in minor parts of certain episodes, flashbacks, and some epilogue scenes, the game solely takes place in the same city. The cast of named, speaking characters is also relatively small like most Visual Novels.
• Butterfly of Doom: Played Straight with the natural flow of the story rather than your specific choices; if you had not gone to that run-down corner store to buy food that day:
  • You would not have met Megan
  • You would not have been hospitalized by a robber for a week.
  • You would not have met Melissa and potentially saved her from her abusive step-father.
  • You would not have met Rena and gone on the weekend trip with everyone.
  • Leah wouldn't have set your house on fire, killing either Megan or Melissa.
  • You would not have had to go to therapy in order to confront the trauma you endured in that experience as well as what happened in the room that Leah locked you and your girlfriend in.
  • There are also various other possibilities that could occur or not occur depending on the choices you make, but the idea is that everything that happens in the game began with the you going to that store.
• Cartwright Curse: No matter what choices you make throughout the game, Episode 6 will always end with Megan or Melissa dying from your house being set on fire. Played completely straight if you do not reject Melissa and date both her and Megan, as you will then have the option to save one or the other, resulting in one of your love interests dying and the other being launched into crippling depression.
• Concept Art Gallery: Played Straight, except the gallery is not one of concepts but rather of the various sex scenes, which are all drawn directly from the game and happen in the exact same way they do during their respective episodes.
• Cutting Off the Branches: Averted in the sense that there is not/will not be a direct sequel to the game, and as such, it does not need a canonical ending (with there being over 20 endings to choose from). However, the trope is inverted within the game itself, as although you cannot explicitly reject Megan until she dies or you choose to be with Rena, the game does not encourage you to choose Megan over any other girl; that is, it leaves the branches intact.
• Doorstopper: The game is composed of eight episodes, the majority of which will take at least about an hour and a half each to complete. However, if you're not rushing or if you're making choices that result in more convoluted paths, each one can become even longer.
• Drives Like Crazy: When Liam takes you, Megan, and Melissa to the Aqua House, he drives at top speed the whole way instead of being reasonable about it.
• Earn Your Bad Ending: Although there are no completely "bad" endings, there are certain ones that are more bitter than sweet that you have to actively go out of your way to earn by being a bad friend/boyfriend. The "worst endings" tend to be earned by:
  • Not being as good of a friend to Liam as you could have been, although the results are not as drastic as the other possibilities.
  • Committing to either Megan or Melissa but having sex with a different girl afterwards.
    • You can really Kick the Dog by having sex with every girl possible, just to show how much of a scumbag you are.
    • Can be made even worse in hindsight if you take every opportunity to have sex with Leah. You know, the one who burned your house down, killed someone you loved, and kidnapped you and your girlfriend in an attempt to torture and kill you both.
  • If you have sex with Ana in Episode 5 and make certain other choices, you could end up leaving the girl you love in an effort to "try again" with your ex-fiancée who cheated on you.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Although it becomes especially apparent in later episodes, from the beginning it can be seen that most of the main characters have some source of grief, anxiety, or general strife.
  • Your fiancée cheated on you and left you a former shell of yourself
  • Liam ends up getting cancer
  • Megan gets evicted by the end of the first episode, doesn't even have her parents' support for her acting career, and can even die in a house fire
  • Melissa's dad died, she has to live with her abusive step-father for the first few episodes, and she can also die in a house fire
  • Rena's dad left her mom a while back, and she has to deal with having Dick as a boyfriend for most of the story, or even the entirety of it if you or Liam don't end up dating her.
• Featureless Protagonist: Inverted. While it is very seldom done, you do see the your character's face at certain points. While it is usually just parts of their face, there is one point where you see their whole face in a photo of them and all of their friends.
• From Roommates to Romance:
  • Although you have some sort of feelings for Megan from the beginning of the story, whether it's just thinking that she's cute or actually wanting to be with her, her living with you starts out as innocent before soon turning intimate/romantic.
  • Happens if you are not dating/sleeping with Melissa when she starts living with you, as well.
• Full Motion Video: This is done only for the sex scenes.
  • There's even a button to set the speed of the act

Tropes G-O

• Genre Savvy: Justified. Your and/or Megan's knowledge of improv leads you into attempting to trick Leah into freeing you from her room. It doesn't work.
• Guide Dang It!: Unless you are using a walkthrough in order to maximize relationship point gain with your preferred girl or ensure that you get certain endings, it can be difficult to deduce which choices will get you the exact chain of events or sex scene you want, as many dialogue options are similar, but have different consequences and relationship point effects.
• Harem Genre: Played With throughout the game. While you have the freedom to have sex with or pursue almost any girl in the game, only two, Megan and Melissa, can be romantically interested in you from the very beginning. The other encounters in the game are largely one-or-two time things, and although other potential relationships exist, they don't become apparent until the end of the game or in subsequent playthroughs.
• H-Game: Downplayed. While there are a number of sex scenes with full nudity throughout each episode, the game is not meant to be a pornographic film. Rather it is meant to be a deep, long-form story for adults. As such, even if the sex scenes are not dialed up to eleven like some other VNs, they are included as they make sense for the kind of story that is being told.
• How We Got Here: The game begins with you reminiscing on the day you met Megan and how it led to the chain of events that brought you to the position you are in now. Ventures into Book Ends when the ending is narrated in a very similar way.
• Jigsaw Puzzle Plot: Between Megan's developing acting career, deciding what to do about Melissa's abusive step-father, Liam dealing with his cancer, and you trying to come to terms with your fiancée cheating on you, there are points in the story where you have to remember the state of several subplots at once. Fortunately, it's usually not too much of a Mind Screw.
• Magnetic Girlfriend: Rena does not make any advances towards you at all until she realizes that you and Megan are actually dating. She initially only does so out of spite for Megan rather than any actual romantic interest, however.
• Marry for Love: You can potentially do this with Megan or Melissa. In order to do so with either, you must have not had sex with any other girls after you started dating them.
• Optional Sexual Encounter: Excluding dreams and flashbacks, the vast majority of the sex scenes are optional, only occurring if you choose to pursue that girl. You can go through the whole game having the only real and presently happening sex scenes occur with Megan.
• Noodle Incident: The Milk Story (you only see the tail-end of Liam explaining it to Melissa, and Megan mentions being told about it later) and you having the nickname Cum Slut (various characters comment on the absurdity of the name and ask about its origin, but it is never explicitly told during the game's main story). Potentially subverted in some of the possible epilogue stories; with the milk story being depicted exactly as it happened or the Cum Slut story being recounted by Liam when talking to the baby named after him that you have with Rena.

Tropes P-Z

• Porn with Plot: The game contains enough sex scenes to where a gallery function is necessary to keep all of them saved in one place (provided you've unlocked them by having them occur in your playthroughs). However, the vast majority of the scenes are completely normal, plausible, and make sense within the context of that particular point in the story. Even the scenes that seem random end up explained as dreams, so none of the sex scenes are gratuitous or done just for the sake of sex appeal.
• Prolonged Prologue: Subverted. From the beginning narration and lack of immediately present supporting characters it seems like the first episode will be this. However, soon after meeting your character and your best friend Liam, the game shifts to the corner store, where you meet Megan, and your story truly begins.
• Romantic False Lead: Rena to you in Episode 4 out of spite for Megan.
• Sadistic Choice: The end of Episode 6 has Megan and Melissa trapped in your burning house. You can only save one — the other will succumb to smoke inhalation.
• Simple Score of Sadness: At the end of Episode 6, you arrive at your house to find it set on fire, with Megan and Melissa trapped inside. From the beginning of that scene to the end of the episode. a somber, emotional piece, complete with piano, strings, and an impassioned woman's voice plays, setting the mood for the remainder of the story in the most emotional way possible.
• The End of the Beginning: Barring specific choices/chains of events that change the fine details of the game's ending, the final shot is always of you, Liam, Rena (if you encouraged her and Liam to date or if you are with her), and either Megan or Melissa all coming back to the place where you had the camping trip. You have a proper memorial for whoever died in the fire and spend time with each other as you reflect on life and the difficulty it can bring. The game ends with you realizing that you and your friends all still have their lives ahead of them, but the day that everything was set into motion was the very day described all the way back in Episode 1
  • "Life for us isn't over yet. But one thing's for certain... The biggest story of my life began the day I met a girl named Megan."
• Three-Way Sex: Subverted if you choose to date both Megan and Melissa. With both girls being okay with you dating both of them, and even an (unintentional) kiss happening between them in Episode 5, it does seem like a possibility with them. However, no matter your choices, it doesn't happen before one or the other dies in the house fire.
  • Played straight if you take both opportunities in the early episodes to hang out with Liam, allowing you to go home with both Angela and Hedwig after your night out at Inferno.
• Wham Episode: The end of Episode 6, as well as Episode 7 and some parts of Episode 8. Episode 6 ends with your house being set on fire, trapping Megan and Melissa inside. You are only able to save one, with the other dying from their wounds.
  • The remainder of the story is wham after wham after wham. Between potentially shooting or overdosing Peter, being lured to Leah's place and potentially cheating on Megan/Melissa with her,, and you and your girlfriend getting kidnapped by Leah which, although you always survive, potentially ruins your relationship with your girlfriend depending on your choices, there's little room for comedy in the last few episodes.