Ren'Py - A House in the Rift [v0.7.14b1] [Zanith]

For the TLR crowd:





As an Adult VN fan I have quite a few games on my hard drive. They're sorted into folders labeled Recently Updated, To Be Continued, and Useful. If it's in the Useful folder, that means what you think it means. A House in the Rift is in my Useful folder, and is one of the few games that I honestly look forward to updates on. An easy five stars.


For those who don’t mind reading a little more:



Pros:

• Renders are excellent. Characters are unique and beautiful. There are occasional clipping issues but this is to be expected for a solo project.
• The story is engrossing and I look forward to updates for the story as much as for the adult scenes. Due to plot reasons you end up in a house floating in nowhere, and through other plot reasons you end up rescuing women from various universes and bringing them to the house to live and, due to you being the only male around…well, you know? It sounds cheesy but the dialogue makes it believable, and it wasn’t long before I started caring about them and where the story will eventually end up.
• There’s music! It’s well chosen and fits the scene mood perfectly. I’ve even left the house theme running to help me sleep. Listening to it reminds me of my original journey through the story.
• The adult scenes are unique, well-rendered, high framerate, contain multiple stages, and are plentiful. They tend to be much longer than your typical handful of repeated frames with the camera panning around the scene during the animation. Dozens of scenes that work very well for, lets face it, the main reason we’re here!

Cons:

• I’m struggling to come up with one. I could compare it to triple-A titles but that wouldn’t be fair. I was going to say that there aren’t any group scenes but now that I think about it there are at least 3 or 4 that come to mind. There aren’t any group scenes involving different combinations of the house-bound love interests, but I suspect those will come in time.

There’s not much else to say. The game is very well made, is updated frequently, contains numerous adult scenes that work very well, and has an engrossing story. I don’t know what else I could ask for.

Another masterpiece which I somehow managed to miss earlier, but finally being able to witness its perfection.
What can I say? This game deserves maximum rating for its efforts. The developer really put his soul in this game.
Review of v0.6.3r1


VISUALS
I saw someone's words regard this aspect of the game with which I fully agreed. Let me copy it a little bit : This game has some of the best use of static CG I've seen in a H-game. It really feels dynamic because developer cleverly paced dialogues in order for sentences to flow into changes in the character's posture as conversation advances.
I cant say that this game has revolutional graphics for this engine, but its really good. Overall - 4.5/5.


STORY/WRITING
I'd say the writing in this game is great. Developer really knows what he's doing.
I'm fan of plots with paranormal activities, magic etc.
In this game you are somehow stucked between countless realms (as I understood) and start collecting your harem by saving different characters from danger through your dreams. Pretty interesting idea I'd say. Through the game you training to control your hidden power to visit other realms. Pace is good, there is no such things as "rush" or "delay" like after first training you are capable of everything or after 10 trainings you are just useless. Everything comes with good tempe, after each visit you feels like you can keep yourself in different realm for a longer time, or take more peoples with you. There are few missing parts in such magical setting of the game, but hey, there is more that enough place and time to perfection. Overall 4.5/5.


GAMEPLAY
Honestly, I cant say that I'm fan of games with sandbox elements, but this game was more than okay. Here you have really comfortable map to navigate with character icons to find exactly who you are looking for. You also have a journal with quest progress and hints for those quests. Personally, I did not have a single moment in which I did not understand what I should do in order to complete this or that quest. Also, for a variety of gameplay, "secrets" were added all around the house. This is a nice little thing that makes you strain your attention from time to time, and not just mindlessly move from location to location. Overall, 4/5. I took off one point only because I don't like the sandbox mode, for those who like more active gameplay this part is 5/5.


SEXUAL CONTENT
Speaking of sexual content, I can confidently say that this game has exceeded all my expectations. Honestly, I did not expect that this part of the game would be made so well.
The developer really put his soul into it. I was very pleased when I saw looping scenes with changing angles and animation of the faces of characters who behave as if they were alive and try to show their sensations and feelings. This is just phenomenal work, compared to a huge number of games in which there are no animations but just two pieces of wood hitting each other. The developer of this game does an amazing job. Definitely 5/5.


MUSIC
As for the music, I don't know what to say. Just good and pleasant music throughout the game. There was no such moment that I could note, therefore I cannot give the maximum rating. So 4/5.


CHARACTERS (how could I forget, I almost posted my review without single word about this)
In current version we have 6 different characters If I'm not mistaken. There is more than enough content.
My absolute favourite girls are Lyriel (elf) and Azraesha/Rae (succubus)
As soon as you'll meet them, you'll understand why exactly those two. I dont want to describe each of them in details, because it would be too long. Each of them have different personalities and you can feel it.
The only thing I can say is that Rae is the perfect waifu. Why though?
Is she beautiful? Absolute yes.
Is she clever? Definitely.
Is she cute? Oh yes.
Is she interesting as person? Of course!
Is she funny? Yes, her "bad" jokes always cheered me up
Maybe she's not responsible girl? Thats a NO. From the beginning of the game she's worried about every person in your house and try to help everyone.
If all of this is still not convincing for you, than I dont even know what I can say. Oh, almost forget. She is also pretty lewd girl and she knows when to show it.
I could use all of this space to describe in general each of girls, but I decide to talk about one and only - Succubus. Appreciate this or fight me.
Just because last 2 characters weren't my type at all (although its not that big deal) , I'd say Overall 4.5/5

FINAL WORDS
In recent days, this game has really brightened up my everyday life. I tried to play it little by little so as not to complete it too quickly. Every day I was filled with different emotions and it's just wonderful. I am grateful to the developer for this game and will look forward to the next updates.
I will gladly save this game on my device so that I can replay it regularly. (It's really worth it)

A game with really good kinky hardcore scenes locked behind wholesome characters, wholesome interactions, a calming soundtrack. Each character oozes personality in their own way and well lets say Azraesha is my favorite succubus in all of porn games ever played tied with Anath from Bound by lust. I adore Rae so much along with every single character. This game is a heartfelt one and they day their adventure ends will be quite a solemn day in its own.

Awesome game with russian translate,thats rare and instesting story line) But little foot fetish content ,whants more and with more characters. Last two chars for very specific tastes,that's distressingly.

It can be pretty comfy at times and really spicy at times which brings me back for more. The story gives growth to some characters that need it in a healthy manner that makes it really interesting and it exposes a more tender side for other characters. I'm always happy when this gets updates and I really hope more people check it out.

Awesome game. The dev put a lot of effort in it
Good animations, pretty characters, nice story. only minimal inconsistencies but totally understandable with so much story and text.
i want more
hopefully voices will follow

wow, just wow. this game is everything i asked for in a neat little package, amazing renders, characters full of personality, sandbox and a ton of content and more to come. really excited about the game's future, good luck to the dev!

A stunning piece of work. So far up to 0.6.2.r2 update, the content is quite plenty. The story is beautifully crafted, the jokes, the setups are all in perfect placement making it felt natural. Animations were wonderful and the bgm used is very relaxing.

The porn is great, the characters are pretty good as well. The only story there is for each character's backstory/circumstances. There's no grind to speak of.

You're stuck in a house in a void and every now and again, new characters get sucked in as well, you can't leave for good but you can "teleport" for a time before the house drags you back. While there's dialogue about muh escape it doesn't matter much, you're in the house to chill and fuck.
The characters aren't really instant nymphos so you need to get a bit of a relationship going first. The process feels fine and doesn't drag out too much.
I'm no literature major but for what it's worth, i didn't notice anything wrong with the english and the dialogue doesn't feel stiff.
The renders are fine, not much to say there.

Only negative i have is that i do not give even a single modicum of a fuck about the orc and wish the time spent on her went into other characters.

This is a really great vn, it is very immersive, a great plot and funny moments.

renders - 5/5 really good renders, the dev does it perfect in this aspect

plot - 4/5 it's very good

music - 4/5 great background music and sounds

overall - 4.33 / 5

This game is rather difficult to rate. Porn and animations are excellent but the plot is non-existent. In short the plot is: you will get sucked into a black hole and end up in a house with multiple of hot girls. Continue from there!

The girls are well written and interesting. MC doesn't really have a past, so there won't be incest or flashbacks and so on. The game is built upon interactions, that you chat with the girls, get to know them and later have sex with them. What I like is that everything is optional. I think you can play this game trough with zero sex scenes, while it does not make sense it shows how much content you can accidentally miss. I mean I think have missed 1/3 or 1/2 content of this game, and still there have been plenty of naughty scenes.

The main issue with this game is (not really) is the inbuild scene logic. First 10-20 days are full of action, but then things start to slow down. You don't know really to whom to talk and what about, you are not really stuck but things will get much slower. For example I had difficulties to get the shower scene with Rae. Why? For some reason she closed the door every time I attempted to enter, and then it just worked out without any reasons. I had no idea why it worked out suddenly. In this game you have to build intimacy and lewdness to get scenes, but something is a bit off with these values, triggers ad logic. Also, you don't know what are the main events and what are the side events (spoiler, Rae drives plot forward) so you will end up chatting with girls with no results. Some minor grinding of rising stats also exists, this does not really bother me but is utterly unnecessary requirement for events.

Anyway, this is a good casual game with a low start. I only wish there would be more indicators what player should do in order to keep the main plot running. Like, in my diary there are +20 open events, and most of them require some trigger of which I have no influence over with. Can we atleast close the entries I don't have enough stats or triggers are not satisfied? Note that this is a smoothness issue, game is just fine and I am sure dev will iron this out later.

Overall this is a great game, just play it anon.

Excelent game. Love the story. Love the characters. Love the animations! It looks soooo good from the very begining. I can't get enough of the girls! Each one is so interesting and fun. Seriously try this one out. This is my first review and all I can tell you is how much I love it!

Story was great, characters were lovely, made me feel something more than just horny lol. This game definitely deserves more attention. I'm not a huge fan of needing to interact with every character, but it wouldn't feel complete if I hadn't.

★ VISUALS
This game has some of the best use of static CG I've seen in a H-game. It feels dynamic because they cleverly paced their dialogue in order for sentences to flow into changes in the character's posture as conversation advances.
The CG characters themselves are great, my only complaint would be how Caitlyn's hair shines a bit too much for my taste, but otherwise that's very good CG !
The fully looped, fully animated sex scenes also really add to the flair of the game.

★ STORY/WRITING
The writing in this game ranges from exceptional to okay, with way more on the exceptional side than the okay side.
Azraesha's writing in particular is stellar ! I've never experienced a Succubus being written in such a kinky and yet sweet manner, while at the same time feeling like a real person instead of just a dispenser for easy-sex scenes (which she totally is, BUT ! Her writing make them sooooo engaging to get to !). She's the "girlfriend" type, with abig kinky side, constantly makes bad sex jokes, but she's all the more endearing for it.

All the characters have this level of care put into their archetypes to make sure they don't feel like blank slates ripped from a Tag-list of fetishes.
I'd argue they succeeded to make every character feel unique and gave them enough depth to be interesting beyond the sexy-time.
Naomi's backstory was the one I was the least interested in, but that's because her "type" isn't one I enjoy. But it's a testament to the writing that I still found her engaging often enough.


★ GAMEPLAY
Basic Ren'Py visual novel, but made painless.
What I mean is that this game makes everything it can so that the experience is as smooth as possible for progression. Here you don't get weird cryptic indications for progression, but you get a lof that tells you exactly what you have to do to progress. Since this game isn't an investigation game, or a puzzle game, this choice was the smartest one: we are here to progress the story with the characters, so no need to slow us down with useless gameplay because the dialogue IS the gameplay.

However, there are part of the game where I was just clicking to past time in random scenes. The game could use a "pass time" button to make those parts easier to navigate. But that's my only complaint about the gameplay really.
There is a pass time button, I just never saw it, whoops
★ SEXUAL CONTENT
Excellent ! I've rarely seen a game with so much care put into the sex scenes and their context. The animations always have at least 2 angles of fully animated scenes that loop, the level of detail in the animation is refreshing after seeing so many games with block of woods hitting each-other (I'd rather a game have no animation than wooden ones... fight me...)
The kinks represented in the content is rather vanilla:
- Some mild corruption of an innocent girl, but that's VERY mild
- A Tsundere Elf that does sexual favours because she's a bit clueless and thinks it's normal at first, but that's also VERY mild

I think the main kink you'll get out of this game is the "girlfriend" aspect of Azraesha, because that part is very good. Not that the other parts are bad, far from it ! But that one really stands out in a game where everything is already so good.

★ ENJOYMENT
I'm having a very good time with this game. I always want to see more of the content, and keep getting back to it. The sex scenes are hot, so it's also good for some quick fap sessions.
But the meat of the content for me was the story, learning to know the characters, seeing them interact (mainly interact with Azraesha, she's a delight whenever anyone else is in the room)


FINAL VERDICT
★★★★★
This is an excellent game with good art and amazing sex scene implementation.
The writing is interesting at its worst, and amazingly cute and thoughtful at its best, which happens a lot when the Succubus character is involved.

Those devs know they are making a porn game, so they made sure every other aspect of the game complements the sex scenes they have written. Which makes this game a cohesive package that doesn't suffer from what I call "porn game schizophrenia" where devs sometimes forget they are making porn and start getting bogged down in their own mediocre narrative.
Here only one part of the story feels like that for me (Naomi's backstory sometimes), but the rest is stellar.

Thank you for having made this game, I appreciate it and will give money to the project

Great animations and story writing. The character development is engaging and the premise very interesting. It can be a bit tedious at times checking multiple times at quest locations to see whether characters are there to progress the quest, but it's not too bad. Looking forward to future patches!

TLDR - Just a really good game.

There is nothing bad I can say about this game.
- The concept is fresh.
- It has interesting (distinctly different) characters.
- Story line is good.
- Good animations.
- The game doesn't try to lecture you on politics, religion and racism. (unlike some other games *cough* hotel harem *cough* so bad *cough*).

Version: 0.5.13r3

This is a first person perspective, linear story driven game with fantasy touches. It does what it supposed to do pretty well and you probably will enjoy it if that's what you are looking for.

The game hooks you from the get go, using mysterious opening scene which also include a sex scene to throw you a bone. This scene leads to a nice theme and concept of a game that builds up nicely.
The characters are interesting and full of personality to the point that I could imagine and hear their voice. Although the stereotypical fantasy characters were used they still did fit pretty well into the story and wasn't boring, with a good dynamic between them.

The animations were good, smooth and more than just few frame loops so it is always a fantastic addition to a game, though I had one thing that bothered me in the adult scenes and that's the camera shaking. Sometimes it just was all over the place and can be nauseating due the sharp and non stop movement.

Overall the game is really good, well written, proof read without cringe dialogue. I definitely recommend to try it out and support the dev if you can.

Review for V0.6.0 r2

Something about these almost cozy harem sandbox games does it for me, and this is no exception. Easily a favorite on the site for me.

A House in the Rift actually stands out a bit from the rest too. It's a more fresh and unique spin on the genre than what you normally see and it's right up my alley. The overview gives a pretty adequate description of what you can expect. The story isn't really intense or rife with conflict, and I'd say it's more of a chill experience which I enjoy.

The love interests are very well created and it really is easy to fall in love with them. They all have their own unique stories and personalities to them that make them stand out as individuals, which makes it fun to see how they all mesh into the house and form this sort of castaway family. Just keep in mind that right now the amount of content for each girl is unbalanced, especially with the newer ones (this is in development after all).

I always love when these games include the little things. Eat breakfast with the girls, have movie nights with your succubus, drink with your pirate girl, etc. It's always a nice touch that makes the experience much easier to connect with than moving from lewd scene A to lewd scene B as quick as possible.

Something else I really like is that as the MC you're given a lot of choice in how you respond in dialogue, and it's not something as simple as A) Be an asshole, or B) Be Nice. It's not AAA levels of choice and variance, but still does a nice enough job for me.

The sandbox mechanics are done pretty well imo. It's not a big frustrating map to roam around, just your cozy rift house that gets a bit bigger as the plot develops. The girls all have their own routines and move around the house at different times of day, setting up the interactions and events. There's a built in hint system and a quick travel button that tells you where every girl is at any time if you truly despise navigating a house.

I've seen some people complain about grind, but it was truly never a problem for me. Rarely did I need to repeat events, as pretty much every event gives you the points you need to progress. If you consistently choose dialogue that makes you lose points then maybe it could be a problem I suppose. Most events I did repeat had variations too, so it wasn't even really repeating them since there was new stuff. For the few times I did, there's this handy thing called a skip button that gets through it in like 5 seconds.

TLDR - It's a very solid and relatively unique harem sandbox game. Very enjoyable if you're into those. Large amount of content and still a lot more on the way.

Art and writing is good, characters are varied, plot/story is decent but...

The navigation is way too slow, in the early versions where there were only 5-10 locations it was ok, now that there are around 20 it's just annoying, the alternative navigation method could work, if it wasn't for gameplay.

Gameplay is way too slow, hunting for scenes and just skipping time, but you can't skip a whole day so 3 skips + sleep, skipping time closes navigation menu, walkthrough tells you location, but the time/day is usually not specified and/or random so you just check location and skip time/days. This is again something i don't remember being in early verions with a bit of grind for stats/items instead, but my memory might be wrong.

Another issue is the amount of porn, Rae is the only character where i feel like she is good in that department, any other character is lacking substance in that department, the same applies to overall character development.

One of the best games on this site. Minus only in static pictures. Grind is bad in this game, i suggest autor minimise it or modify. Animations are great . Nice romance moments with succubus. Good original storyline. Elf, succubus and schoolgirl is the best!