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

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!

One of the best games I've found on this site. Great character designs and variety of girls in terms of both looks and personalities. Easy to know what to do next, rarely ever feel confused or stuck. Art style is nice, not too cartoony, fits the fantasy settings well. The PoV animations are my favorite part of the game for sure!

Best game on this website imho, hands down. Possibly not the greatest story, but the characters are incredible and the detail, the textures.

Also the animations used, where your pov moves around to simulate something real are (quite literally) on another level to anything else available on here. I have minor complaints, such as the fact bouncing between the stories may kill the pacing a bit and the story tends to meander, also sex scenes, for all their unbelievable quality are basically 3 positions, but it all pales before how immersive this game is.

[0.5.14r2]

A House in the Rift took me by surprise; I thought the set-up and premise was interesting, but going to be throw away gag as nothing more than the reason to collect a harem. How wrong I was.
The ethereal fantasy setting, the uniquely compelling characters, witty dialogue, and gripping subplots all meshed to make a standout experience that I enjoy from start to finish in a single go

H-scenes
Overall the animations and statics are remarkable. Truly some of the best I've come across yet.

The "worst" complaint you will find is that once you're nearing the end, and the events become more sparse, you will end up needing to "skip" through a few days to get the correct conditions for said events to trigger. Honestly, a minor inconvenience at most

Mostly vanilla in terms of kink variety; though a few fun ones mixed in. But there's always the option to skip within the choices if it's not your cup of tea.

In conclusion: Play it. Enjoy the characters, enjoy the wit/eroticism/innuendos, and enjoy banging the woman of your dreams-- all 5 of them so far

As of version 0.5.14r2 I believe this game deserves 5 stars for several reasons:
- It features a colorful cast of 5 different and beautiful girls. Chances are at least 1 of them is going to fit your taste.
- The game overall functions great. I've encountered only a single bug, the UI is easy to navigate and the game tells you what you need to do to progress with each character.
- You are able to complete the overall story and/or a route for a specific girl while doing only a few interactions with the girls you may not be interested in.
- Decent writing(Great writing by porn game standards). The dialogue is natural and all the characters are consistent and believable(enough).
- This game has the best 3d animated scenes I've seen on the site.
Not only are they gorgeous, but they also have a lot depth. In every scene you can the pace, they feature lots of different dialogue depending on what you do(if you speed up, slow down and etc.), there are often multiple angles and in a few of them, if you do the right things, you can get the girl to cum before you.

As for reason why you wouldn't want to play this game:
- There is a little bit of grinding you have to do. Its not a lot but if you really hate grinding this game will annoy you.
- I would also not recommend this game if you are just here to fap and ONLY to fap. There's a lot of dialogue and multiple scenes that don't result in an immediate sexual pay off. And while it's well written and invests you in the world and characters, if its not your thing this game probably isn't for you.

Azraesha's model and characterisation really carried this for me, but the premise and the continued stories with each of the characters is also very well done.

The writing is distinctive for each of the characters and I think their personality is presented quite well. The system for indicating tasks is good, while only a small change to the usual way of doing it in such games I think it's a good improvement on what I've experienced so far.

The animation quality is quite variable, some great, some a little less polished. While the models may not compare favourably to more realistic stuff, I think they all have something to like about them. The writing definitely helps in this regard.

Digging this game. I stayed away from it because of the bdsm thumbnail but I didn't need to as you can choose to be nice or be more aggressive. I am playing through in a nice way and the game is great. The girls are all fun in different ways from the amazon pirate captain to the schoolgirl Caitlin.
Definitely recommend a try, especially being nice to the girls as they reward the MC with good scenes. I guess you could try the dom thing but I can't see it coming close as the story feels pretty satisfying if they are all trapped together and actually care about each other.

Edit-after playing to the last update I figured I would update the review. Sadly the game didn't live up to the hope I had that it would be something different other than a "hurr durr time for a lesbian scene" kind of game. The dev recently confirmed lesbianism is coming in an update so the game became another pointless clone where the dev makes some halfass premise and then just throws it out to show some predictable lesbo action.

To be honest the game was dragging anyway with too many characters and little content for any of them. Too bad. These devs are confirming my theory that anything decent or different in their games is a fluke and they never know what makes their game different. In the end this game will be about some silly story about a guy who saves females only to bring them to the house to turn them into lesbo/nymphos. It could have been so much better.

I still give it an average rating but it loses two stars for adding too many characters I guess with an eye to creating a lesbo-harem and doing nothing with any of the characters besides that. There really isn't anything going on at the house most of the time as it was so adding updates where the girls are fucking is just another update with zilch for the MC. Maybe two stars would be better but the start was pretty good so I'll leave three as the rating.

The overall setup of this game is wonderful with great graphics as well as story. However, the pacing of the game after the initial start just becomes increasingly boring. The grind of having to upgrade your relationship stats with other people first before advancing with a specific love interest makes certain actions very repetitive.

This in my opinion is the biggest fault in this game is the slow burn of choices. A lot of the time is spent clicking around hoping to fulfill the requirements to advance the story. Multiple times I was just stuck and even when following the instructions for the activation of certain missions or quests I couldn't advance because one of the prerequisites for starting a quest wouldn't activate.

As someone else as well as I mentioned alot of the advancement of relationships with characters in the game requires you to first advance a relationship with another side character in order to advance with the original person. If those requirements are unable to be done usually due to bugs, you're SOL. I found myself extremely frustrated with things not activating and having no idea how to progress due to the prequisite advanceement rules.

This game map is way too small for the amount of grind you have to do. Most of the time the scenes aren't even worth the squeeze afterwards or you haven't even unlocked that scene because you haven't grinded enough. If you have a lot of patience to grind it out with repetitive tasks like spending time with so and so, be my guest. However, I quickly got bored of the game and each time I tried to go back and play it was the same things that put me off of it to begin with.

All criticism aside the graphics and story are great as well as compelling characters with diverse personalities. Only downside is the grind and the pacing of game progress in my opinion profoundly hampers the experience, and most likely you will just end up getting bored. Same premise of a similar game MIST on here.

This game show many grls with diffrent personalities and its fun to corrupt them.Game is well written so you can enjoy whole story and sex scenes.
Animation and graphic in this game is something else every sex scenes or even environment although the game is still in development that you may feel like game is finished until you reach the end.

Certainly a breath of fresh air. Very good game. There's A LOT OF content, rather than high quality of art it has most emotions. But ythe art is timid and could do with morew detail. Not good enough. Extremely well written, with neat open ended gameplay. Lyriel is so unlikable, and I hate her.

This is a game that has a nice premise of being stuck in the middle of nowhere and has some fantasy elements to it. The main story progresses very slowly as it quickly turns into a harem game. One of the biggest problems with it is that there are some game breaking bugs still present. One of my bugs made it so that I can't progress with one of the girls no matter what I do. Unfortunately, this is one of those games that forces you to level up certain girls (meaning you have to interact with some girls you don't care about) to progress the story which means that I'll never be able to progress. One of the joys of harem sandbox games is being able to focus on the girls that you like which isn't the case with this game.

The gamebreaking bug wouldn't be too much of an issue but this game also has forced grinding. When you level up one of the girls, you're forced to wait an arbitrary amount of days for the next progression scene which makes the game way longer than it should be. Thus, it would still take a really long time to get back to where I was even if I started from scratch which is extremely lame. Once the bugs are fixed and meaningless grind taken away, this game would be so much better.

i would feel really bad if I can't give it a five star. Good story, good character. Really awesome game. Each female character is very unique and has her own attractiveness. It would be nice to see more interactions among the girls though.

TL / DR: There is something pervasively charming about A House on the Rift. Scenes are great, well written, and there are lots of wholesome moments b/t the characters. The two places it shoots itself in the foot a tiny bit is a lack of development in the meta plot and re-using the same ugly Male MC skin pre-fab that like 200 games are using.

Pros:
~Animations are great
~Text for the sex scenes was nicely done and usually gave you options b/t being gentle or rough so you could experience a bunch of different erotic vibes.
~The plot is a novel concept- and a somewhat compelling way to harem build.
~Characters are all really cute / charming in their own way and the arcs have some nice romance + lust vibes.
~Cuddling

Neutral:
~Game was a little whimsical and cheesy- but heck; I'm not always looking for an epic struggle. Pretty relaxing to play.

Cons:
~ Meta plot needs some foreshadowing / allusion or some other literary development to give the story some tension.
~ Male MC skin is really ugly and probably exists (approximately) in hundreds if not thousands of other Ren'Py games. If anyone ever makes some free non-hideous male skins for Ren'Py devs to use they deserve a free ticket to w/e afterlife they desire.
~A LOT of random clicking around. Game progression is pretty choppy from a UI perspective.
~MC was a bit too standard sneaking around spying and being a weird pervert for my tastes.

Excellent renders, excellent animations, excellent stories! Excellent game! Good job dev! Love the pillory scene with the elf. Keep it up! Quick question, are you gonna have some sharing scene in the upcoming updates like spitroasting the girls with another male character? I would love it if you do, well it's up to you. Looking forward to the stories of each girls.

I played V0.15.10r2. This is another of my all time favorite porn games. It starts out pretty slow, but hang in there (or read quickly), and it'll soon take a turn for the more interesting. There's not much in the way of game mechanics, but it's definitely got enough to keep me engaged. The art, story, characters, and premise are all on point. I can't wait to see where this goes. I hope there's more dimensional travel to come.

Decent game so far, but increasingly boring. It´s time the plot advances and interesting thing happens.

IMO the problem with this game are too many characters, not all of them interesting and attractive. The developer has bitten off more than he can chew. Too many updates have been needed to introduce all the characters and set the plot. And now that everything is set, the game seems to no advance, or better, advance at a snail's pace with updates full of boring and mundane events and scenes.

This is the initial premise: a regular guy is stranded into a house floating on the ether because of magic, and different girls (well, not exactly girls: a succubus, a female elf, a female orc and others like that) from different worlds arrive to that house to live with him, again because of magic. The explanations about that magic is just waffle. For some reason they can´t go out of the house and to other worlds, except for short periods of time. That´s all so far. There are several mundane scenes in the house (the girl X having breakfast, the girl X seeing TV, the girl X passing some time in her room), and several vanilla sex scenes, pretty similar from a character to other. The dialogues aren´t specially interesting, funny or witty, but aren´t terrible either. About the characters, some of them are interesting and have some kind of charm. Others not. For example, I can´t see like an attractive character the female orc: green, with boar tusks and the personality and charisma of a wooden plank.

The level of grind, I would say it´s "medium".

This game needs a shake. More interactions among the girls and those interactions should be less mundane than the previous ones. Parties, sexy games with the MC and the girls... things like those. More humor and less invented verbiage about magic and astral travels. More kinks and fetishes, more variety in sex scenes. More evolution of the characters and their relationships into the house. And real advances of the plot. Not more updates about a character walking across the street with the MC, discussing if the city is best at night or during daylight, and going to pawn a bracelet for buying a dress, like the last one.