Ren'Py - A House in the Rift [v0.7.17] [Zanith]

Game version: 0.7.0r1

I have been a fan of this game since the very first release here on FN and that's why it hurts me even more what has become of it by now.

Where the story and gameplay has been strong with this one once, the more girls entered the house the more dull and boring the game became. And this is something very unfamiliar to me, because I LOVE harem games and such.

Since ~ a year or so, there hasn't been anything exciting added to the game. The goblin and orc are bland and purely redundant, because the dev chose to focus on the (obviously) most popular chars and these would be the elf and the succubus. After them, there is a gigantic void of nothing!!
And there isn't a sign that issue will get resolved by changing back from quantity to quality once more.

Reviewing version 0.6.16r1

Initially the VN starts off as a 5/5, however that doesn't last unfortunately.

As it progresses further and further it starts to lose it's charm and instead becomes a lot more tedious and boring.

The premise is very good, but the execution is half baked and doesn't really feel like it's going anywhere.

Azraesha (Succubus) and Lyriel (Elf) are a solid 5/5 and are very attractive , however Naomi and Caitlin are more like a 3/5 , tolerable, but just that.
Yona and Blair are ugly as sin and look like NPC's.
Personality wise Azreasha and Caitlin definitely have the best writing between the characters, while Lyriel has average writing , and the rest quite terrible.

The writing unfortunately starts to really fall apart once Yona and Blair get introduced.
They add nothing to the plot, they don't feel fleshed out, and they aren't even attractive.

Overall it starts off strong, however it becomes painfully boring once too many half baked heroine's get introduced.

Hopefully they get redesigned , but as they currently are , they just don't do it for me.

fun enough when it starts. quickly drags down into the usual open world clicking around waiting for things to advance.

lewd scenes sometimes just seem to come out of nowhere without much reason.

eventually got bored and gave up.

not really sure why it is as highly rated as it is.

Gameplay: 4/5, Fun and easy to navigate, however, the money seems useless and is unnecessarily hard to grind for. As it currrently exists it could be removed with no issues, as there's already enough grind/content as is. The scheduling system also starts to get annoying into the late stage due to how many possible variations there are with 6 characters.

Story: 6/5, A great story that has clearly been thought out to some degree, you really feel the tension and anxiety when things start to change later on.

Characters: 4/5, these are ratings based on how they fare in the current patch, not future potential.
Rae: 4/5, To avoid a paragraph rant, she's my favorite. She's well fleshed out to an insane degree, however, getting all of her content takes so long compared to anyone else if you don't rush the main story. Her current cliffhanger ending + vagueness also leads me frustrated due to how MC isn't allowed to push for more answers.
Naomi: 5/5, I've met people just like this in real life, the dialogue is consistent for her and even when main event ended I loved seeing her interact with others.
Cait: 5/5, Super smooth progression from her being a naive girl with no experience to becoming a "lover". Sometimes annoying but it's a nice quirk.
Lyriel: 5/5, Really nailed the progression from angry and household mood wrecker to a great participant in the "family". Current story is decently long but it doesn't dig into motives enough.
Yona: 3/5, her appearance threw me off at first, but I really warmed up to her later. Her story does seem much more fast paced than everyone else's though which makes her a weird outlier.
Blair: 4/5, Well paced character who goes from annoying and aggravating to fresh and fun once she realizes what's going on.

Overall: 4/5, Gamplay is good, story is great, characters are mostly great but occasionally frustrating.

[v0.6.16] A very pleasant, relaxed harem sandbox in a magical sharehouse.

Unexplained magical shenanigans isekai you into the titular House in the Rift, where everything runs on magic and you keep inadvertently conjuring cute fantasy girls. Learning how this world works, and figuring out how to escape it provide the main story. And it's a pretty extensive story too, spending a considerable amount of time exploring the concepts. But the story rarely drags on, as there's dozens of hours of side content to keep you busy, which you can engage with at your own pace.

Gameplay is pretty standard for the genre. The day is broken up into different time slots, and you spend each slot moving around the house, interacting with the girl(s) of your choosing. There's no real challenge here - you can improve or worsen your relationship with the girls, but these actions are clearly telegraphed, trivial to fix mistakes, and rarely have lasting drawbacks. With no real gameplay to speak of, the game is left to rely entirely on its graphics and writing.

Graphically, the game is very nice. Characters and locations are consistently high quality, while the animations are plentiful and smooth. The sex scenes are similarly very good looking, though I found their direction a tad vanilla and lacking in energy. Not bad, but not especially erotic. Speaking of sex, you're able to unlock new sexy content at a steady pace. The first few girls are pretty eager, so you don't have to wait long to get to the action. But later girls require more patience and relationship building, making you work for it.

Developing your relationships makes up the bulk of the content in this game. There's some action, some adventure, plentiful sex, but most of the time you're just hanging out with the girls. Chatting over dinner, or while lounging by the pool, or while going for a walk. It's a very chill game. This laid back, meandering story may not be for everyone, but I found it a pleasant routine to settle into. The writing is consistently decent; not amazing, but comfortably above average. I did end up skimming over dialog at times - there's just so much content, and found some of it less interesting than others.

Overall, there's a ton of good content here. While no part is individually exceptional, the consistently pleasant tone and casually high level of polish make this a game that's easy to sink a dozen hours into.

This game is dope asf, fun conversations, fun minigames, great NSFW scenes. There's something for everybody in this, for every lewd taste and for every story taste. I got sucked in for a few hours after boootup

Very interesting premise for a game, if executed right, it would be pretty good game, unfortunately it isn’t, at least not for me...

From the start this game kept me interested and girls started to grow on me (as it should in this type of game), from certain point all of them began to being annoying as hell, except that succubi. The worst was that blonde elf, I understand that author want to make them all unique and some of them has to be the bitchy one, but holy shit was she overly annoying. Dev had in mind to make her bitchy queen, who will eventually calm down and start to grow on player... yeah missed by a mile. If she was just bitchy that’s fine, but she is bullying that little girl way too much and if you try to defend her, she gets upset with you for defending her from bullying, wtf? You have no option to put that elf in place at all and you have to put up with her events, otherwise you will not be able to continue main story.

That little girl is inexperienced and shy as hell which is fine, those types easily grow on player, but I just got annoyed with her dialogs. It can be cute if you put in her dialogs ehm... or um... like she is shy to speak to you, but holy hell there were some dialogs 7 full screens of writing without saying anything at all, why? Once again overdone way too much.

That pirate dominatrix was fine from start as well, even tho I don’t like femdom, she started to grow on me. Then I got event to go dreamwalking with her and we failed. She got angry, which fits her characters, that’s ok. But once again overdone af. She starts throwing and punching furniture and went into complete frenzy without having real reason to do so and even if she had that reason, that behaviour was way too much.

What also doesn’t help are honey select graphics, which just aren’t good anymore and haven’t been for some time. I get it that someone likes them and if the game with them is good, I can get over them as well, but why wouldn’t you pick more attractive models? There are hundereds of models too choose from and you pick those? This is mostly subjective as well, but don’t tell me, you couldn’t pick better ones. The only attractive one for me was ironicaly that elf. And why the hell has that black pirate white/pink nipples? It almost blinded me.

The only bright point for me were animations, which are done very well and that effort which this dev put into this game, which made me rate this very generous 3*. I understand that this review doesn’t mean much, but critique is for free ain’t it.

I've been following this game for a long time, I don't even know how long exactly, and I have to say that I've never found anything wrong with it, not in performance or in terms of story or characters or whatever, if there's a game that's a utopia for me, this game would be it, strong elements of fantasy with supernatural, there's no way not to like it .. and thanks for not killing my elf or leaving general slaving like most games do, I got very attached to the characters and the story, and I noticed that there is almost a complete dungeon team, demon, mage, warrior, dwarf, elf archer, I hope one day I can see a dungeon event even if it's a dream haha, as I didn't see any defects in the game I just wanted to comment some of the many details that I appreciate in the game, thanks for making a game where the player feels good about fulfilling their fantasies without having to put on drama.

so i think ive rated this before but this will be including the content up to the current update as of v0.6.14r1.

there are other reviews out there that give you the breakdown of what they like and don't like, ill try to keep this objective and review as if i was describing the game to someone who has never played this title before. my personal opinions will be in a separate section at the end for those that like hearing what others think of the game and for the dev to get a feel of how well or poor their game is being received by the players.

first the good:
-character development is well done! each character has a unique back story and motivation. they interact in the way you would expect those character types to act. (ex... the pirate girl is brash and rude and is rather blunt with her statements while the meek and shy magic student is timid and doesn't tend to do well in confrontational speaking, etc...)
-lewd scenes are well done with nice animations to accompany them. pretty cut and dry here, the lewd scenes are high quality and even with some of the characters that are less liked by the players, the quality is still there. some of the more kinky fetishes aren't done here and for some that might be seen as a negative but i personally like that there isn't any extreme fetishes to the lewd scenes.
-story is engaging and hooks the player in causing a sense "whats gonna happen next"! this might be how the dev gets players to keep coming back to this game as the story will have you wondering what they are gonna do to fix a certain situation and will said situation lead to "sexy time"

and now the bad:
-updates do seem to be few and far between and have a limited amount of content with each release! this is typically the case with most adult games that have been going as long as this one has. maybe its finding inspiration to come up with more of the story or sitting down to actually do the rendering, the time between updates and the content that comes with each one has seemed to slow down.
-there are times where the game seems "hand holdy" and you kinda have to do things in the order the game wants you to do them and it kinda takes away from the immersion of the open world feel. (not sure if its part of the same thing, but also what the characters say when you approach them to do repeatable "sexy time" or just to talk to them to progress time is repeated dialogue and it gets stale after a while)
-the couple of characters added later in the game don't have as much interesting content to their story and lewd scenes seem a bit forced (not as in the MC forcing himself on them but more that they didn't get the same buildup that the other girls got). this may be just a side effect of being the late commers to the party but they just don't seen to have as much appeal as the other girls.

and finally my personal feelings and opinions:
let me start by saying, I love this game and I feel its of high quality and look forward to each time I play. the update thing I mentioned earlier isn't a huge deal. I usually just wait for two or three updates to be released before I pick it back up again to catch up on what's been happening in the story. I mentioned in the above review how the later characters don't seem as appealing and while that's still true for the most part I have to say its good to see both Blair and Yona get some expansion to their story which helps with this issue. Yona still isn't the most attractive of the girls and her story is ok, but i do like the direction that Blairs story is going and maybe we'll even get to have some "sexy time" with her in the near future.

i have missed some of the random dream scenes that used to be added every so often and would like to see those come back. other little nitpicks that I just feel deserve a mention are, when is Lyriel gonna drop the whole tsundere bit and actually admit that she likes the MC! I don't mind the whole valley girl way of speaking but, cmon! She's been intimate with the MC enough now that youd think she would let those walls down. but anyway, ...would also like to see some more intimate moments with Cait! Maybe some varied reactions from the both of them in their early morning visits!

that's really all ive got for this review other than a few speculations on endings and how things are going to go down the line, but that's more a topic for a discussion thread. overall my rating for the game is a 4/5 stars as I think this game does a lot of stuff right but it still has a few flaws and every game has room for improvement. If your a player reading this, hope you try the game for yourself as its worth your time and Zanith hope you keep up the good work!

I really look forward to the next release ever time I play this game. The character development is really good, and the images and animations are top tier. Everyone should give this game a chance, it's one of the best and highest rated games on her for a reason.

Go play!

This visual novel (VN) is a good starting point for people new to the genre, especially if they enjoy anime where ordinary life gets a touch of the supernatural. But even with many five-star reviews, I didn't find it as impressive.

The VN's story and characters deal with everyday life events. These events need to move forward in a way that's easy to believe and feels real. After playing for a while, I feel this VN didn't quite meet that mark.

The story either moves too slow or too fast. More problematic is when one event leads to another without making sense, like where you have an unpleasant or even bad interaction with a girl, and the next day it's back to normal like nothing happened. These inconsistencies don't belong in a 5 star VN imo. There are even bugs. For example, the game allows you to play an event that should only happen later in the story. These issues break the feeling immersion, which is very important to me in a VN. Because of this, I had to lower my score a lot as it happened too often for my liking.

The art is simple but works well, and there's not a lot of sound. The writing wasn't as good as I expected from a VN with such high ratings, and the adult scenes were okay. These good points, however, don't make up for the issues I found in the VN.

Whouaaaa, there is an excellent game, very great history and dialogue, animations, girls, music, all are so good, thank you very much ZanithOne for this superbe work, one of the best game I have played.

All around amazing! I rarely comment on this forum but I have to offer my appreciation and let you know that this project is my favourite so far!Great story, brilliant characters and dialogue and absoulutely stunning artwork.

Thank you for your hard work and please keep it up!
I'm addicted here!

~CK~

Version rated v0.6.12r1

Visually it is not the best game out there but perfectly serviceable with above average animations.
There are plenty of scenes and a good variety in the girls. There is also plenty of content in there.



In terms of “gameplay” there is not a lot of grind, things are pretty direct, however the day transitions do start to feel a bit slugish at times, and having to look up if there are events in the notebook also gets old, really nothing major but small annoyances.

In terms of story and setting I quite enjoy it’s premise, however there is quite a bit of filler, conversations that take a bit longer than they need to, without much useful info, especially if the girl in question really does not interest you. It also starts to feel a bit stretched out at this point. Lots of content can be nice, but also leads to bloat, without the story progressing much. I feel like this is going to be a real forever project or get some rushed ending at some point. It certainly is no harem hotel in that regard but things are slowly moving that way. Adding more girls will probably only spread things even thinner.

To the developer I want to say this: To me the best way forward seems to focus on tying the story together, keep the side events shorter, at this rate it will just be too much to ever finish.




This was my incoherent rant for to today, I feel sorry for anyone actually bothering to read through it all. I just didn’t feel like spending real time in writing something shorter and more coherent, thus this will do.

One of the best games I've played in a while. Fantastic animations and doesn't feel too grindy. Gathering money seems to be the most annoying thing. Besides that, with a lot of quests, there's a lot to keep you busy.

Wonderful premise and decent story.

Very high quality and fun game worth trying for sure.

Pros

• Good animations
• Excellent sandbox, never feels grindy. Similar layouts can sometimes be tedious but this feels very natural.
• Rae deserves a mention a top tier character
• Choices are frequent and have varying degrees of importance
• The LI's do push back if you're being a bit of a dick
• While events are triggered by meeting characters at the right time/place, the game doesn't make you wait too long for opportunities to trigger them, so you rarely have to skip time.
• Fun story

Cons

• The Strength/Knowledge/Focus stat system isn't relevant for long but some people might prefer that

It is an excellent fantasy harem game. It takes liberties to spice things up, but it is OK since this is a fantasy game.
Freeroam quest system is just done right to not become boring which also sets the pace of the game. Main quest is interesting but the main appeal is the girls' side quests. Increase lewdness quests can become difficult to advance since you don't know for a fact that which activities increase it and you have to spam some to get more lewdness level of a character. But the player is rewarded handsomely with good quality lewd animations in the end.
Naomi and Rae are humorous characters that the game needs to make us chuckle. Lyriel and Caitlyn is just so good and cute that I want more and more content with them. Yona and Blair add variety as late additions but they are not as impactful which is a bit sad. I like the roster overall each girl is different. They are not always cock-hungry/depraved like in many harem games.
The only downside i can think of is the fact that game gets a bit stale in the sound department. No SFX and 3-4 soundtracks on loop can get repetitive.
This game offers a guaranteed good time. A must play. Just don't get too cynical and you'll be fine.
Request: pls an endgame harem orgy?

Love the game.

Graphics are fantastic, sandbox elements prolong the game, but not too much to become bothersome (nicely done fast travel options) and there's just enough creativity in the various areas.

I also love the characters. Rae is one of the nicest ones in any AVN. There's good amount to allow deep content with each, but not too many to make it unnecessarily branchy. Also they're all different and it adds variety and everyone can find a favourite.

And I love the theme and idea of it.

Overall 9.5/10. Really nicely done.

I am a longtime lurker and never write reviews - this is my first one. That should already tell you something. I love this game!

The plot is genuinely interesting and rarely can a game make me care about the characters, which are really well written and authentic.

Seriously, the writing is amazing, it's better than most Netflix shows.
And the animations are simply superb. I usually don't like this anime style(?) but this is obviously an exception.

Among all this rubbish on this website this game is a gem. 5 stars!

This game has a lot of merits, good animation, it is unique, it is fun at the beginning, and the story is good. I really like Rae, looks, body.

Where it falls flat is too much repetition, I am not a fan of the looks of most of the girls (Rae the purple-hair succubus and the elf girl are the only exceptions), the other characters are written well but not a fan of their character models.

At the beginning, I was really impressed. The story was cool, I never played another game like this and I like the mystery of the story.
Story: 5 out of 5

Character models: Rae the succubus is an attractive character, as is the elf girl. The rest of the girls have weird proportions and are not that attractive. There are also games using Genesis 9 models now, so HS models are falling further and further behind.
Models: 2 out of 5 there. If more looked like Rae, especially, 3.9 out of 5.

After playing a while, you kind of get lost what to do. It gets repetitious and the girls kind of come in and out of the story while you wander around. More variation on the repeatable scenes would have been nice, as after a while it gets boring trying to find the one thing that progresses the story and the girls do all of the same things or have the same scenes.

There are little side events (finding girls in their room, in the shower, etc.), but not enough to prevent the repetition. This is the single biggest issue of this game altogether, along with the character models just being meh.

Progression: 1.8 out of 5 stars

Replayability: Would likely be low, it would likely get even more repetitious. For me, I will likely be "one and done", I play through every update and want to play through the finished game when it gets there.

ZanithOne, the developer: Keeps updates coming, delivers on promises. A very good developer that I wish lots of success to!