Ren'Py - A House in the Rift [v0.7.21r1] [Zanith]

The main story progresses a bit slowly, but the characters are quite charismatic, and you quickly grow fond of them. It's really a great game.

Azraesha is definitely my favorite, and I think most people feel the same way. But honestly, I'm not a big fan of Yona. I feel like they've kind of neglected her in the game. Her story is alright, but her design doesn't really convince me or inspire me much, you know what I mean. I'm interested to know what plans they have for the game's future and if they're going to add more characters down the line.

This is my favorite VN on the whole site.

At first glance, it looks like a generic Renpy harem game with vanilla fetishes. But, it's the best written game on the entire site, and the only one that makes me feel a genuine connection to the characters.

This game is crazy good. Gameplay wise, it is just like most decent VNs: repeat certain actions until you have enough affection to trigger new story moments.

The thing is, the girls are pretty well written. They each have different personalities, "fetishes" and progression. Learning more about them is a treat because dialogue is snappy and funny. It is technically a fantasy setting, but the writer won't murder the mood with weird lore dumping.


Some feedback on this site can be very silly. Like people complaining about stuff that makes the game unique and interesting (?). I hope the dev doesn't take everything to heart and stick to their vision.

A strong start, that loses steam and focus after a while and becomes a meandering, boring mess.
6 girls, only 3 get actual focus and they definitely aren't the best. Bizarre shifts in characterization that have no reason or explanation. An MC that has no personality of his own, and the provided "choices" are usually just good/neutral/bad but with no consequence to justify them, other than a inconsequential stat loss that can be immediately gained back.
The gameplay is the same boring sandbox you can expect from this kind of games, raise a girls affection via repetition of the same action, followed by a hunt for the next trigger across a dozen locations and time slots. And that is despite the fact the game takes a very lengthy tutorial to teach you how to fight, for a grand total of one (1, uno) fight in the game itself, basically wasting the time of everyone involved, players and the dev(s).
Visually, a decent use of honey select, but it's still honey select, so don't expect to be amazed.
A competent VN, but unfortunately the big dip in writing will definitely stop it from being anything above a mediocre experience.

update: knocking down a star because every aspect of the game got worse. Updates are shorter, writing is worse, sex scenes are rarer and rarer and the plot is frozen. Very typical patreon milking machine

I really love this game, its very... chill, laid back. The animation is really good, the writing is really good, the characters... vary, but that's the point I imagine, some aren't to my taste but likely are to others. I usually like romance in my games and there's some overtones here but its more friends with benefits than anything committed, although that might change in the future.

I do wonder how this story will end, I have my hopes for a Harem ending but we'll see I guess.

Simply put, this game is fucking amazing overall, and the content with Lyriel is mind-blowing.

The story and dialogue are decent, characters have real personalities and none of them look like clone copies that you have seen very similar variants of in other games. The animations and just overall graphics quality are TOP NOTCH. The story and your emotional connection to the LIs is so well-done that I am actually really invested, and seriously fretting over how it's all going to turn out! That is rare as hell, at least for me, in an H game.

The story progression also works very well considering how non-linear it is. You will rarely if ever feel like you are just waiting for an event to pop up, I don't think I ever even clicked the skip time button - there is always something interesting to do in one of the rooms.

Other bonuses? Refreshingly, they did not feel the need to cram the game with incest, NTR, or FUTA content.

As far as cons, I will say this - I only really care for two of the LIs (Rae the succubus and Lyriel the elf.) The decision to include a giant beefcake pirate chick with huge muscles, AND yet another giant beefcake in the form of Yoma the orc, AND a short overweight dwarf, is a little puzzling to me, but then again I'm one of those old-fashioned types who prefers my women to, you know, actually be pretty and feminine. Cait the bookworm is feminine enough but her personality kind of blows, and I wouldn't call her attractive, but at least she isn't 50 lbs overweight or taking anabolic steroids.

I will say I like having Naomi (the roidrage pirate lady) in the game, because of her hilarious antics and conflicts with the other LIs, but they really could have left it at that and then given us another couple of beautiful characters each with their own unique personalities and quirks. At least the game doesn't seem to force you to progress the less desirable LIs too much, at least in the current version (0.72) - if that changes it would be a major con. Please note, I do think you have to continuously progress Rae for the story to advance, so if you don't like her you are shit out of luck, but I think it would be hard to not find her attractive.

At the end of the day, the content with Lyriel alone makes it all worthwhile.

It's a good game.

And the story proceeds at a steady pace.

But it's a slow pace.

I had thought I'd be fine with that.
However after ignoring quite a few updates, and checking back in.

I'm going to drop this. It's no longer fun. And the mc is . . . . no character. He'll either be a horndog, uninterested or have no initiative.
I've lost interest. It's a shame. I was hoping to see more romance developing and all of naomi's talk about "boyo, are you seriously trying to give me a brood." was particularly inspiring hopes of impregnation content. . .

ah well.
have fun it this is still what you're looking for

Amazing art and cut scenes. good-great writing, narrative, premise. would recommend 9.5/10. azshaera is probably my fav of the lot, but you can tell the amount of detail in the model, physics, angles, and dynamic motion that she's probably Zanith's favorite too.

I'm wavering between 3 and 4 stars. I'm going with 4, since everything here has such inflated ratings.
This game is good: the writing is mostly solid, although it isn't special, the girls have different personalities
There are bugs aplenty. Most annoyingly, the game is sandboxy, and each girl progresses separately, AND many events occur on their own time. So some days there are events that overlap and you'll have to wait until the lower priority one comes again on a later day, and many days you have nothing to do for two of the three time periods. It's really irritating. I forget what the bugs actually are, but I remember that they relate to this.

While I don't particularly like all of the girls - in fact I dislike some - you are given the option to not have sex with them, which is nice.
There are mild consent issues - things that wouldn't be illegal, but wouldn't exactly be clearly ethical. That is pretty common in these games, but still a minus. And sometimes there isn't a way to slow things down and get proper affirmative consent. Again, not uncommon, but a negative to be certain: I'm bothered less by the presence of unethical options than I am by the occasional lack of ethical options.

Accidentally came across this thread and I am so happy I did. Extremely interesting environment, love the character models, renders and animations. A bit repetitive if you miss a days task but forgivable because there is so much to do. Absolutely loving the story and there are quite a few genuinely touching and funny moments.

5 Stars

A surprisingly deep (if convoluted) storyline with interesting characters that are well modeled and animated. Well worth checking out, especially if you enjoy character development and story-driven play.

Easily one of the best games i have played in this genre. The characters are well written and beliveable, the "Grind" is obvious not too long and not too short. The Girls and sences are very creative and hot. The story is a very fresh take in this typ of games, cant take a game seariously if the 0815 story plays at the start. 10/10 can recommand

I think it's one of the best H games i've played in the recent years. Story is good and engaging , characters are lovely and beautiful. Lots and lots of H content. For me it's a 5 star and a full load on your hand garanteed

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.