Ren'Py - A House in the Rift [v0.7.9 EA] [Zanith]

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!

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.