Ren'Py - A House in the Rift [v0.8.04r1] [Zanith]

Version 0.717

A Game in the Drift is what it is. The starting concept was good, the main character designs (Rae, Caitlin and Lyriel) are gorgeous, animations are as good as they come and it has a strong fan base. Unfortunately, there is little content for a game that has been in the making for 6 years.

Excluding the time spent on a clickfest sandbox, we are talking about maybe 10 hours' worth of story content... quite underwhelming considering AHITR supposedly has monthly updates over many years.

Story
MC got teleported to a house floating in a rift which serves as a magical magnet that sucks in new inhabitants (i.e. 6 LIs) from other realms and prevents them from going back. It's a decent premise to do the multiple girls stuck in a house harem, but the main plot of finding a way to get everyone back hasn't progressed all these years.

In addition, there are many side stories pertaining to each LI that can be unlocked. However, the vast majority of them are around Rae, Caitlin and Lyriel. There is a bit of content developed for Naomi and almost nothing for Yona and Blair. I presume this is due to their lack of Patreon popularity, so they are more "miscellaneous" girls.

Game Mechanics
A standard room clicking across three time slots to trigger events sandbox plus inconsequential choices with minor dialogue variations.

Background / Character Renders
Backgrounds are standard assets with some customization. There aren't a lot as gamers will be spending 80% of the time inside the house with some additional scenarios in other realms when unlocking the LI's side stories.

Character designs are a mixed bunch. The three main LIs are very well designed and obviously very popular while the other three with little content are sort of there to satisfy certain kinks (muscle woman, orc and DEI hire). There are a few once-off side girls that are decently designed, but not enough to be memorable.

Character Development
Very uneven as there are a lot of side stories and slice of life moments reserved for Rae, Caitlin and Lyria which allows their character build up whereas the other three seem to have been introduced and then softly "de-emphasized" without much content due to their lack of popularity.

The relationship building between MC and the LIs though, is sorely lacking. There's hardly any difference from start to now - you don't get the sense MC is forming a closer connection with anyone beyond being housemates and FWBs.

Sex Scene
The lewd scenes are heavily concentrated on the 3 main LIs, but are very well done. A lot of variations in positions and camera angling and it's definitely not a copy and paste job repeated with different models.

A shout out to the animations, they are certainly the selling point of AHTR - good lengths (5 - 20 seconds), loop smoothly without jarring and feature many unique customizations. A few like Rae's anal and space dream, Caitlin's spooning, Lyriel's first time and Jenny's pool scene are very well-animated and memorable enough for collection.

The dialogue is passable, but the overall mood is dampened by the lack of music and sound effects. Quite wasted considering the excellent animations available.

BGM and Sound Effects
Very limited tracks which adds to the dull especially when the game requires you to spend vast amounts of time clicking around the house. Some story and lewd scenes do not come with any BGM which is an odd take considering these are the moments which are supposedly more emotional.

There are no sound effects that I recall.

Conclusion
My thoughts on AHITR are mixed - I like the character designs and the animations are simply amazing, but this is let down by a story that is drifting aimlessly and a lack of overall content considering its time in development.

Being one of the earlier batches of indie non-Jap AVN developer has given it a first mover's advantage in Patreon subscriptions and ratings. This combined with frequent fan engagement and slick marketing has allowed the developers to reap financial rewards and over time they have chosen a risk averse path favoring financial stability over creativity.

It's certainly a profitable business model, but from a game play POV and as a new player without nostalgic lenses, AHITR is perhaps 3+ stars still water but reliable with strengths and weaknesses across.

I'll start by saying I wish there was a 4.5 star option, and then explain why I've chosen to round down.

The game is more or less what it says: you find yourself in a house, trapped in a 'the rift', with not a whole lot going on. As the days wind on, a series of events introduce you to new characters. (After a while you get some control over the pacing of the new characters coming in.)

In terms of characters, the depth is a mixed bag. Some characters have some internal growth, others don't appear to grow much. Some characters have deeper background lore, and for others it's shallow, leaning on tropes and what's assumed to be common knowledge. This is fine if you know what's being drawn on, or recognise it, but it's a bit of a problem in certain contexts. I'm not penalising the star score exclusively because of this, it's just worth noting that some of the lore needs cleaning up. Since the game appears to be fairly far from done (at least where it's weakest), it's probably not a huge deal overall.

Standard humour issues: jokes land once, which means replayability is fairly low. This isn't like other story-based/story-driven games, in that those jokes punctuate moments; these jokes often pointless text selection options, which can cause a jarring impact. Ordinarily, this wouldn't be an issue for the score either, but it's contributing here.

The biggest issue is the sandbox element. Certain events overlap, and can occur out of synchronisation. There's no 'lock-in' mechanic for events you've told characters you'll do that day; there's also no penalty for a collision. Certain events aren't things you directly trigger, and instead require you to be in the right place at the right time (even though you've told people you'll do them). It leads to the sandbox becoming a fairly frustrating experience.

The number of parallel quests is problematically large. Not because the list is huge (it's like the in other games), but because of the overlap. In on particular circumstance, an issue breaks out between two characters, and you need to mediate it. Because there's no sequence gating, that event can play out after you've done other things, making things make very little sense. Other things can happen in parallel which treat it as unresolved or resolved (there's branching dialogue to handle it).

While it may be a subjective gripe, the lack of gating and sequencing is a huge issue for me. It makes the story part of the game extremely muddy. This is more important because there are individual character stories as well as the main arc (not uncommon in other games either, but it appears to be a driving point in the middle of this). This hits the fore when dreams appear on the wrong night (they'll happen a night or two before your character reacts), or some event between characters will trigger and be unresolved, leading to an unexplained interaction later.

In terms of 'what's wrong' here, the fix would be to gate some of the content behind proper sequencing. I know that this isn't something most people really care about, but in this particular game, particularly as it has expanded out since the first time I tried to play it a year ago, it has only gotten worse.

On the whole, the stories are interesting. The characters have enough depth to grapple with who they are, want to be, and their wants and needs. But they're not particularly deep, and the emphasis is more on the story than the character in them. Of the existing characters, there are three who are probably easy to relate to, or support, and three who could be replaced at random. I expect future story expansions will correct for some of those deficits.

To be clear, the loss of the 5th star here comes just from the gating. The sequencing problem can be a problem, not just an annoyance; I know freedom to do things is seen as important, but there's too much, and the chaos isn't controlled well enough to get the full five from me.

Tonight was my second playthrough of the game. When I first considered returning, Azraesha immediately came to mind. The next thing you know, a quote from Invincible popped into my head and then I told myself, "I think I miss my wife."

Jokes aside, I personally see A House in the Rift as the cream of the crop when it comes to AVNs. It has the perfect blend of monster girl, slice-of-life, fantasy and adventure. The story is actually very well-written for a harem plotline, and every love interest is memorable with a strong sense of individualism. Even cold and reserved characters like Lyriel have a deep emotional capacity.

This game is also home to Steven, one of the kindest and most understanding protagonists I've ever come across. It's extremely rare to come across someone like him in this male-dominated landscape, and he has his horny toad side. The player can make him a jerk, but his canon actions reveal him to be compassionate and thoughtful. For instance, Azraesha literally called herself a sex toy at the beginning of the game, but Steven continued to treat her like a normal person. Someone who deserves love. It is just so sweet to watch.

Review of v0.7.14b1

AHITR is a sandbox AVN with a relatively standard gameplay loop. You have a big house and go around different rooms, interacting with the girls to progress their stories. Thankfully the journal tells you exactly how to progress, so you don't have to fumble around in the dark. While the sandbox structure does allow for good repeatable sex scenes, but I still found it a bit unnecessary and annoying. The visuals are good and improve over time, with good sex animations. However, I found only Lyriel and Rae's model particularly attractive. Cait is carried by her cute personality, but her model is quite low-poly, and Naomi's model looks like it was made on a PS2.

There is a central story which is engaging enough to follow along with, though nothing special, but almost all of the screen time is devoted to the girls. There are extensive scenes developing your relationship with them and exploring their stories. This serves well to flesh them out, but at times it feels like filler.

My main problem with the game right now is that, for me, Rae, Cait and Lyriel are all highly lovable, but neither the mc nor the girls seem to be interested in being anything more than friends with benefits, despite the already very long runtime.

Also, Yona, the, 5th girl introduced out of 6, has had very little content so far in comparison to the others. Though I can't imagine her being anyone's best girl, considering she has next to no personality, and isn't particularly attractive.

I would also like the sound design to be extended beyond the handful of tracks which loop over almost every scene (with some scenes being suddenly, for no reason, silent). Good sound effects in the sex scenes would be much appreciated.

Despite all my criticisms, I still enjoyed the game for the most part, so I'm giving it 4 stars.

To get it out of the way first: Yes, it's a sandbox with everything that implies. I think it's worth playing despite that.

The animations on this are excellent, I love (most) of the characters, the worldbuilding is superb. We do have quite a few of those around, thankfully. In terms of unique features, A House In The Rift has excellent not-so-mini games. No "click your mouse really fast" or "play babbys first attempt at dance-dance-revolution on your keyboard" games, they're engaging on multiple levels, and there's quite a variety. The first you'll encounter is by far the weakest - the combat minigame. A variant of rock, paper, scissors that has actual strategy but is still pretty easy.

The (probable) next would be the choose your own adventure sequences. Halloween is an enormous event with tons of twists and turns and you have to use your head to map out a path to the 5 (6?) good endings. There's a weaker version of it in the sci-fi dream sequence as well - a lot less content but it doesn't take as long to solve either.

Finally, the maze. One of the better "mini" games I've seen in an AVN. you have to explore a maze to find all the scenes before you run out of moves. There's a lot of cute scenes with the group as they run into various pitfalls and find treasures. Even the book of terrible pickup lines was worth a laugh.

The second mini-est minigame is solving the alchemy puzzles, and those are fun as well.

Downsides: The sandbox. No getting around it, sandboxes are gonna sandbox. There's days of the week, times of day, and the girls are on a schedule that varies each day.

There's theorietically stats to grind, but they cap out basically immediately and you're waiting on a story event to trigger the next level, so there's no "grinding" after the very beginning.

There is, however a whole lot of skipping time to get to the slot you want, and the girls being on a schedule where they may not be in the right place and you have to go another day or two... oof. The developer has mitigated that to an extent - you can often ask a girl to move to where she's needed rather than waiting for her to go there on her own.

This is something you're going to hit towards the end of the playthrough, as the available content peters out. Before that there's enough to do that there's not a whole lot of downtime.

TL;DR - Massive potential which is ruined partially by the go-nowhere plotlines and tediously written filler dialogue. The animations are quite nice, the girls are varied in body type and very sexy although the personalities are very trope-y. The writing is sub-par and drags the experience down. The story is fine in the beginning and gets more boring and treads water the further in you go. 3 stars seems harsh for a game that will definitely get your rocks off, but there are better, sexier games out there that wont waste your time.

Catchy storyline, different and cute npss.
Ten hours in game some times not enough.
I start plaing more than year ago, regulary updates. and responsible development team.
Thank you!
Looks like Ipass all way, but from time i pass it was a several updates, so I still can expect something newin favorite game.

The game is very good. I had already given it a chance a long time ago, and now that I downloaded it again I can see that there has been great progress. I really like some characters, and not so much others. But I believe that there are different characters for all tastes. I recommend playing it.

This one pains me a little. I actually really like this game and have been paying attention to it for probably about 4 years now - discovered it during Covid lockdowns.

The art is great, the animation is some of the best you'll find on this site, the initial story premise is great (and actually unique which is rare) the characters are each well developed enough to feel like real people with their own foibles, traits, personalities, and interests as opposed to being interchangeable with one another or mindless sex dolls which is awesome. Even the sex is pretty paced out which for me is awesome. With the exception of the succubus Rae (who is best girl by the way), there's an actual build up of relationship with each character before they sleep with you, so it feels like the sex scenes are actually meaningful which I like. And even Rae gets a pass because she's literally a succubus and besides has a lot of relationship building outside of the sex scenes so she feels like a full character who has an actual relationship with the MC.

So if I have so much praise, why 3 stars? Simple, three words: bloat and pacing. It's been like 5 and a half years since this first came out and yet it feels like very little has actually happened in the story. Sure each LI has gotten more side quests and whatnot, there's plenty of content that has been added, but little of it actually matters, little of it actually moves the main story forward. We've been stuck in the same "huh, we're in a fancy magic house but don't know why and have no way out" for ages, the only real main plot developments being the occasional addition of a new woman to the house and some tinkering with dream-travelling to different worlds which is cool but hasn't really gone anywhere narratively speaking yet - outside of helping each girl with her side problems, and don't you worry I'll get to side content.

I also don't love some of the pacing. In general I love it when story-driven games are willing to take their time before getting to sex in order to build up romantic/sexual tension and relationships, I even praised this one for it earlier. But sometimes it's just too much and too slow. There are some characters who despite having been present for literal years have very little sex/romance content i.e. Naomi and Yona, (and Blair but she gets a pass for being the newest one), and even Cait while having a lot of content is mostly foreplay - I'm not actually sure if she has a full sex scene yet.

Meanwhile getting to the scenes is a bit of a chore, each LI has a billion little side quests and moments that you need to do, most of which require visiting them at a specific time of day but only if they're in a specific part of the house which isn't guaranteed to actually happen on any given day, sometimes made even worse if they also need to have specific other character present too., all of which means it can take what feels like hours of mindlessly skipping through days to actually access new content.

As for "gameplay", there's are some stats, lewndness and intimacy. But frankly they never seem to matter to the point I question why they are even in the game, they never really serve as a real limiting factor - the actual progression is based on completing the thousand little side tasks each character has and you usually get enough lewdness and intimacy as a byproduct of doing those things. As well you get to make dialogue choices, which would be cool except basically every single choice in the game is entirely irrelevant. The average dialogue choice you get can be summed up as A.) normal response, B.) weird response, and C.) lewd/flirty response. However regardless of which one you choose it won't actually impact the outcome of a given scene outside of a sentence or two. Sometimes you might gain or lose a stat based on a choice, but again since stats don't actually matter it's not enough to make me actually care about what option I choose. A bit lame in that regard.

It wasn't so bad when the game first came out, and if you're someone who has been following this for years and is mostly caught up then it probably isn't so bad for you to complete each update, but the idea of starting a new game and trying to do it all again, or being a new player entirely, is daunting. WAY too much filler content. It would take so many countless hours to go from the beginning to the current content, most of which would be just clicking the "skip time" button over and over until the right characters are in the right room at the right time, and then skimming the dialogue until you get the option to make a conversational choice that doesn't matter and won't change anything anyway, and then doing it all over again a thousand more times.

I get the vibe that the dev is maybe losing themselves in this a little. Every update is adding more and more side stories and dream/holiday scenes but not really moving anything forward. It's like they just love the idea of living their fantasy of being in this magic dream house with all of their waifus so much that they just want it to keep going forever and are afraid for it to actually end. Or I suppose the more cynical take would be they like getting the patreon money and don't want that to end, but I prefer to give the benefit of the doubt. Anyway, it's probably too far in to change things now, but the game needs to drastically cut down on all the side content, make some of the progression faster and stats/choices matter more, and get the train rolling on actually progressing the story. As of now it is way too bloated and doesn't feel like it's story is interested in going anywhere anytime soon.

Great game with a set of fun and diverse characters. It has a lot of content (around 200 ingame days if you do everything) and high quality animations. My favorite character was Lyriel for having the best character development (for a porn game).

You usually have some choices while going through events but most of the time they just affect the dialogue instead of the outcome, which isn't much of a bother considering the amount of content the game has.

5 stars for high quality and a good story. Good luck to the developer.

From the Start in 2019 looking and found this game a pearl i must say beautiful girls.
The animtiaon is perfect. the story line is good.
I like the episodes every time when im finish a update already looking for the next one.
many thanks for the dev for this piece of work

A House in the Rift is a solid 8/10
A game that is a game first and porn second.


Story/Lore/Plot:
The story is pretty simple to understand, an incident that sets the stage for the situations that will develop during the game, why the characters are there and the justifications leave no room to say "What if they try this" or "Why don't they do this", as such, the whole premise is very solid.

The development of the story is very good, it is very interesting and the world (or worlds in this case) are well thought out, they make sense and awaken a feeling of curiosity in you when playing, you want to see them in more depth.

There are many mysteries and without realizing it you will end up formulating your own theories and assembling the pieces as you go along, it is captivating and perfectly fulfills what a Visual Novel should always be, being interesting enough to trap you in its world. Additionally, the game handles very good humor.


Characters:
They are varied and picturesque, but their very different designs are well justified by the story, which gives freedom to the appearance of all kinds of colorful characters. Each one is normal in their own world, they do not exist out of nowhere to satisfy the player, they have their story, their problems and most importantly, they are characters that evolve as you advance in their stories.

One in particular has a very human and interesting development and conflict. Gameplay: It is a Visual Novel, they do not usually contain anything very exaggerated beyond dialogue options, there are some particular systems that are not very recurrent but they do work well to break the routine.


Graphics:
The standard that you will find in every Ren'py game, the renders are well cared for and the animations are good. Nothing really remarkable, but above average for other games.


Negative aspects:
I really could not think of anything particularly negative that is not within the limitations of time, dev knowledge or Ren'py limitations.

Awesome game, a character type for everyone´s taste, beautiful animations.
Cool mechanics in some scenes that actually need you to watch out and try, not just mindlessly rushing through to get to the good part

I hated this. But my hate is subjective, and does not apply to all and a considerable amount of hard work was put behind this game, so a 5 star.

Cons: First off, this game has countless hours of boob-less scenes. The writer wanted to tell a story which is mind numbingly boring but I would roll with it if he put some kinkiness in between. The premises is so awesome that it would take extra effort not to put sexy scenes frequently. This game could have been so kinky, I'm pretty sure the writer hates sex or something. And some characters are so annoying, it would top the chart of most annoying fictional characters of all time. Especially Cait and that elf girl. The two hottest girls are also annoying af. The are so timid so self loathing so whiny its ridiculous. And the other girls are not bad but they are just ugly (specially the dwarf. That was the point of introducing that character? Oddly I kind of like that orc girl even though she's muscular and with a... well, orc-like face)

Pros: 5 star because Im a sucker for games with repeatable scenes and harem where girls know about each other. And all the marks for creating the premise. This game I suspect is made for the female audience, not for straight dudes, so can't hate too much because I don't like it.

I haven't finished it yet, I'm on 130somethingth day. Still no public sex or even threesome. Just vanilla sex.

It's okay. Has a rather unique setup that allows for a harem to be even somewhat plausible unlike literally any other harem game in existence.

It's just that the characters never, ever develop and the cohabitation nature of the game feels like ass because the developer just isn't willing to change basic dialogue after hours and hours of grinding away at a character's relationship, they still act like assholes to you. Doesn't help that you have 0 choice in the game. Almost every choice is just an ilusion of it, you can roll back and choose the others and it'll lead to the same shit.

I'm telling you. Whenever, in the main game you etherwalk with someone, ask them to stay in the bed. You will ALWAYS be told no but the game always gives you that choice. There's even one part where you have 4 different lines and it all leads to them leaving. What the fuck is the point?

The main story was somewhat interesting but the infinite padding killed whatever stakes there were and it's impossible to give a shit now.

Oh and it's just another Honey Select romp, so you've seen every animation ever, none of it is all that great.

The game is super grindy for little reward and each update would rather add some stupid fucking haha-so-silly interaction rather than porn or pushing the story forward.

And as some other reviewers mentioned, the game design is intrinsically flawed. While at first it's novel and it does feel a bit like you're sharing a house as the game drags on constantly hunting for triggers around the house is a complete fucking chore.

An excellent game, thanks Zanith, the beautiful construction of the characters, their moods, their conversation, and the poetry all over the game is just superbly wonderful, The Elf development and trajectory within the game is astonishing and delicately beautiful, it is a masterpiece, there is not obscenity, while is a sandbox feels like reading a lovely and interesting novel, the music is just like a breeze. Please keep your creation at these highs

5 Stars because (as of a few months ago when I DLed it) I was actually a little emotionally crushed when I realized how heartless the succubus is. She is 100% geared towards bringing down the prison, with 0% care whether the MC is left stranded back on Earth afterwards. She constantly nudges him to take her to Earth. Despite the MC wanting to see other things cautiously, the only time she ever actually takes him anywhere is when he needs him to be her dimensional uber for things she wanted to do anyway. Realizing she's just the absolute worst person - it actually hurt my feelings. I barely even HAVE feelings, so... FIVE STARS all day.

(Well, 4.9 stars - the dwarf's slow-wittedness goes well beyond skepticism into the realm of sub-80 IQ stupidity but it isn't written that way.)

This is one of the best sandboxes on this website, it has a few flaws but it's strengths far outweigh the flaws. The game has an original main story with several smaller stories of each LI to support the main story. The main story follows the events of MC and a succubus stuck in a house and more LI joining them as the story progresses, while this does sound interesting the best part of the story are in the branching mini stories of each LI.

Story: 8/10
The story of the game is good enough and the mini stories are really good for most characters and absolutely trash for one character. Outside of the character which has a stupid story which makes the LI (Naomi) look like they have the maturity of a 10 year old who lost their role in a school play rest of the characters have compelling arcs and development over their stories. The stories serve as a way to make the transition of MC's relation with the LI's from platonic to sexual, which makes the stories slow burns and I personally enjoy it. Even if someone is not a huge fan of slow burn games they can still enjoy this game by skipping through story decisions as they are mostly for immersion and have little consequences.

Gameplay 8/10: The gameplay is standard sandbox style with no new things to note. It serves the story well enough and there is not much to complain about it. There is some grind to it but it is so little and spread out that you won't notice it. There is a "days" system in the game but I have not seen any consequences to skipping/wasting days yet so I don't know if it matters.

Renders 10/10: This game has top 5 renders on this website, they look like they were made in Koikatsu (correct me if I'm wrong) but they are top quality and most of them are well animated and looped so you can enjoy them while you let them run. The older LI's have more content than the newer ones but that is to be expected and I'm excited to see what the developer does for the new LI's. There is also a free gallery unlock for those who just want to see the renders.

Flaws :Now for the main complaint in this review and which I think is the only flaw in this game: You are forced to complete/experience every LI's route at some point or the other. You have agency in when you want to do their stories's but the main story and other LI's stories will eventually halt and you NEED to complete the other stories to progress the story of your favourite LI. While I understand why the developer has done this to make the story feel more interconnected, I wish there was a way to not engage with the LI's you don't like by giving certain responses in dialgoue, or if completely avoiding is not possible atleast let us skip major portions of it through dialogues.

Overall: 9.5/10
If I liked Naomi I would've given 10/10 but for godsake just add an option to remove her or make her use her brain for once.

Story is not original but it does the job very well to explain why people are here and also give space to develop the characters with their personnal stories. Animation is good, it is globally well done. Characters are interesting, I think some stories could be more profound but I am okay because one character is really well made. Just play it, it's worth your time.

This game was amazing, It takes a sec to figure out, long gameplay great animation/CGimages (Can't figure out if it's stolen from Honey Select but still well done) But the story... Is what kept me playing and not just ripping the images/videos. As always, wish there was more group play but I get it.