HTML - A Life Lived [v0.84 Public] [ZennyDarkstar]

Firstly let me say that I like the tags (Fetishes) of this game and I even like html games, so this review is not a matter of taste.
The UI is terrible. lots of pointless clicking. For the most part you have to check a bunch of things to know who is where.
The content is terrible. A bunch of pictures of pornstars with nothing exciting. The videos are even worse.
The story and the quest are not good at all.
Unbelievable amount of grind for very little reward.
Unfortunately I don't think this is one of those game that would improve over time, I think what will change is gonna be a bunch of photos of pornstars being added and more ridiculous quests. Don't waste your time.

Is there a guide for this hellish game?
It's really really confusing on what to do
Like where do I get more charisma??? what is the main storyline quest?? Why are there no hints on some stuff for example;
Trying to get through the pink building

The good:
- Literally nothing about this is good.

The Bad:
- The UI was made for 1024x768 CRT monitors and seems like it's from that era.
- over 2GB of of images with video recorded by a potato.
- Almost none of that is actual content.
- "Realistic" life simulator.

The Ugly:
- 2 hours into playing this and you're begging for just someone to flash you some boobs.
- Little to no content for being a 0.8x game with several "content" updates.
- The grind is fucking hell and an artificial time gate to what little content there is.

Overall:
Games are supposed to be fun. This is the literal antithesis of fun. This needs
to be taken out back, beat to death, shot in the head just to make sure it's dead, then encased in concrete so it never has the chance to come back alive after dumping it in the Mariana's Trench.

GRIND GRIND GRIND GRIND GRIND GRIND GRIND GRIND GRIND
Probably most dull game on f95zone. I spend a 3 hours grinding getting no content, than after manipulating with cheats a spending another 3 hours I still get almost nothing. By looking at image folder there is some softcore porn.
Don't waste your time on this trash

This game is, without exaggeration, a true masterpiece
This is coming from someone who is very critical
Writing: Very logical and engaging without unnecessary and boring dialogues
Story: A life! I mean, we don't just have a story, but a complete simulation
Logic: 100 out of 100! Every reaction has a logical reason, and we are not dealing with strange characters
Immersion: The above points, especially the logic, make you completely immersed in the story
Characters and Personalities: Everyone is different from each other, and they are all fascinating in their own way
Atmosphere: Excellent
Scenes: Excellent
User Interface: Excellent
In summary, the writing, logic, and other aspects of this game are so good that for the first time, I wanted to f*** a sissy in a game!

Grindiness: All negative comments are because of the grindiness, while they can eliminate the grindiness with cheat codes, although it's not recommended as it destroys the immersion and life simulation

I wish all games had the high logic of this game

This game is excellent and has significant potential.
The claims about it being grindy are incorrect. The game doesn’t feel grindy at all, especially for those who understand its mechanics and know how to play. However, for players unfamiliar with the mechanics, it might seem grindy.
The writing is very strong and makes the characters feel alive, giving them a unique sense of realism.
The models are diverse, with at least 80% of them being highly appealing.
The sexual scenes are chosen and placed in a very professional and thoughtful way, enhancing the sense of realism.
The atmosphere is both original and immersive.
The story is unique, focusing on relationships, and the sandbox environment offers diversity.
The game’s logic feels solid, and most of the characters are quite engaging.
As the review below mentioned, I hope we see a lot of content about sharing, infidelity, and cuckolding.

This game focuses more on gameplay than adult content, requiring effort to progress by increasing stats and advancing the plot. The game's foundation is solid, with varied characters and potential story changes based on playstyle. However, none of the character storylines are completed, which might make the effort feel unrewarding. Despite being unfinished, if updates remain frequent, the game has potential to become great.

Please focus more on netorare

v0.801

Though not the typical porn game where your character will be getting their dick wet in four clicks, the game is overall very well built, with a nice and simple UI, interesting characters and well written quests, with every new update furthering the quality of the game.

0.751 Version review

On the surface the game looks very tedious with almost no content ( if ppl just check npc folders and do not take into account that most of it is in the quest folder) and its definitely on the grindier side but I think that it has a potential since it has much better writing than your average porn game that's just all gifs and no story.

There are some inherit issues that I think could be easily fixed to make it feel better. Most of the reviews below heavily critics the game but do not offer any solutions so I have come with some that could help

1) Difficulty - First of all I would set the default difficulty to easy and renamed it to normal. I believe that there is a lot of ppl like me that went into the game didn't read the explanation of it properly and assumed that its for stat requirement and said to themselves that they do not want to play on easy mode but now that I know what it is for I would definitely turn that on and would have much better experience. I only found out what it is for when I explored the HTML file in notepad to get some clues on how to finish the quest. I would go so far to explain this in the intro quest just to make sure folks know what they are getting into.

2) Saves - since you have possible ''game breaking'' choices in game, there should be more then 3 save slots not to mention that we need LOAD button. I should not have to open a new game to load the save.

3) Money. A lot of content is hidden behind money requirement but for some reason the main thing that grants money in early game blocks a lot of progression. It takes 1h15m in game time which will sets the time right after the classes have started effectively blocking any quest that needs to be taken between 9-10am. I think intended time was 15m like any other conversation and that this is just a bug since there isn't really any conversation with mom during this to begin with.

4) Characters - While I like that you are going for a lot of characters to make the town look more lively and setting up the game for future, I do not think that we need 60 characters if barely 25 of them have some story. Either disable the interaction with them or remove them from the list of the characters so you have easier time to interact / find info on those that you should care about.

5) Bully system - Like the idea but the math behind it should be redone. It has too much RNG involved in its not worth . Either lower the score required or reduce the amount that the luck roll contributes in it. As it is now its better to just reload the game and avoid it. You should be able to do something if you actually win the fight which would make it worth investing into the stats affecting it.

6) Houses - As it is now you are able to enter house of anyone you have 15+ friendship with (if they have one). Which on one side is plus but it also unlocks the access to some conversations for characters that should not happened unless you progressed their stories. For example they refer to you as boyfriend or are nicer to you even if you are not that far in their quests.

7) Friendship gains - I think you should review some of the conversations with the NPC and change the numbers behind it. There is a quite a lot of conversations where they are straight up hostile to you which would imply that you should get -1 friendship (almost all bathroom scenes + being in someone's bedroom when you are not supposed to) but they give +1 instead.

To combat this to not slow the game progress too much I would remove the limit of +1 like every 2 hours to give +1 for each unique conversation that day.

7b) This could also be part of the difficulty redesign. If you want toggle's for difficulties I would rename them entirely:

Difficulty: Normal / Hard - affects amount of affection /xxx / xxx you can gain per day ( you add other thing as well like money stats or others)
Hints: No / Some / Full ( no hints are obvious . Some would be the red/ greens stats you have now and full hints is your current easy mode)

8) MC Name change -Obvious one. More Tech Savy players can already change this in HTML file so why not give the option to all or mention it how to do it to all if you are not ready to implement it.

9) VODS - Game could benefit from bit more videos(not all have to be 5mins long) for the more developed stories. There is more content in certain porn genres on your laptop then some characters have in their full stories which is weird.

Overall not a bad game. A lot of space for improvements on quality of life things which is why I can only give it 3/5 (unfortunately 3.5/5 is not an option) but will definitely come back to it if more changes are done and change the rating.

v0.65

I played this for 2 hours. Not a single sex scene happened in that time.

I cheated the money and stats, because the game is absurdly grindy for no good reason, and the controls are among the worst I've ever seen: clicking picture after picture, where half of the pictures look the same.

After not seeing anything worthy after so long, I checked the files and there isn't anything there: just a collection of softcore pictures and one showing a single breast.

I'm sorry for whomever can call this "a life lived", because it's anything but.

Don't waste your time here.

General Review
This is a Game more than it is Porn.... so the expectation here is that you have to put in effort to increase stats for progression with plot. It can feel grindy or not depending on what do you expect out of the game.

Pros: The game is pretty solid as far as foundation is concerned. The characters are varied and its interesting to follow the journeys of each of the characters depending on the playstyle you want and the storyline might change for the character.....

Cons: The Might I used is might... because of the nature of the game, none of the storylines have been completed for any of the characters, thus you can feel like the reward is not worth the effort as you might not get the satisfaction of the effort you put into increasing your stats or not.

Since this game is still in Progress and not yet done, as long as its not abandoned and the updates are frequent, I am positive that at the end of the day the game with its good system and vision would result in a great game with varying Fetishes for many different people. I just hope the promise of the game is delivered and the progress could be faster.

The review might change as the game gets closer to release either increase on decrease in rating so for now Its comfortably good.

While this game is obviously in progress and still being polished. It has a great foundation so far and ZennyDarkstar is extremely active on the forum constantly replying to the forum and is actively developing the game with plenty of updates. There is a huge cast of NPCs that have huge potential to be developed. Looking forward to the M/M content and also can't wait to see the creator continue to tweak stats and add more questlines.

No sex scene's, hours of grinding. The game consist of images & shorts, that dont involve actual sex. The closest you can get too it, is by watching porn on the laptop. I dont recommend anyone playing this to be honest

Review is for v0.55p
There is so much good, and so much bad about this game it makes it very difficult to rate accurately.
Overall the games vision and behind the scenes aspects appear to be stellar. The shear amount of things that you will be able to do by the end is going to be crazy.
Now for the bad. First off, the game feels REALLY empty right now. The characters are all their, but other than just speaking to them, there isn't anything to do with most of them. The quest txt and hints option should automatically go to easy when you start the game, if not you have very little idea what to do in the game. Maybe later, once things are fleshed out, it can be put back on hard, but there isn't enough to do right now.
Second, the game is exceptionally grindy right now. It appears that most of the sexy content doesn't start until the MC has Corruption +50, which can easily take 50+ in game days if you don't know what you are doing.
Third, the interface appears to be homebrewed, and it could use some work. The overall aspects of it work, but some QOL updates for it would be amazing. I'm constantly going to the wrong place because the buttons moved around on me when I went from one area to another. Framing buttons with different colors based on location, and if things changed, could help with this, or you could just overlay the location name on the button so you know exactly where you are going.
Lasty, something that is kind of tied into the first issue, I would love to see a more robust questing system, that implemented a slew of smaller and easier quests to increase the MC Corruption and other stats. There's already a couple of these throughout, but if most of the characters had some instead of just a couple, it would make the early game grind feel a lot better.
Overall, a pretty good start that could use some polish to become great, but a little too much grinding and not enough to do to fill in the down time really brings it down.

Well. It's... ok? As stated, there's a grind. The description describes it as 'hard', which, it isn't hard. It just takes a long time.

Which is fine, those sorts of games have their place and I often enjoy them. The real issue, I think, is that at the end of all that grind there ultimately really isn't all that much content. There's a huge big framework laid down right now, and a vast amount of work between you and content. So you put the time in to get there and you do and... not much is there, most characters are dead ends, It takes a bunch of mindless clicking to get what is there.

Idk. It could be good, and maybe with a few more months of work it will be. But right now it's not worth the effort. Grind needs to be rewarded, if you're going to implement it.

tl;dr, Grindy and boring.

It's a shame, I feel like if I had another 5 years of interest in me, this game might get to a point that I'd enjoy it, but it's just not there.

The basic gameplay is incredibly grindy (as has been pointed out multiple times) and uninspiring. Clicking through multiple screens (even with the shortcuts provided for school and the local shop) to get anywhere and popping back and forth between places.. it's just tedious and dull. There's nothing quite like grinding out the same picture/scene 15 times to get to a point where you can go inside someone's house and then be forced into content you might not enjoy so you can complete another quest that requires yet more grinding out... you get the picture.

I didn't find any of the content that I did manage to unlock particularly interesting and I don't care to play it any further to find out if I was wrong as I've already wasted enough of my life.

My suggestion : Come back in 5 years.

Sad to say the grind its too much.
Story wise i cant get to see much.
Tried a phew times but some how i manage to mess up and didn't get to any good parts if there are any.
Being unable to cheat a little stats and money to make the game run faster the grind is just too much clicking and nothing more.

The game in its current state is worth 1 star on my review list.

So many bugs, missing quest items, missions that have very little information, finding the right time/day is tiresome, Grind is insane. I like the idea / design, but it is just too much hassle to play.

The game seems optimised for an old 15 inch TFT monitor and as such just presents VERY poorly.

The interface is not intuitive at all with far too many rooms and clicking to get to any destination and no real logic behind why there is so much clutter. I can JUST about look past that as the premise has promise.....

BUT the saves are stored in browser cache!!! Seriously? Why is there no option to save to local file? This is billy basics for HTML based games and completely unforgiveable - I'm also pretty bitter about losing 2 hours of play through because my browser updated and cleared the cache when it done so. This is the one immediate thing you can do to significantly improve your game and give anyone a chance at recommending it, until then this is firmly on the avoid at all costs list.

I like the idea and I can guess at what the dev wants to do, the problem is there is no content and we can't even be sure if a game loop will ever exist.

It's probably easier to work on putting in tons of rooms/cells or whatever than to actually write dialogue and put in content/scenes. But having things take many clicks and areas be empty save a lone picture that does nothing doesn't a game make.

There are enough rooms, there are enough characters, the stats are defined. Now start putting in actual content. I would even say hide most of the areas until you can fill them. Consider it more a headstart to the future than actual content today. If you don't have a dialogue tree and conversation for a character, then they aren't ready to be in the game. if a place doesn't have things to do, it's not ready to be in the game. If you're not sure what your gameplay loop is, then you're not actually ready for an 0.2 release let alone 0.45.

Start small and then add, don't start huge and empty, because you run into the problem of not adding anything or it always looking and feeling that it lacks content and progress, which will drive away players.

Try to appeal to players to want to play your game because it's fun, rather than trying to tell players they need to play your game to prove how smart they are to you. Especially since the player's definition of intelligence is unlikely to be randomly clicking around to find some random trigger.