VN - Ren'Py - A Wife's Life [v0.7.5] [Kerosine_NTR]

* Reviewing version 0.15 *

Summary: I don't hate the game, but I can't quite say I like it. I will keep playing for a few more updates to see if my opinion goes up or down.

The Good:

• The writing is clean English. No major grammatical or translation errors to distract from the story.
• There are a couple of hints that the story may develop in one or more unexpected directions.

The Meh:

• The media clips are consistent quality, though the presence of watermarks and logos from the sites where they originated detract from the overall effect.
• The interface is interesting in conception---a laptop and a smart phone. It is definitely much better executed than a lot of the games that attempt something similar. That said, it is extremely limiting when it comes to storytelling. Especially for a married couple who are living in the same household. Some of this is also included below.
• The story is a combination of typical tropes: 1. Married couple moves to a new town without any money. 2. Husband can't find a job to support them, so wife "has" to work even though they planned for her to be some kind of tradwife homemaker. 3. Black men ensue.
• Taking the above into account, the story is generally executed well, with a couple of exceptions. See below.

The Bad:

• The MC is definitely a racist. As soon as he finds out his wife is working near "African migrants" he starts thinking all sorts of weird "You know how they are" type of nonsense.
• Also, I think I remember some references that imply this takes place in New York, but there's a "camp" for "African migrants." That's not how geography works. Or U.S. immigration law. Very weird premise.
• No choices at all. It's basically click here, click there to progress the story. It's not always clear where to click.
• A lot of the media appears as thumbnails in text messages. You are supposed to be able to click on it to enlarge it, but this doesn't work well. If you click around within the image, you might be able to find the exact spot that works, but this is definitely a problem with the image mapping.
• Why the hell is a wife texting her husband to wake him up right after she leaves the house rather than just physically waking him up 2 minutes earlier, before she left? Because the interface demands it. If they are communicating by phone, they aren't communicating. Not great.

This is a really good game, it has been a long time since i have had played a good ntr real porn game and when i played your game i was pretty impressed, the characters are well written the wife is hot, the interface of the laptop and mobile is really good and pleases keep porn videos with sounds in next update and i hope you don't abandon this game and keep on developing

Updating for v.0.2.0

Good news: No more jarring time skips in the new content.
The porn is still pretty good and I like the BNWO and hypnosis/drugs angle.
The intro hasn't changed and so my earlier criticism about it still stands.

I think I understand the goal the author is aiming at though: Make you think the wife cheated when she really hasn't (yet).

Unfortunately, this single goal leads to a bunch of inconsistencies in the story. Unnecessary innuendos (sometimes accidental sometimes not), unnecessary secrets, the MC jumping to conclusions for no god reason, the MC suddenly over-trusting his wife for no good reason, a general lack of communication between the MC and the wife, the wife being super inconsistent in how she feels about her job, apps suddenly failing, messages deleted just in time for no reason... The list goes on.
While it's a nice tension builder, I hope this gimmick will stop in the next version as I think it already has overstayed its welcome.

It will have to change when the wife starts actually cheating anyway, unless the author want to hide that from the player, which would be very disappointing.

All in all, I'll give it a third star since the author did steer the project in a better direction.

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As much as I want to love this game, the writing makes so little sense that I've been wanting to quit before the main story even starts. I've pushed myself further in order to write this review and see if I can just ignore the setup once the main part (phone hacking) actually starts. Unfortunately, this is also where current version (v0.1.0) ends.

Let me summarize the first few days of the game to explain what turned me off so much and see if that would break your suspension of disbelief.

First off, the MC is looking for a job. After just one day of failing, he is already in desperation mode. Everyone around him is asking constantly if he found something like it is a huge failing not to find a job immediately. After just 5 days of not finding anything, he settles for a dead end job outside of his skillset where, of course, the boss is an ass.

More important to the plot, during the same period of time, the wife is offered a new job on day 1, takes it on day 2 and leaves the MC totally in the dark as to what the job is.
She doesn't even stay vague or gives a reason or event tells she can't talk about it. She just chooses to not tell ( "I'll tell you later" ) every time the MC asks and he just drops it. She even acts annoyed about getting asked about it after a while.

Keep in mind that the couple lives together and thus spends their evening together where they would have virtually infinite time to talk about that.
But it never happens, because the evenings just are not in the game. The author apparently didn't want to deal with that so it's just cut from the script completely. So are other moments that would be inconvenient to the plot.

A particularly jarring example to show my point:
After the MC started at his shitty job, his wife invites him to the restaurant that evening.
There's this whole buildup where she tells him she even bought a $500 dress for the occasion (because she apparently makes bank, and once again she brings up her job and then refuses to say anything about it).
The MC is not very comfortable about the situation and wonders if she will talk about her job after the date. You are made to look forwards to that scene.
Except, the next screen is the MC waking up at home the next morning. No mention of the date, how it went, what happened, nothing.

With that much secrecy about her job, you'd guess it would be a very taboo or shameful job. It is not. It's just helping migrants. Now, you're playing a ntr porn game so you can guess what that will entail, but as far as the MC is concerned, there is no reason to suspect anything sexual happening at her job yet (it is even confirmed later that nothing has happened yet).
Despite that, the MC reacts like this is the worst thing ever and that he must get her to stop working there.
Like, what the fuck even ?

How am I supposed to force myself to believe those are real characters in a relationship? The timeline is all over the place, the characters act like childish morons when they are not acting like puppets with strings the size of telephone poles. Why does the wife hide her job and delete all her messages? She has no reason to be embarrassed about it, but the script requires mystery so she follows it.

An additional thing I noticed is the time/date displayed on the phone are not in any way related to the time in game, they are your date and time in real life. Another way the game breaks immersion.

Now on the bright side, some images and videos in the game are really hot and if the NTR is well done in the future it might be enough to just forget the terrible intro.
The plot is not bad and could work well if it was written in a more credible fashion. So a full rewrite of the intro while keeping the broad lines of the plot could also work.
The UI is also pretty clean and the Phone + PC display making it a wide screen format game makes it way more comfortable to look at than the portrait format these games usually have.

In conclusion, all is not lost with this game but it will require a lot of work if the author wants to make it enjoyable.

It's too early to talk about the content that is in the game, but I like where the author is trying to lead it.

Among the advantages of the game I can highlight a nice design, a clear interface, and no grind. There is also a small hint on what you need to do in the game at the moment, in case you skip the dialogues.

Among the minuses, I would highlight a large amount of text and a small amount of graphic content.

I give the game a 5 with the hope that the next update will have more videos and pictures

Interesting concept with a lot of potential but barely any content as of now. Check back in a few months and hopefully there will be enough content to consider this a game instead of a 5-minute demo.

Game offers just about nothing in its current form.

When these "text message" games first came out, it was a neat concept. However... unless the Dev deviates from what others have done, it's going to become a ridiculous mouse clicking fest. Having to click for every line in a text conversation... I just can't describe how tedious it already is. It'll only get worse when more characters are introduced into the story.

Speaking of... the story... good grief.

*spoiler alert?*

The opening is utterly ridiculous. I can only hope the Dev is purposely making the story absurd for some kind of weird comedic slant. The wife getting a job and refusing to tell the husband what it is for days, and the husband keeps letting it go until he gets the friend of a friend to help him hack his wife's phone. I can go on and on, but so far v0.1.0, the Dev doesn't even seem to be trying.

I'm a big fan of the NTR genre, so this isn't me hating on an NTR game. As a fan of the genre, I might check back on this a year down the road. If it lasts that long, perhaps the Dev will have made improvements, and I'll update the review. Right now, don't waste your time.

It's similar to A Wife's Phone, but not a bad thing. Despite what people say, the dialogue is well-written, and it's a solid foundation for more to come. With what's here there's a lot to look forward to in the upcoming updates. Should give this a chance of this sort of stuff is your thing.

Great UI, very good setting for an NTR game.
Writting is ok.

Little negatives for me is that the MC's internal dialogue are a bit whiny. Just complaining about whatever happens. But it's the first content of release so the sample is small.

Personally not a fan of the ''sexy mom'' character. I see it in many games, hope she wont play a big part. Just not a fan of a mother or any family member in the context of a porn game, but thats personal taste. In any case I hope the focus will be kept on the wife.

Anyway it's a promising game, look foward to future updates

Extremely trivial story, that defeat any logic.
Plot is quite clear, and in the first release is already been set up.

The positive of the game, is the UI, very intuitive, very simple to navigate and do not offer any grindy dynamic.

What can I say, it might no be an unforgettable game, but it can entertain.

Real challenge here... the game is not wankable.. hardly you can have a wank on this 3 seconds animations... Wankability is a parameter that must be considered in the adult games