Ren'Py - Absolute Domination: Rework [v0.2] [RudeStudio]

Story is incoherent and substandard.

Graphics are absolutely terrible, and that's with the supposed "rework" and to top that off the game size is a staggering 7GB.

Gameplay is the overdone sandbox style so it feels like a constant jumping through hurdles to do even the simplest things.

Avoid like the plague.

The main issue with this game lies in the gameplay loop, as is often the fact with many sandbox games. There's a few too many systems, windows, locations to go through manually that are way too annoying. Furthermore, the game suffers from a thing that is so incredibly prevalent in games like these that starting from this review I will refer to it as the "iterative development syndrome". The game has a phone system where the phone tells you exactly where you need to go to progress the overall plot. This is obviously done in a way that the developer can add events to the game and pump out new versions, and the goals get added to the phone on the next batch - so the phone pops out the woodwork with say, 6 events, and after completing all 6 of them you're met with another 6, and so forth. This happens because of the iterative development cycle, of course, where we push out new versions with X events before moving forward. This however creates for a very distinct "stop-and-go" feeling in the progression and overall feeling of the game, as it is CLEAR to the reader/player that things were added/made in "batch", and it makes the game sorely lack fluidity.

Other than that, at one point fairly early in the game, I was made to raise a characters' love meter to 50%, and it took me around 3 to 4 in-game days of this exact gameplay loop:

Click Map -> Click Market -> Click Shop -> Click on Flowers * 5 -> Click red X to close shop -> Click Map -> Click School -> Click on Char Portrait -> Click on gift button -> Click on flowers -> Go through dialogue -> Go back to gift button and repeat this 4 more times -> Leave -> Skip time twice -> Go to library -> Click char portrait -> Click the Teach option to gain 50 -> Click Map -> Click Home -> Click the movement button -> Click My Room -> Click Sleep.

Repeat 3-4 times.

Do you see how insanely annoying this is? Can you look at this and genuinely say something good about this at all? No. You can't. It's boring as fuck.

To the games' merit, the main story is actually kinda interesting! I like the character models and the overall plot progression (given there's not a lot of agency of where the story is going being given to the player but that's kind of a non-issue to me), the english quality isn't perfect but it isn't bad and it is understandable - albeit at one moment, I hilariously clicked "Cowgirl" on a scene and was met with a Doggystyle scene instead so there's that. There is some music, but nothing I can recall that is too outstanding or catchy; nonetheless, it is a definite plus that it's even in the game at all.

Realistically I should be giving this a ~2.5, that I would usually round down to a 2. However, I feel like this game shows a decent amount of promise and care from the developer, and I like the overall theme enough to look past the annoyances of the gameplay loop to actually enjoy some of the storytelling aspects of this. I'm putting faith in the developer and placing this at 3 instead; despite everything, I did enjoy myself, and that's the point of games.

This is a great game and needs some development as it's short but in all honesty, it's what you get from the title and the storyline I enjoyed it. There are a few grammar and English problems but nothing too big. The game needs development to make it easier to not skip scenes for instance the cat scene can have me skip all the Bomi scenes and other girls scenes and that should instead be a cheat button if needed. Other than that the game is not bad. As others discussed this game says sandbox but it isn't so that could be added as well.

I was bit intrigued by this game, since the models are cute and the premise could be interesting, but the implementation leaves so much to be desired that I can't recommend it. First, the game is tagged 'sandbox', but if you don't follow a specific linear progression, you run into some dead-ends. The description of the plot summary describes the basic progression you have to follow, and depending on where you diverge from that progression, things either never start happening, or things that started to work just break. The obvious solution is to change the game from sandbox mode to linear, but if the dev doesn't want to do that, they should put in the effort to make every choice lead to some kind of progression, or change the various dead-ends into some sort of game over.

Update after Rework [v0.3]
The updated navigation controls make it much easier to move around, and the clarity of the story hints make it easier to follow. The pacing of the story is still slower than I think is needed, and making money too difficult. The other difficulty I see is that the love points of the girls seem inconsequential in what happens with them. The story is quite linear until chapter 14 or 15 when the title becomes much clearer. Even after that it continues to be linear for several days after. It might be better to pare the early linear part of the story down to make the progression to meaningful decision-making less painful.

Just pointless boring grinding for stats and no clear direction of the game - it is just one of those repetitive sandbox grinding games. For instance to end each day you have to go through multiple screens to get to the bedroom and than select sleep.

After it was first released, I initially checked this game out and noticed the negative reviews. In order to gather more information, I read through several of the threads. I decided to give it some time since it required alot of improvements and waited for the next update to see if any changes had been made.Getting into the game now the story seemed promising,but from my first 5 minutes playing it is evident that this game lacks quality with odd looking character models, inconsistent names, and subpar grammar,though i will give the grammar a pass since the dev is not a native english speaker,doesnt excuse them from not finding someone who can translate the game properly since most of the time translators online arent the best.Anyways the developer places you in the storyline and assumes you will instinctively understand where to go. There are countless places where nothing can be done at the moment, and you have to figure out which place to go to in order to encounter an event to move the story along. I was playing for around 4 days straight ingame, doing the same activities repeatedly, which is not a positive experience. The dev should have made this game linear and giving us players the option to choose when interacting with certain characters instead we get this game which executes the sandbox open world point and click poorly, resulting in me wasting my time trying to figure out where to go. It has the potential to be an okay game, but based on my experience, the developer truly needs to reconsider if they desire their game to go in this direction. The dev could remove or lock out the places we can't go yet, instead of making us guess where to go. This would allow us to continue the story without unnecessary clicking through countless areas and maybe add a simple task or quest system so we don't get lost. Until then, this is one of the lousiest games I've played in a long time.

Well, this is one of the worse thing available out there.

The renders are substandards, there's no story or lore to speak off.

Navigating is painful difficult, with absolutely no direction on where to go, or what to do.

You can earn money, but there's no inventory, or even a way to check how much you've got.

The spelling and grammar is bordering on being atrocious as well.

Don't bother with this, it is going nowhere.

Has potential but there is still a bunch of bugs, a lack of content, and some clarity issues.
The good is that there is a decent story with the willingness to actually make you feel the consequences for your actions (forced by the story or not), the bad is as previously mentioned.

With more content, better clarity, and no seriously major bugs (minor ones are fine) this could be a 4, or 4.5 if the quality of the story and characters was improved a little bit as well. There is some clear potential in the story here, it just needs polishing.

Still very short and some weird grammar(but that’s just me cause I’m full on Deep South American lol) but I enjoy it a lot and the developer is dedicated to making it better and taking everyone’s opinions/criticisms in stride and working to improve it.
so far the story is intriguing me and pretty good, especially looking forward to seeing some nice stuff with Daisy(I think that’s her name, the sexy cop) Can’t wait to see more.

Sad to say, as fellow perverts have observed, the game is unplayable in its current state. A decent-sized file drew me in but until there is more content and in particular text in a language more closely resembling English, it's a washout.

This should be 0.1 or 0.0.1, literally no content yet from what I can tell. You need more hints on what to do, and learn to use google translate properly please, there are many words that are incorrect and honestly, there's no point in adding in so many paths when all of them say "empty. will add stuff here",

Absolute Domination is an absolute waste of time.

I honestly don't think that the story content in the overview is in the game yet. For that matter, I don't believe that anything is in the game yet. The only thing you can do that I have found is walking into the bathroom and spy on the mc's mom, get rejected in her bedroom when you ask to sleep with her, go to class, and get your ass kicked in the hallway. That is it.

I don't think I will ever understand how some people got this weird idea that lazy low-effort work will get them success.

English translation is absolutetly terrible. I'm not sure at what point you start getting 'a power' but I quickly decided I could not care less after going to school for a week or two and just wandering hoping to trigger random events