Ren'Py - Another Chance [v1.47] [TimeWizardStudios]

This VN had many good things going for it. Nice art, funny dialogue and hot characters ( esp the Homeroom teacher). But then as I went further, my interest started to drop.
First things first, one major drawback is the endless inner monologue the MC has. He goes on and on whenever he sees a girl, instead of actually talking to her. No wonder he is/was a loser.
Now the summary is that MC is a loser, lost everything in his life, but then gets taken back in time to relive his high school days. So obviously you as a player think that this time MC will act more confidant, be smart and turn around his life.
And it does show the same at the start at least. In one scene MC stands up to this cheerleader bully and it makes you think that as the game progresses, there will be more of this where MC will have a spine.
But nooooooo! That was just fake bravado to impress some girl. As soon as he is alone he goes back to his loser ways. And by loser ways i mean that the first chance he gets, he goes straight into simping for the cheerleader and doing her bidding.
Idiot even sneaks into a party hosted by the bully, locked up in a box and ends up licking and kissing feet . Comes back home and thinks to himself that what an awesome party.
After that scene, i closed the game and shift+delete. I have no patience or time to play simp/loser simulators. It was pretty clear by now that MC will continue to simp for the cheerleader and will keep on obeying her till his spine is so flexible that he can blow himself.

i really had high hopes when i started playing this, but then another game which fell victim to Devs who for whatever reason love to create loser simulator VN's

Ok, I just finished playing the game, at least till the current version (v.1.34) and it's good but suffers the same problems a lot of other sandbox games have. Let's start:

1. Story
The story is nothing new, MC is a loser in his late 20s, his family disowned him, he's working a shitty 9 to 5 job and is reminisced about old times. After some events, he wakes up the next morning and got Another Chance at life. What makes the story different is that you feel the consequences of our meddling with the timeline from the very start. Weird artifacts, certain people behave differently, some objects are in different places, and mystical creatures hiding in the vents. Some scenes even have a pretty creepy outcome if you make the wrong (or right ?) decisions. All in all the game took an already existing concept and polished it up, so thumbs up for that

2. Characters
The characters look gorgeous, you get a lot of different "flavors" body and personality wise, which I always appreciate, the overall 2d style is very pleasant and something else than the usual Daz models (which I also like, if done right). Even tho some characters felt a bit too cliché, I think it adds some kind of character to the game, like an old teen sex comedy movie from the late 90s.

3. Gameplay
Now we get to my biggest problems with this game, the overall sandbox part.
Listen, I personally enjoy a good sandbox game, but It's so hard to get it right without making it repetitive, feel empty or cause some kind of quest breakage, which happened to me. When I started playing this game, I just roamed around, collected some stuff, and played some quests, but noticed pretty fast that the side quest are not bound to the progress of the main quest, which meant that you would unlock stuff way before getting to that part in the main quest. For example, I got the scene where you get the nurse to crawl through the vents hours before I even got the blackmail picture, so a lot of options were grayed out in my play-trough. I had sex with Isabelle and then in the main story, the MC talks about how Isabelle would never look at him this way and how he's out of her league, which was confusing as hell. Maybe it would be better if you can't continue certain side quests until you got further in the main quest, which is already implemented in some quests, which confused me a lot. The other part is that you have to rely on the quest button a lot, because otherwise you would roam around and instead of making some progress, you would only start more side quests in your search for answers or items.
That's the overall reason why sandbox games are so incredibly hard to get right

Last Words
even tho I had a lot of annoyances while playing the game, I still think it has a lot of potential
I'm gonna check out the game when it's finished, and maybe the quest problems are polished out by then. I only wish the best to the dev/devs


TDU.

I do not know what everyone is snortingto give this game 5-stars, because I simply don't find anything that worth of. The game is stalling with boring fetch quests and walls of text doing menial shit events that somehow develop the relationship you have with someone. The game is linear, not much of a "sandbox" as the tag suggests.

The artstyle is amateur at best, with severe lack of perspective in every scene. Scenes themselves have characters pose in statue-like forms barely conveying any energy or movement but rather read that energy through text, the whole point of a visual novel is to use the best of both aspects writing and visuals. Moving on the the characters themselves, we have different flavours of the exact same dish, but with different haircut and hair/eye colour, with extra seasoning the clothes, boring interpretations of characters.

The music will make you blow your brains out after a while so I suggest puting something you'd listen to while performing the most menial tasks imaginable by a game that doesn't respect your time.

Absolutely excellent.
Game is extremely polished compared to the vast majority of releases.

I do agree with other reviews that there is too much grind and the quest system is unnecessary complex, it gets so complex that even the ingame help pointing you to the exact places to click is unhelpful at times.

Regardless of the issues, the girls, story, and scenes are all top tier and worth the playthrough. It doesn't take too long to get to scenes if you use the ingame guide. Recommend saving often though as some choices will softlock out of content.

I'd rate the soft and hardlocking with no prior warning or ways to avoid as the only real issue with the game. Expect to be constantly save scumming and rolling back.

The strength of the rest of the game still warrants 5 stars, but if the devs could clean up the progression system and reduce grind this would easily be top 10 from the entire catalogue on the site. Too often you are locked out of scenes due to simply doing quests out of order, with no indication that you need a prior quest completed (nurse is the worst for this, and also the best character for me).

[V1.33]
An engaging story with lovable characters that left me invested to its future development. Ero content CGs are great, but they are not common.

Story:
The premise is similar to an anime titled Re:Life. Loser NEET failure wakes up and restarts his life at his last year of high school and proceeds to do better. Not an entirely new idea, but it's executed well. The writing is great. Witty, funny, and can be serious when it needs to. It actually surprised me when I first tried the game. Perfect in my book, but I don't really read a lot, so I'm not a very good judge. Progression is a tiny bit slow, but I guess that's a consequence of putting this many heroines in a game. Overall, excellent especially for an erogame.

Gameplay:
Lacking for a game you play for fun, but great for a game you read. It's more of a visual novel with some point and click elements. I like it though. It keeps me engaged and it is a good way to feel more immersed in the world. It also has some cute mini-games. Nothing special or fun, but it's a nice touch still. There's also a quest guide that holds your hand to the answers if you don't want to think like me. There are also some nice mini events that could come from the item interactions, so the inventory system isn't useless. The choices when it comes to the story also matter a lot which is always good and makes it more immersing. The stat system feels a bit tedious at the moment, but the love and lust stats for the girls are nice because you can feel the effects of how you treat the girls better. Overall, great mechanics for a visual novel.

Characters:
Amazing. Maybe it's because I fall in love easily, but I had a hard time picking a favorite girl all throughout my gameplay. Even with the amount of heroines it has, it managed to write and define them well. Each of them has a different approach to being romanced, and their personalities are lovable and diverse. I think that even if you're picky, you'll find a girl you like. You want to romance your sister that you have cute sibling banter with? What about a sadist? A masochist? A sporty girl? Your mother? They're all here. Some more than others because some of the girls are less important than others as of now.

One problem I have is how many the heroines are though. I love them, but I feel like focusing on one girl is impossible as of now because there just isn't enough screentime and content for each of the girls individually. Overall, girls cute and nice (except Kate).

Art/Ero content:
Great and unique. If you like how the girls look in the cover, then you'll probably be like it more in-game. The CGs are nicely done, and the characters have several cute expressive sprites. The ones with their tongue out are especially cute. The character designs are great! Expressive, down to what underwear they have. The designs are good enough that it makes me like the character I hate a little bit. The game also offers x-ray anytime anywhere in-game if you want to keep yourself horny. It works with the CGs too! Kinks in the game are not plentiful, but it's not why I stayed and played this game anyway. In short, very good.

Extras
-Bugs. The game has some bugs where an exception is raised, but you can just click ignore, so it's not game-breaking. Still a bit annoying though.
-Sound design. I mostly played muted, but I heard nothing specially good or bad when I left it on.


It's nice to see passionate devs creating a wonderful project. Can't wait to see where this game goes in the future.

One of my favorite game so far... And I've played a lot ! Engaging story, deep characters, and so much content ! Ok I've read a lot of reviews pointing the lack of H scenes, and that you have to grind to get them. Wow guys ! I don't know how is your life running, but from my side, I don't have sex with a girl 5 mins after meeting her ! If that's your case, lucky you !

This is really a great game, on the artistic side first, graphically speaking this is something you will not see elsewhere, unique genre and I really dig in it. Then, each character has its own background but the creators manage to make all this world fluent. Well done !

Definately a 5/5 and waiting for the next update ! Was so glad that our Lindsey is still alive...

Last but not least... For those complaining that they don't know what to do and need a walkthrough... Wow are you serious ? No you will not get all achievements in one row, this is where the replayability stands ! If you're an asshole and like bitches like Kate, then it will turn the game in a different way that if you chose to stand on Isabelle side. You don't like that ? Many harem games are available here, just go grab one but please don't blame the authors for that, it's just your problem....

I think people are being a bit too harsh on this game.
Yes, scenes can take a long time to find and be slightly unclear as to how to turn them sexual. But all of them are available to replay, and you can open command console to input cheats so that balances it out for me. There is also a HINT system in the game that basically walk you through the quests.
I can very easily see this becoming a 5 star game. The sexual content is a little anemic, as to be expected from an in-development project. And .
I quite like this quaint little game, and I especially appreciate that some of the characters have more realistic proportions than women in these types of games tend to have. I look forward to raising my score to a 5 when it reaches completion.

- all the content is behind some sort easily missable interactions that you don't know about and con't comeback to
- what content there is is RARE: 1 scene in 5 hours is my stat
- it's just grind grind grind: go there talk that
- don't waste your time

This is one of the best games I played. Though the way they did my fav char is def pissing me off. I sure do hope they make a way to save her as I did literally everything I could to do so. Currently I have a love hate relationship with this game. Keep the best girl around and let me save her.

Amazing.

Not for everyone, but nothing ever is... almost all the negative reviews aren't about the game at all. Instead, they are about people's personal preferences. Like complaining that a shooter isn't a city builder, or that a puzzle game isn't an RPG. The world would be a boring place if every game was exactly the same.

In any event, this is a fantastic puzzle game. The writing is brilliant, clean, and clever. Every single interactive item has flavor text. The in game clues are fantastic, as they are often word games. The sort of clues where when you finally figure something out you go "Ah, of course! Well played."

Yes, I have been stumped many times, which is a good thing. I appreciate the complication. Every scene has multiple conversation options, with all of them having something to offer. Constantly shedding more light on the story and characters.

It is a rarity to see a game so well written, and so polished. I am not sure if I have ever seen a single typo or misused word (misused on accident). The references are often very clever, and I am sure lots of them go way over people's heads (mine included at times).

All the characters are interesting. The situations are fun.

If you don't want to play a puzzle game then go play something you do want to play, and leave this fantastic puzzle to those of us that do enjoy a well written and clever game. And, yes, it is a game. You have to actual play it, unlike the standard visual novel that are a dime a dozen.

I played an earlier version a few years ago, and thought it was quite ambitious. I came back to revisit it this week, and I am so glad I did. It is clearly moving forward well and maintaing an extremely high quality.

So few games are this well constructed. Bravo.

I have to say this game is one of the worst I've ever played. It's been out how long and there's barely any "adult" stuff. Let alone the h-scenes that are in the game are way too short. Talk about a boring blue-balling grindfest. Plus on top of all the crazy women in the story, you have a MC that at times is completely spineless wimp. Seems like the whole game is a bait and switch from the screenshots that are shown, but never see them in the game. Do the love and lust levels have to be at 100 before anything good actually happens? I played this game a couple of years ago and never could get into it. I understand if the dev wants a slow burn building up the relationships of all the LI's, but this game moves slower than a glacier. Plus all the filler mini games just to get more people to play the game. To be honest, at this point the dev just needs to finish the game at it's current spot, or just completely abandon it. It will take a miracle to make it an actual playable game.

sorry, can't back this game for one reason only - the bait and switch. basically you fell in love with one of the girls and wanna bang her so you grind the hell out of her story line (which is pretty long and twisted and more than often absurd with choices locking you out of various endings), which i'll call the bait, only to finally get into that girl's pants and realize the naked girl in the lewd scenes (which are far in between because of the absurd grind) has nothing to do with the girl you were grinding for, which i'll call the switch. it's a RTX ON / RTX OFF kinda situation. The girls in the story, clothed, are sexy and their tease make your imagination go wild, true RTX ON situation, and when you get to the action part and take their clothes off, it's a RTX OFF situation, a low poly, low res wannabe sketch of the girl you were rooting for. maybe there's a graphic designer for the story and another low skilled graphic designer for lewd scenes, or worse yet, there's 2 graphic designer and they both work on story art while the coder/dev said f*** it, i'm gonna save some money and draw the lewd scene girls myself and yeah, that's how we got in this situation.
tl;dr: grindy game, great sexy and varied characters, good teasing, kinda crazy story and setup, insane grind, terrible letdown when after the long grind you get a naked low res stick man version of the formerly clothed girl.

Fantastic. Loved the picture, volume, and especially the story.
Characters are charming, too.
It would be better if there's movement or voice.
Looking forward to check some new updates.
Thanks for the maker of this game!

Firts of all, I really do like core mechanics and charecters in this game. But it's still raw IMO. At the same time there's significant improvment in a new content. Hope this game ain't gonna be abadoned and at release the game gonna be more attractive in a graphic aspects like an animations and etc. Oh, there's also a low optimization in gallery, hope this gonna be fixed.

Not enough action, too much empty dialogs. Pretty good at the start, but fallback pretty fast, and gets extremely boring. Good idea behind the game, however poor execution. I think that whole 'dating' thing could be done better.

Man, this game was so close. It has the framework of a good game, but it just keeps falling on its face. There's too many problems and not enough payoff. I'd pass on this unless you really like the artwork, are desperate for something to play, and have a lot of time to waste.

-Fully 2D game with very poor performance on low-end hardware.
-2 to 4 frame "animations"
-Tedious. A couple of quests requires you to repeat the exact same task 3,4,7 times. Also, close to 6 hours in and I've only unlocked 3 or 4 sex scenes and another 3 or 4 nude scenes. No vaginal sex yet. Most of the scenes are with 1 character.
-Dialog isn't bad, but it isn't great. At times there's an excessive amount.
-Most of the quests are totally counter-intuitive. You'd never figure it out on your own. Fortunately there's a help system, but instead of hints, the dev opted to just tell you exactly what to do. Still, kind of defeats the purpose of playing a game.

+Artwork is pretty good, it certainly grew on me.
+It's an actual game, not just a visual novel.
+There is some degree of replayability supposedly. Decisions apparently affect the game.

I'm not much of a story guy (that's my roommate's expertise.) Though I do appreciate some decent gameplay.
So this rating (like my others) will be mostly on fapability:
Artwork : Gorgeous
Characters : Love that they're not all carbon copies of each other.
Animation : Pretty basic, still good.
Scenes : I haven't gotten to them all, but so far fantastic.
Fappable: Oh hell yes.
Overall : a well earned 5/5, I hope to see more updates!

There's a lot to like here. Good art, interesting characters, engaging-enough story.

If there's something bad to be said about it it's that the gameplay loop is way too hint-dependent in order to make progress.

(Version Reviewed: v1.29)

Another Chance has the fun premise of a man who has wasted his life getting a second chance to improve it. The story follows him trying to right the wrongs of the past and turn himself from an unlikable loser to a respectable dude. The music is irritating cus there is only one song played on a loop. The art may be one of the best among 2D games. Hand drawn and all the LIs look uniquely good. There aren't many lewds, but it is somewhat of a good thing as it allowed to flesh out the relationship between our MC and all the LIs.

Overall - 8/10 is a fair rating. The devs release an update every month with branching paths that can be played without starting a new save. The game is pretty player friendly due to that. I would recommend this game.

WARNING Before you spend/waste time on this game, this game cannot give you enough sexual arousal for masturbation)


Evaluation based on non-pornographic games would be 4 stars, but the promotional images of this game almost exhaust all its pornographic scenes. If this is not a pornographic game, then it is deceptive.

++Great art.
++Well-designed characters with detailed characterization.
++the main character has the greatest way to make money in renpy games. A lot of games that don't have an important economic system should learn from this one, instead of putting boring grind time skipping jobs.
+Engaging plot and well-written text.

-UI design has minor issues, with unnecessary animations for sliding options. Two exploration modes are redundant.
-While the writing is good, there is too much unnecessary chatter. Idle talk is like an appetizer and should be used sparingly.
-Too few images for the pornographic scenes. The game tries to use language to describe different actions in pornographic scenes, which is not a good idea.(since the art is only 32%, this might be improved during future updates)
-Too few pornographic scenes. As mentioned before, a good pornographic game combines many pornographic scenes with an engaging plot, like cookies with water. This game has too many cookies and too little water.
-Sandbox design and quest system are poorly executed. In a game with a lack of gameplay itself, the branching quest system often leads to repetitive time-wasting for players who do not follow guides, which is very boring. Why not utilize the ability to time travel and allow players to switch choices for a completed quest without wasting time on repetitive actions?


Overall evaluation: A waste of excellent writing and character development. The initially enjoyable detailed writing becomes quickly tedious due to a lack of meaningful rewards. Many quests do not provide motivation for players. I am not sure how those who view it purely as a visual novel would react, but as someone who saw the promotion and expected a pornographic game, I am disappointed. Its like a fancy chocolate box without chocolate. It should be version 0.12, not 1.29