VN - HTML - Back to Freedom [v0.32] [Bald Games]

One of the best games / VNs around. Storyline has a bit of everything and all options can get really complex. I tend to cheat on these games but this one is really worth it to go over and over discovering new paths. Besides of good quality of writing, engagement and complexity, it's not grindy but with enough difficulty to find different scenes/storylines.
Last but not least, dev is really engaged in the community and has very regular feedback on anything. Keep it up!

Writing: 9/10
Imagery: 9/10
Gameplay: 7/10
Kinks: 8/10
Overall: 9/10

Back to fucking every woman you come across.

Your wife, your daughters, your maid, your boss, your secretary, your boss's daughter, your daughter's rival, your wive's mother, the list goes on and on. Luckily our ex-military man, hardened further from his time in prison, can handle them all and still have enough energy to go toe to toe with Ivan Drago.

While that might sound like a lot, trust me when I say the story is actually really well written. Normally I will blast past the stories in these real life porn games since they are barely worth the time, but here I was intrigued by the MC. The choices on how you can direct him are really in line with how I actually would react to some of these situations myself, which helps put you in the character's shoes and it is because of this I wanted to know more.

I've played through the current version of this game, 0.31, around 5 times now. Sometimes as a pure good guy, sometimes as a corrupted jerk, and other times as a huge prude who only bangs his wife while fighting off the advances of all the other girls who approach him sexually. While there might not be a big difference between the paths, the choices available do depend on your level of corruption and how far you have gone with the women. So even the last path mentioned can have its own unique moments.

Now one other thing I want to say is that whoever is picking out the ladies to fill in the rolls here are doing a bang up job, all the women are sexy, hot, and all bring something a little different to bedroom. The only suggestion I'd make is for a hot goth chick, I don't know how or where to implement her as it stands, but that is what I'd like to see.

For now I'm digging this one, and I'll be back again at the 0.5 mark to see what's changed.

The first half of the game is very good. What I liked:
- Development of family relationships
- Video selection
- Non-linear narrative
At first I really planned to give the game all five stars

But in the second half you start to notice some significant shortcomings:
- Too many characters are introduced into the narrative, they scatter the player's attention. And at the same time, interaction with them seems superficial and strained. After the 24th day, I simply did not understand who all these people were that I was fucking in the ass. That is, pornography completely pushed the narrative into the background.
- Many options are not available without cheats, they are vital for comfortable play and disclosure of a huge layer of content (the save editor will help us here)
- Some choices require the right action a third of the game ago. Moreover, the choices are not critical to the narrative, for example, in order to have the opportunity to have anal sex with character X on the 32nd day, you had to have sex with her on the 8th day, this looks absurd, especially in cases where we subsequently sleep with this character more than once, but anal sex remains an unbreakeble taboo for us in all the later game. Because it did not happen six months ago and now there is no way to fix it. WHY? Its nonsense.

And lesser significance - some events are quite non-obvious, require a grind or a guide. For example, throwing a specific number on the roulette, it just took me about 20 minutes to save-load the event. This is not cool, this is not fun, this is not a challenge. Repeated scenes and a drop in the quality of videos in the second half. Not technical, I mean more the selection of actresses, staged scenes with pseudo-sperm, liters pumped into their cavities, and the like. In the second half, the focus of attention completely shifts from Gina, Megan and Angela to absolutely unrelated girls - the boss’s secretaries, strippers from the club, etc. By the end was the same boring repeateble minigames with shooting or dancing. So...Day 1-24 (or about it) - 5. The all game as is - 3/5 due to a significant drop in quality

For a game that has "freedom" in its title. This game sure has a lot of paywalls and gatekeeping. I'll rate lower if not for the effort cause game literally needs your full attention and could easily ruin your run because of simple route divergent that for some reason completely gate keep a progression. Doesn't help that the guide as well as the cheats are behind a paywall. Making the grind and this game feels like total chore and a waste of time. Once you lack certain lust or love you won't be able to replenish it as it's already cemented making your run full of holes that you potentially could fix if this was a sandbox but nope. This is a virtual novel and your stuck progressing through everything and having to endure not being able to access a lot of routes. Overall. This is the kind of game you wouldn't like to re-play once you lost your save. It took too much time and the gave back isn't worth it

I found the story interesting, the characters are pretty well written and some of the interactions are really good,

I like that the MC is not a wimpy beta cuck who undergoes sissification which seems prevalent in so many html games for who knows what reason.
Of course if that is your genre then i would probably stay away from this game.

Looking forward to more updates and content in the future.

The videos are well done, but the models are very oftne used in real-life HTML porn games. Not much discovery here.

The MC and the world is the definition of mainstream porn. He is a huge powerful, dominating manly man, ex-military, bla bla bla. Boring as hell. Interactions are robotic, dialogue is cringy. Relationships are not believable at all.

You will enjoy it if you like mainstream porn, and if you like basic porn logic for all interactions.

Otherwise, it's a no-go.

If I had to summarize this game, it would be "pointless". The illusion of choice is presented, but in a manner that makes it nearly impossible to see all the content without paying for the patreon cheats. Which, hey, I understand - you do what you gotta do to make a living. But if you (as someone on this forum) aren't interested in throwing down the cash, just skip this game and save yourself the frustration.

The game itself isn't terrible. Pretty typical male-power-fantasy / small-dick-energy, where every woman you encounter is desperate to get it on with the uber-Gary Stu MC. The writing is good enough that you can play it without rolling your eyes so much they fall out of your head.

The clips that the dev uses are well-placed and generally consistent (as opposed to most HTML real-porn games). There are some things that are novel and unique, like the ability to take viagra (which, honestly, should be way more common in games where characters have sex multiple times in a row lol).

If you want a game where the only challenge and mystery is which specific order to massage a woman to get her to bang the MC, then you'll like this. Otherwise, there's much better options than the free version of this game.

I don't have the right words to describe how good this game is. The story. The game mechanics, the cast of girls, main and side ones and their personalities. The choices and different outcomes. Everything is very well done. Congrats to the dev.

It really makes you want to play this game, but all the scenes are almost impossible. You have to play through the game x times. Because there are so many ways to complete a scene. And that too retroactively. If you had done this and that on day x, you would now have the option for x. And I had that more than once while playing through. And the instructions aren't always entirely correct - that's what I noticed with Part Ginna

Of all this html games (real porn) I’ve played recently, BtF has the best porn scenes/stars. It has a great UI, it’s generally got no hiccups, and the overall presentation is unique and yet comfortable. I also love that you can pretty much tailor your viewing experience to whatever type of content you really want. With that said, even though the content is presented in such a personalized way, the amount of waiting for the content you foresee & really want (and dangling certain content for so long I already fapped thrice-over ) - it means practically speaking you’re limited to less of the “personalized” experience and more of a generalized, contented porn-viewer.

This game shows how ultimately, picking great scenes and having the scenes be cohesive and engaging will carry a visual novel, followed closely by just picking great pornstars. A lot of other real-porn games fail (or miss the mark) at these main aspects. To me, it’s much more akin to being a director, not necessarily a designer or seasoned writer.

I had to weigh some subjective opinions about BtF, such as the amount of writing(a little too much for me, personally (but yet a lot less than most)) and feeling of grind (better than most, but not perfect imo) with the overall polish and immersion in this game. Even though it is very fappable and an overall nice experience, I still feel it doesn’t do everything perfect. Overall, for anyone who likes regular ol’ straight porn, mainstream fetishes including corruption/love options, some step-cest, and a good amount of anal, plus an interesting & straightforward plot - you’ll have a nice time with Back to Freedom.

Played this a few times and always a frustrating mess. Once you get into it a little, every page seems to tell you about a scene you've missed, or mini-games like the massage that you always fail unless you do exactly the right sequence of moves, which mainly have no rhyme nor reason.

The porn and the actresses used are very well done, the story is pretty lame for the most part, with a few passages that a very good. No consistency really. The UI is OK, pretty clean. Worth a play through maybe, if you don't mind missing most of the content.

A ruddy marvelous game, especially because the scenes are carefully curated wrt plot in question and makes it an enjoyable play through. In addition, the plot itself is rather good and there IMO there are plenty of directions this can go.

It's not my thing to review but this game is awesome! I'll be waiting for the next update, I had played twice online in mopoga. Keep going man, can't wait what will happen to the next mission. The storyline is good, I wonder how it will end since Ms. Kiss offer to join hands with her. I just hope it will have a multiple endings.

I must have skipped a few versions but this one is a meaty game. The premise is easy -but the underpinnings of a morality system brings in some drastic changes as consequences for previous decisions.

I love it.
Keep making this dev, please.

one of the best rp games, the story is good along with the vids selected for the each of the cutscenes. Atfirst i thought it would be a typical porn game but addition of crime/mafia in the mix really surprised me. even except the porn the game can hold its own storywise. one complain i would have is that there arent more sources to get money from, but apart from that pretty solid game.
looking forward to the updates

Great options and storyline, love the diversity and mini games. Growing the story has been at an amazing pace and with very few or no glitches that i have ran into. There is a bunch of decisions with respectable consequences and provides and great sandbox feel to it

This game is pretty good and not just good for an HTML real porn game. The story is interesting, the characters are varied, and the freedom of how to treat those characters is well done.

However there is a lot about the game that severely detracted from the former. The minigames are many, varied, and obnoxious, content being locked behind choices with little or no feedback on how to get the desired result without a walkthrough, and esoteric puzzles sprinkled in (looking at you ducts and massage).

If the negatives either don't bother you or you can stomach them then this'll probably be a 4-5* but if they do it's middle of the road.

The game itself is quite well done, although nothing special
and outstanding among other HTML games in it. Because it is because of the gameplay that players do not see an impressive part of his work. Quite a strange decision...

Version Reviewed: v0.16

Overview: Free the cock, free the mind.

Story: You are an ex-soldier who was sent to jail for not killing enough and get back home to start your life over. There is only one problem, every single woman you meet is hardcore sexually harassing you. From the word hello they are stripping you with their eyes and not shy about the innuendo. The MC can't even get a cup of coffee without be propositioned. Despite this constant barrage of harassment the MC maintains a stiff upper dick and soldiers on, servicing 3, 4, sometimes up to 6 women a day. It seems exhausting, he'll just finish making his stepdaughter come 5 times only to get a call that his boss's bratty daughter needs some BDSM treatment, and he's barely done warming up her cheeks before his camgirl daughter needs someone to help with the show or something. The MC spends all day bouncing from one porn setup to another.

Gameplay: This is a branching VN. The game has a lot of mutually exclusive scenes as well as a per-character stat system. All girls have a "love" and "lust" stat, and you will often have a break in the dialog where you can choose one of two options, one of which will bump love and the other will bump lust. Some content is locked behind certain love and lust scores, and there is no advance warning as to which you will need. Between the stat grinds and straight up mutually exclusive scenes I'd guess you would need to play through this game at least three times to see all of the content, and you'll need a big spreadsheet to keep track of all of your choices. The game has a help and cheat system, but they are locked behind Patreon codes. Even the sex minigames will sometimes have options locked out if your love or lust scores aren't high enough with the girl you are currently fucking.

As for the amount of content, well, it's rare to see a game with this many scenes. There are many hours of unique content to enjoy and no grind. It's all killer no filler. Well, some of the dialogs run on a bit long (but at least you don't have to click through every line!) and none of it is especially interesting. If you've played a few of these pornogames you will find nothing novel in here. The HTML engine works fine and I really appreciate the relatively low number of clicks it requires to play. In Ren'Py this game would have required an order of magnitude more clicks.

This is one of the few games where I think it might have been better as a free roam style game than a VN. There is just too much stuff crammed into every single day. It becomes impossible not to fall behind on the stats for the girls and start missing content. Or just spread the stuff over a couple of days and stop making me choose. Why is it always the longest games that want to make you play through them multiple times?

Graphics: It's real porn but a lot of care has been put into using the same actor for a character and when there is a scene with multiple videos the videos will all be from the same shoot so they don't clash. Probably the best way to do real porno games. The guy varies of course, but who cares about him?

Overall: While I don't love games that make you play through multiple times to get all of the content I can't rate this game less than a 5 due to the skill and care used to put it together. Quibbles about the story being dull are overshadowed by the fact that it's easy to skip past the boring parts and the game never makes you wait long for the next sex scene.

I usually never write a review for games but I really wanted to share my thoughts about this game but also what kind of person the developer "Bald Games" in my opinion is.

Fundamentally the game is on the greater side of all the HTML games i have played. The storyline can be intriguing at times and with all the choices you can do you can experience different outcome with different girls.

The gameplay is pretty simple but with how much freedom you have your choices you can almost make your "own" storyline but that also means you can completely end it if you take a wrong turn. Sometimes it can be a maze but also a wrong choice can lock you out of content that you dont know about for a long time and youll need to reload a save far back and sometimes you dont even know which of the choices locked you out.

I dont know if this is my end but sounds/audio ingame is lackluster.
The scenes doesnt have any sound other than the generic background royalty free music that plays in the ground that completely ruins everything.. Try it yourself and you'll understand.

Well ill end this first portion of the review with how is the;
"Sexual Content"
I'm surprised how well its done. There is a lot of dirty talk in between scenes. Since the game is made by real life actors sometimes scenes can be hard to come by that is good but bald games have chosen some good actors. Thumbs up for this atleast.

Now it comes to Bald Games as a person.
I'm just gonna say it outright that you probably never gonna find a person that spends more times on the internet than this guy. You may ask; what does he spend his time on? Well everything that is about his game. Bald games is on every site that has his game "publicised" so he does this to minimize the spread not the game itself but the features that comes from the "codes" patreon rewards; that is his right to do i will never question that, but.. One thing take makes me completely lose respect with Bald games is when he actively shuts down Fan-walkthroughs. As i stated before this game can be a complete maze sometimes so for looking all scenes to collect I outright think it's impossible without a guide to collect all the scenes with all the choices you have to do.

The developer has always the right to put his walkthrough behind the paywall but never have a seen a person so actively & ferociousness kill every walkthrough out there. I have seen active developers on f95zone but funny enough that alot of the question Bald games gets is either "update when" or "How do i do this?" that he happiiy answers?? Why not release the walkthrough then? i did ask BaldGames about this and i got this answer;

Bald Games said:

I don't mind answering player questions. But I decided to make the guide supporters-only, as the $2 supporters had no advantage over the public version of the game. That was the only reason.

Click to expand...

He says there is no advantage and i completely mind-blowing with that statement since people with a guide will experience the game in the fullest, when the person that doesnt have it has to resort to the forums and hopefully get an answer from the Developer that has locked the guide behind a paywall (Funny enough) or other players that has done.

I wanted to give this 2/5 but after some thought the game isnt bad, i just actively dislike how Bald games are doing things do it gonna be 3/5 for me.