Ren'Py - Bad Memories [v0.9.5.2] [recreation]

Played v0.9.5.2 as the female protagnist

+ perhaps not a very original setup, but well delivered, grim, dramatic
+ interesting characters, captivating backgrounds, good chemistry between them
+ visuals are above average (some are even exellent), some models are better than others

Version 0.9.5

A bland and mediocre incest themed game where everything is barely passable and nothing sticks in the end. Recommended only if you are under a game dry spell and have free time to spare.

Story
MC is back in his home town to start a new job only to have his rented apartment burned down and every hotel and apartment taken up, so he's forced to move back to his old home with his stepmother and stepsister. Corny and unrealistic, but I suppose it will do to set MC up for semi-incest.

After that, it's a run of the mill slice of life story where MC picks up several other girls for his harem. The developer tries to inject emotional depth by hinting at past trauma where he was abused by stepmum Rachel long time ago, but it comes across flat and unconvincing.

From flashbacks, we learn Rachel scolded MC unjustifiably whenever she got physically abused by MC's father; shitty childhood for sure, but MC acting like he suffered severe PTSD which culminated in a visceral hatred for Rachel makes little sense.

Then there is his stepsis Ellie who supposedly went mute and acted like a mentally underdeveloped eight-year-old kid after MC left home. Another implausible mental drama squeezed in for the sake of it.

Game Mechanic
Visual novel with choices that allow players to reject content with some LIs. There is the occasional pointless sandbox where you just click around to trigger the next story.

Background / Character Renders
Both background and character models are common stock assets found on Daz Marketplace which one would have likely encountered from many other games.

Character Development
Very little as both the MC and LIs are largely one dimensional throughout the game. Although MC is introduced as a highly paid working professional, the stuff he thinks, says and does are that of a high school freshman.

The game spends considerable time on his emotional trauma and conspiratorial suspicions towards Rachel, but never quite explains what exactly it is that led him to suffer such serious mental aftershocks.

Rachel is an apologetic docile figure who is so eager to make amends that she will allow MC to get away with whatever he wants. Ellie is for all intent and purpose, a mute and somewhat mentally challenged individual, but explained away as being "stubborn". This is probably to get around potential legal / ethical issues of consent when it comes to sex.

Jada, is your typical juvenile rebel cum slut trope who is there to provide quick drama and sex scenes. The cafe girl is a usual fall in love with MC at first sight yandere with nano thin character depth. Katherine is the only girl in this harem with a bit of depth and proper backstory - a tsundere with a submission kink, but at least there is some character complexity.

Sex Scenes
Generally OK and average in quality. There are some short and occasionally jerky animations to go along though I do find the dialogue and foreplay are often too short and the scene over before the mood is built up.

BGM and Sound Effects
BGMs are generic and adequate enough for use, no or very little use of sound effects as far as I can remember.

Conclusion
I don't get the high ratings - I am willing to concede an E for effort on the developer's part for bringing in difficult psychological issues to season what is essentially a generic incest plus harem game.

However, though the attempt is evident, the result is substandard. It comes across as unrealistic "making mountain out of molehill" and it doesn't help that the MC doesn't grow, reconcile or recover from his troubled mental state throughout the game.

All in, it's an old and flavourless incest / harem AVN which should have been concluded many years ago.

Incredibly average, and short as hell for something thats been on this site for 6ish years now. Needs a better setup, better dialogue, more obvious route choices...

I have no idea why this one is rated so high.

Very little sex either, and none of it with depth. Big pass.

(Review of 0.9.5, vanilla)

Bad Memories is a bit of a mixed bag. For starters, the story is nothing new except for your "mute" sister, with the MC going back home after a long time far away because this and that.

The characters are OK, the best thing I can say here is that they are normal, everyday people instead of the standard lot of bodies with huge melons, so this is a nice change of pace and probably one of the best decisions from the developer. However, the beginning (say, the first 1-2 hours of the gameplay) is quite boring, with nothing much happening other than the MC distrusting his half-mom, and for good reasons. I must say Katherine, while a bit OTT on the weirdness meter at first, is a character that grows on you and becomes more and more appealing, despite the fact that her body isn't entirely consistent between renders, and her ass sometimes is slim, only to appear a lot juicier and curvy in the next shot.

Rachel takes her sweet time to open to your advances but then she kind of goes for it full on, which is strange. I can understand your "mom" having doubts with engaging in sexual acts with her son but then changing her mind all of a sudden isn't what I expected. I mean, I wouldn't want her to be a pain forever in this respect but a more progressive evolution here would have been nicer.

Animations are just OK. Some are jerky as hell, the patch can help somewhat at times but don't expect miracles.

Lastly, there's the "harem" bit. I mean, the developer decided to let you seduce almost every girl you can find, and for me this is a mistake. By the time I found out about the "situation" of the female coworker I went and said no to pursue her simply because the story becomes senseless with so many LIs and I have more than enough with the girls at home and the nice barista.

Summing up, a game worth playing (I suggest NOT using the i-patch) that could do with at least some work on finetuning animations and reconsidering the first 2 hours of gameplay to not put the player to sleep.

updates are way to slow, no updates and every time excuses and no real progress with every yearly update
best to wait till its fully done before even trying the game
while the game idea and the art is great the dev is not

Female protagonist and an all-lesbian path, amazing! Characters are hot, a lot of sex scenes, what's not to love? Looking forward to any updates this game should get in the future!

Also thank you for not animating the bad dreams part, dev!

Fantastic - I hope it is updated.
I played the lesbian version.
Great, subtle animation. Came across as sensual
Good story progression- not a grind.
I'm glad the women have small or medium sized breasts !

For me personally, this was 'the' VN that got me paying attention to the genre again, I was always aware...just wasn't much for the reading when it was always the same old ,same old, after my first few Bad choices (pun-intended), more playing for the scenes and bored of the repeated reasons that led to them...and this was before the female aspect was added in.

This game drag's you through alot of quite possibly real situations from abuse and broken homes to old forgotten faces and foolish accusations by people bent on your past that can't see that you've changed.

It also has some that you obviously wouldn't expect on a normal basis, but well within realistic, if not a bit far fetched (generally the mc's home life here), but that's to be expected.

Good story, high quality visuals, and extremely well thought out, it's still one of my favorite VN's to this day and I eagerly await each release, I'm even waiting for the game to end for the extra content that comes after it

Highly recommend this one to people looking for a more down to earth story with good scenes and content at the same time.

Just Completed the Current Version as 0.91 and here is my review

Pro's:
Nice Character Modeling
Good Animations
Enviromental Modeling was quite good
Nice Lewd Scences and Plenty Of Good Looking Girls to Play with
MC Chills out by half-way through but you have to select "Nice" Choices for Mother

Cons
TOO Angry MC - Very Off-Putting and Nearly Stop Playing in the Intro
MC Disrespecting his Mother - Couldn't Tolerate that and posted about it in another Thread

[v0.9.1]

It is quite good. I think you've already tried the games with a similar premise ('A young man with issues returns to his family home, harem ensues'), but here the developer seems to actually like every single character, which is reflected in writing. The tone is somewhat serious, although the game is not without humour.

I have two main concerns about 'Bad Memories'.

First, it seems too safe and formulaic in the type of story it tries to tell. There is certainly ambition to do something geniune, but the darker and more serious themes, which form the backbone of the plot, are in part watered down and in part nonsensical. It is like there could be two story-roads to follow, one more serious and one more fun, and 'Bad Memories' decide to lie on both, not commiting fully to any.

Second, although sexual content here gets better with some honestly great scenes, the game in general kinda loses focus, while not being a proper sandbox where this is not an issue. There is no pressure in the story, so I'm not quite sure what to expect. Maybe we're coming to a happy end, but I feel that some time is needed to make harem work, and it seems to me that the proper, fullfilling way to do so will take too much development time. There are also bits and pieces of overarching plot (somethins to do with mind control?.. It is not prominent and may be a spoof), which seems not to interest the developer much. But we'll see! I'll be sure to come back to this game some updates later.

I don't want to criticise this game too much. It is good, and If you like incest and harem AVNs with somewhat angry vibes and a more dominant touch (no BDSM here, just a general feel), you may like it. At the very least, it is worth noting for anyone who likes adult VNs.

What's the point of giving you choices with characters if it doesn't even do anything. Should make it so the MC can just ignore Jada, she's a terrible character and forcing the stuff with her ruined the game.

I love this game! Love the characters and humour! Love the little minxes. Love the art and girls. Animation too!

And the women are all different sizes: not all 6 feet tall, not all huge breasted (definitely not my fetish).

One of the 3-4 games I love to watch out for.

v0.9b

Not gonna lie, I was about to shit on this so fucking hard, because of the rough start, but i got used to everything, and as time went on, began enjoying it quite a bit.
Now the first reason I was upset is the premise. MC moves to town/city due to job transfer, into an apartment, that was appointed to him by his real estate agent. So, get a hold of this: not only that apartment gets burned down, but there isn't a SINGLE one available for rent in a whole city, not only that, but EVERY hotel is FULLY booked, AND while having his OWN HOUSE that he LEGALLY owns, he chooses to spend a night at a run-down motel somewhere in the ghetto. His excuse to not stay in his house is that his mother, that he hates, also lives there, but she has no right to the property, and he can simply kick her out, but he doesn't want to - for reasons that aren't explained. When you meet her, you're presented with an option to be rude and reject her several times, which doesn't make sense from a player's perspective, because we don't know their backstory yet, so it seems like a troll choice.
Another problem, that will hopefully be fixed on release is "sandbox padding". For example you can wander around the house from one room to another for absolutely no purpose at all, when the game clearly just wants you either to stay where you are or to move from point A to point B.
Adult scenes's animations are a bit too slow.
I'd also prefer if there were less references to irl stuff, as it does break immersion.

[Reviewed at v0.9]

I've been following this project for a few years now, even bought it on Steam, and I'll admit I remember it being a lot better than it is.

While there are some good elements to it, there's just a generally amateurish vibe to every aspect that stops it from being anything other than average.

Let's get the least offensive stuff out of the way: the renders are dated by this point; the models are generally attractive, but there are a lot of goofy expressions and a general lack of thickness; and the sandbox parts are, as far as I can tell, pointless and annoying.

The worst part is the writing. Every character is immature and annoying to varying degrees, with the worst being the MC. He's just really petty and bitchy, which combined with the room-temperature IQ and the attention span of a horny goldfish make for a very frustrating protagonist. I also find most other characters annoying, Ellie being the exception since she mercifully doesn't speak.

I appreciate the years of effort poured into this, but the product just isn't worth it. It's a shame, but the nostalgia goggles had me good on this one.

Very nice Game, with good Renders and pretty good detailed animations.

The Story is surprisingly different to the usual ones.
It has his little failures, but which Game has not?!
The Dev is cummunicating active with the Community.

This Gem and its dev has very much potential. Love it...

Really hot harem game, heavy on the taboo side.
It would be a 5 star for me if the development was a bit faster and constant as I started playing it 3 years ago and last update has taken a full year.

Having said that, this last update, although not long, is bigger than the previous ones and has finally progressed in the story quite a bit. So hopefully that means the dev will start picking up the pace as this is a project that's been fairly compensated in Patreon.

Wow, this game is quite disturbing but reflects some of the shit that happened in my life. It's so damn hard to find an adult game that makes you reflect on the demons you have inside your head. The art is absolutely incredible and the disturbing story is a big bonus.

Really one of my all time favorites of all time mainly cause it's a dev that is actually committing to a good lesbian harem while simultaneously committing a male harem at the same pace. The downside is the solo dev does take a very long time between updates, but every one has delivered more awesome content. If you want to support this dev, the game is for sale on steam, which is also where he gives updates.

. Harem
. no jealousy
. easy to get to scenes
. renders pretty good
. mc isn't a little bitch


When playing these games, I'm usually just here for the incest to be honest, but this game is great even if there was no incest. My favorite character is Katherine, the one on the far left in the main picture. There's already quite a good bit of content in this game, but there's so much room for more, and I can't wait to see where this game goes in the future.

I don't look at the story too much though, and when I do, sometimes the characters' actions don't make sense. Not too obviously though.

+ no jealousy drama
+ harem
+ Ellie
+ 3somes
+ not a slow burn
+ renders
+ mc is not pathetic in sex scenes, he know his stuff and girls don't have to tell him what to do
+ story is ok, nothing spectacular


- boring & short sex scenes, not a lot of positions and sometimes bad angles
- Jada, too much of her, she is annoying
- cockblocking
- first person kissing scenes
- music could be better

I played as male MC. Wanted to try FMC but not interested in "pure" lesbian playthrough without any straight content, it's too boring.
Overall it's decent avn without deep story and unnecessary drama. 3 stars from me