VN - Ren'Py - Baddies Inc. [v0.1.13] [FOZ]

Review v.0.1.13

I would normally give this game a rating somewhere arround 2.5-3 stars. but in it's current state, which i find extremely frustrating, it's 1 star.

This game reminds me a lot of this dev's last game...maybe a bit too much
With the look of the models, the way too many girls (which lack screen time), the overall lackluster story, up till the boss (or in this case boss of the investment firm, which backstabs you) is a corrupt, money hungry, criminal. And of course the bugs/errors.

The renders are ok. Although you will find continuing errors, like a girl wears lipstick, in the next render not and than again and some others.

The animations are ok, but stiff at times, the angels are often not really good either.

The models range from a few good ones, to mostly serviceable ones and others which just look strange, especially the faces.

The sex scenes are bad.
Mostly consists of just 2 angels, one being close up. No dialogue while you watch the animations, made even worse by a stupid 'minigame'.

There are way too many girls, meaning most of them get barely any time and are sorley underdeveloped.

The writing ranges between below-average to average...the problem is, it's just really very boring.
I needed to force myself to not start skipping at times.
There are no real surprises, no particular funny or memorable moments, or really anything, which keeps you interested in the story.

Now for the reason i give this a 1 star review, or also the very bad points.
If these points are fixed, i'd rate it likely arround 3 stars.

All choices are saved as persistent...which completely fucks you over when you want to have multiple, different, saved paths.
God knows why the genius of dev decided to do it this way, but it's really player unfriendly and prevents trying different paths/choices.

Variables are not set correctly at times, quite regularly variable check's are wrong...meaning, you get not the correct result of previous choices.
This happens regularly, from start to finish of the current version. Apparently the dev isn't bothered to fix this.
Now you can add clashes, because of the persistent saved choices and you end up with a complete coin toss as to which of the choices will be used...
This point is really ruining the game for me.

Overall this is a through and through average game, nothing is standing out. It has some asine dev choices, neither is the dev fixing the existing errors, which worsens the merely average experience even further.

Okay, this is going to be a bit harsh, but this game really is a letdown.

I've quite liked the dev's previous game, it wasn't perfect, but had its strength, not the least the more down to earth look of many of the ladies.

That part is still here.
Just to make it clear, the disappointment isn't in this game not being the same as the previous one (It's actually not that dissimilar, merely the profession of the MC so far), it's about the actual quality.

The renders are serviceable, the models mostly have a certain look, that isn't perfect, but that you either like or not, I mostly like it, but still think some ladies look odd.

The writing is just... boring.. It isn't horrendous, it would be alright if there was some hook or twist to the setting and story that would make you interested, but since this game is absolute standard fair, it would have to score with the writing and this one just doesn't.

The sex scenes are frankly horrible. Adding a stupid and annoying "mini-game" does not make up for most sex scenes being two still images you can switch with no accompanying flavour text. Some have basic animations, but again, this is just not enough to be interesting.

What broke the camel's back and why I stopped playing even before reaching the end of content was that for some asinine reason the game makes your choices persistent, meaning if you make a decision in one route, it will be in all your saves, even different routes, and if the decisions contradict each other it seems to be just pure chance which one gets treated as real in a specific case.

Overall this game is just so basic, that it is hard to motivate myself to play, especially since I can't think of any reason, apart from a few models being to my liking, to actually do so.
I will give the next few releases a try, but if it doesn't improve massively, that will be it for me.
For now this is somewhere between a 2 and a 3 for me, I will lean towards the 3 stars ATM, but if it doesn't improve, I will probably tend more to the 2-stars in a few updates in

The renders themselves are quite high quality, and the character models also look interesting. The writing though is pretty bad, and sometimes nonsensical. There is a moment where the main character can be a dick and blame a person for his carelessness or to find a solution together. If you choose to find a solution, the story still continues as if the mc blamed the person in question, and i seriously couldnt tell if its intentional and part of the persons character, or just completely disregarding the players choice just so the story can continue on a path the dev wanted. There are a few fun scenes that dont really push the story forward and feel like filler, like the two ladies on the beach, but they might come back later on with plot relevance, who knows.
Overall its worth to check out, for the quality renders and interesting character modesl, if nothing else.

The game feels dull and repetitive overall. Some of the animations could use improvement—there are noticeable "stiffnesses" where the animation abruptly cuts off. I might be extra critical here, as I work in 3D animation professionally, but these issues stand out.

Each update seems to offer very little new content, which makes it even more baffling that the game is 10GB in size. The developer really needs to learn how to compress the game files; it’s not worth downloading such a large file for every minor update.

As for the plot, it’s not very engaging, and the gameplay itself lacks enjoyment. Unfortunately, this one just doesn't hold much appeal for me.

For: v0.1.09

The visuals look nice, the audio isn't bad & the story looks decent.
Then why 1 star?
Cause it's a game 1st & foremost, and it's almost unplayable.
Often times variables are used in the opposite ways in different parts of the story, making it a incoherent mess with zero continuity.
Oh, you blamed Jaiden? Well it's a coin toss whether the game treats it as you blamed him or took responsibility, making your choice pointless.

Also what's with using persistent variables to store game choices? It totally messes up save-load, especially on different routes, cause persistent variables are affected across saves: i.e. if you say yes to girl 1, it gets changed in all your saves, even in ones you didn't go that route.

This is not a release worthy game, if the dev cannot use variables properly to tell a story that makes sense. The game's a jumbled mess where non of your choices matter, not cause the story is written like that, but because the variable usage is messed up by the dev & even if you choose something, like option A, you will get the result of choosing option A in some scenes & the result of not choosing option A in other scenes...
Between 2.5-4 stars if the game is fixed to work as intended. Have to get a feel of the fixed game before making an accurate judgement

I really tried to like this, but, ultimately, I failed!
Maybe it's just a 'me' problem, however, whilst I liked the protagonist and his team, the game felt superfluous and empty, without real meaning or context.

Don't get me wrong, the protagonist has a lot of attractive options and invites open to him, he's young and good looking, women are naturally attracted to him...however, it all felt superficial and inconsequential.
What I couldn't understand, was the fact that he has the most beautiful, raven-haired, voluptuous girlfriend...and he's still looking to play the field.

I'm obviously just getting old...

Probably closer to 3.5 stars than 3, but since theres no way to do that...

There's a lot of good in this game but the significant issues keep me from really liking it.

So what is good: the models and renders are quite nice. The animations tend to be be smooth and are proper animations not a glorified slideshow. The women introduced so far have a range of body types and personalities which is nice to see. Probably a bit more curvy than others but that appeals to me. The story is pretty unique being about a guy starting up a dating company in a silicon valley/san fransisco-esque setting. There is also a fair bit of choice in terms of which characters to interact with and other things like what company culture you are going for however this also leads into one of the bads...

The neutral: I'm not a fan of the main character appearance, but we don't have to see him that often. I don't really care for the almost masturbatory approach to capitalism, however i'm putting personal politics aside for this review.

The Bad: The game either has coding or QA issues, I'm not sure where the problems stem from. However what it boils down to is that while the game indicates there are decisions you can make the dialogue and actions of the characters don't reflect those decisions. As an example you can have sex with a lady on the way to your meeting. However regardless of whether you do or not the game says you show up late, even though when you don't stop for a quickie the game also says, you're a half hour early and have plenty of time. This is just one example but i've noticed it many, many times. It makes your decisons feel like they have little weight, and sometimes i've even questions if i picked the path i thought i did because the game suggested the opposite happened. So very big negative there IMO.

The other major negative in my opinion is the animation menu for sex scenes. The bar that shows your approach to climax can be clicked to advance but is miniscule. Its also annoying when I'm replaying a scene that there is no way to fast forward through the scene with the CTRL key. Please just have a button that says cum, next to the scene options. This problem is exacerbated by the other problem. I found myself replaying scenes multiple times when i found errors with the coding to check if different options led to different results. and every time i got to a sex scene i had to stop just pressing the skip button to furiously mash left click on the tiny little orgasm bar. poor design choice in my opinion.

TLDR: a lot of potential but needs some good QA and a simple overhaul of the sex scene mechanics

A bit of a surprise with this one, I had left this game alone for a while. I'm glad I finally give it a try. Good graphics, hot babes, fun but not zany storyline that hits many of the popular beats without going into "it's been done" territory, I am very impressed. I am now a fan, and will be looking forward to each subsequent release if the dev(s) continue delivering such things.

Ok story about a guy and his startup. Typical story about big dick guy falling into pussy all the time.

It's basically in line with the dev's previous game. An ok, fapping good time. 1/5 stars.

Pros:

• Lots of sex scenes
• Solid UI

Cons:

• Models are same looking.
• Story sort of meanders and consists mainly of the MC fucking what feels like mostly random women he just met. His landlady has cancer and he was raising money for her and it sets up the landlady's hot MILF friend but still doesn't do anything with it at this point.
• Latest version has some coding error, where game scenes don't reflect the decisions you made earlier.
  
  EDIT: Updated the score because the game just keeps getting worse and the coding problems are affecting decisions in game.

This is an interesting AVN for me. Full disclosure, I like the devs previous game. It wasn't great, but they worked hard on it, it was pretty good and they completed it with some good endings.

For this AVN, you can clearly see the devs improvements in production quality and storytelling. We need to celebrate and encourage devs like this because there are not that many around. So for that reason alone, the dev earns one extra star to start.

I am enjoying the story and am looking forward to future conflicts with their business rival. I also like the relationships and the characters, although they are somewhat common tropes. Of course, I love the look and feel of it.

On the negative side, a lot of the characters are pulled directly from his first game. Also, some of the choices are limited and I hate being forced into a relationship and there seems to be a lot of that. Natalie is just horrible. Her looks suck. Her personality sucks. The last thing I wanted the MC to do was spend time with her, but there were no other choices. Then the annoying girl at the club. Could not ditch her either.

IDK, I really liked the first release, but this second one was just silly. It suddenly became an entirely different game and the new LIs are all such shallow, wastes of space. And some of the dialogue choices were limiting. Like the girl who gave the MC the docs in the elevator. I wanted to throw them out because she didn't give him a choice and walked away. Then at the bar I would have liked the MC to put her in her place more like say something like "if it were that important to you then you should have done it yourself rather than dump them on some stranger."

Anyway, this is similar to the devs first release in that I did not like a lot of the story elements. But again, the dev works hard and puts out solid, regular releases and for that they should be rewarded.

Good luck to the dev. I will be keeping an eye on this.

Nothing new or interesting, very basic stuff that you saw in hundreds of adult games at this point, but honestly it's not a bad thing, at least you know what you'll get.
Slightly above average renders, variety of girls is ok, amount of content is good.
Story is...happening. You have almost no control over it so it's basically doesn't really matter, we don't play AVN for complex story and slowburn.
Why only 3 stars? Because every time one particular LI (Nat) is forced on you and you can't turn her down i took off 1 star. It was 2 sex scenes so far, so that's it. Why tf is every other girl can be avoided but she's not? Bad decision imo.

Overall can recommend if you dont care about player's agency.

Game is very interesting and has multiple paths depending on your choices. Girls and models are very hot and the flirty dialogue is very well made and hot. I like the cut throat-materialistic personalities of most the cast it is a refreshing change from doing VNs with the same characters over and over again.

Well it is fine.
Art: 7/10
Gameplay: 1/10
Sex: 8/10
Story: Idk didn't read it. Didn't miss anything important it seems.

This is almost not a game. I know that VN are very story loaded, but man no choice does actually mean anything. It is more of a question of: Do you want to see the sex scene?
Other choices are just there to pretend being a game.
The sex scenes are great but no sound whats so ever.

The story might be not that bad maybe, but I don't read mediocre writing for 4h straight in order to then click one item and continue reading.

First release and it is already one of the best games you can find around here!
-Renders 10/10 great quality
-Animations 9/10
-Plot 9/10 Refreshing to see it is about business and app dev. (we had enough college with the other game xD) I like the filmaking resources to achieve a more dynamic game and gives more freedom so we can enjoy a better balance between the hot and the plot
-Hot&Kink Well 9/10, i am writing this after playing first release and it has already a lot of naughty things to enjoy
-Cast 10/10 As in Collenge Bound, you can enjoy a bit of everything with these characters. Great diversity among the girls and all of them hot. I even wanted to fuck the motel old lady (hope this can be fix on a future release xD)

College Bound was already too much fun and by the looks of the first release of this one you can already see the dev has improved everything.

Great game so far,you can tell the dev is going all out on this one,i just hope the ambition to make everything interactive doesnt mess with the general workflow of the game,would be annoying having to click through a bunch of prompts to get through different menus and scenes,so i wish all the best in the direction the dev is heading especially since i enjoyed college bound and i have high hopes this game will be a hit in the future! Will be keeping a close eye on this one.