This is a hard one to review in a way. It's the devs' first project and wanted to consider giving them some slack but... it's just a mess.
Personally I like to think there's a distinction between an Adult Visual Novel and "Porn Game", and this something that shows the promise of being the former but unfortunately ends up in the latter.
A great example of this is that of Val. (SPOILERS)
Every character seems to one moment have some deep-seated historical issue only to then act completely opposite to that, a prime example that of Heidi. This is a woman who kicked out a previous male housemate for supposedly being a stalker towards her only to then on the first night you're there deliberately attempt to have you stumble into watching her and another woman have sex without that other woman's consent and later on just straddles you while you sleep and expect the main character to strip in front of her.
But honestly, the biggest problem with the writing is that every character in this game, despite superficial differences, is the same basic 2000s Sci-Fi nerd in the worst way possible. They all know the same movies, they all know Firefly, and every single conversation will feature at least three references to the most generic of fandom cliches or quotes.
It's a shame because while the visual fidelity itself is of a pretty great quality, the writing is so one-note that you could probably just turn on "skip unread text" to just get to the sex scenes and not really lose anything.
This game is really good, it's the first game in awhile that I really enjoyed all the way through. Brought myself a copy on steam with no hesitation at all. This is why I like adult games, no matter how much trash and shit you have to sift through, it's all worthwhile when you find a game like this, one that makes you enjoy it for the story and the sex scenes, and believe me as someone who's been on this site a long time, that's hard to achieve. So with all that said, this game gets my fullest endorsement, and I hope those that enjoyed it help support this game on Steam, you wont regret it.
PS. Sadie an all time perfect waifu
girls are hot and there is lots of lewd scenes.
the greatest point of the game is the music, it is awesome.
the story are not interesting, but good enough.
few times feel like a little bit boring.
i found only 1 bug. one of the endings just change the choosed girl to other girl.
there is a little humor what is good, but the game dosnt enough strong in it.
So, I love the story... but watching some of those endings are like watching the end of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King: Several endings have 10+ natural ending points, but every time you think it's about to end, the developer looks at you and cajoles, "You're almost there! Just a few more renders! Just a few more!" The story actually consists of five chapters, but one of those chapters is more like an epilogue as it is simply a collection of the multiple endings. No significant choices are made at this point. Only one choice happens, and that's to decide whether you fight or you run, and both options lead to the same outcome.
A quick rundown, (spoilering off major plot) due to witnessing the attempted murder of his father and the murder of his father's colleague (cue the title, Bare Witness; clever, no?) by The Outfit (yes, that Outfit), your MC--real name Shelby--is now in the Witness Protection Program. At the beginning, you get to choose a name for your MC because Shelby is far too uncommon and would be tracked down in about 20 minutes and are set on a train ride to Plattsburgh, New York, to attend college at the fictional Plattsburgh College of the Arts (PCA; likely based on School of Arts & Sciences - SUNY Plattsburgh); your character is into graphic design. Originally, the MC wanted to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), however WitSec outright rejected it because Chicago is where the witnessed crimes occured; pick any other school and they would vet it. Rather than stay at a dorm, your MC has chosen to apply his room and board budget to stay at a house where two other tenants are looking for a third to replace their recently graduated roommate.
The MC, well... the developer played with the sliders, left more than a bit of intelligence on the table to give the MC more in the way of strength, stamina, charisma, and... size. Real stat min/max'ing from the dev. For as much as he might have given the MC strength, he took the charisma and stamina up to 11... and MC's happy stick up to 12. Makes your favorite male pornstar seem pathetic. Needless to say, every woman in this game loves him and wants to be with him. He's a pretty one-dimensional Gary Stu. No, he's not rich, no he's not a genius... but that is what the women bring to the table. I guess if you're going to do it, this is the most appropriate way to do it.
The LIs themselves have great personalities, and no two of them are remotely alike... except they're all squirters, every single one of them; to a ridiculous degree. Feels like they should be dying due to dehydration and fluid loss. I digress. One of your roommates, Athena, is a bartender that's not afraid to whip some ass if someone acts up in the bar and she drives a motorcycle, but she's also a gamer in her spare time and is a romantic at heart. The other roommate, Heidi, is the resident smol and an infinite ball of positive energy, just as likely to prank you as she is to fuck your brains out. The girl who's juggling two on top of classes because she can't afford her lease payments (her fucking ex; it's a whole thing) while going to school? Yeah, that's Mora: she's a story-telling, tabletop playing sweetheart that got fucked over, but she always puts up her best face for the people she serves and goes to school with. The one you rode into town with on a train? Zenda, a posh socialite from London, doesn't spend a lot of time in one place because her wealthy family are always on the move; better be on your best with that one. Ironically, your cousin Sadie--that's right, one of them is your cousin (!) because WitSec fucked up and put you in the same town as your fucking cousin despite the fact that you aren't supposed to have contact with anyone from your old life--is going to school at PCA because she wasn't what SAIC was looking for. Did I mention there's a hot MILF in this game, twice the MC's age with emotional life scarring that has seriously changed her outlook on life (for good or for ill remains to be seen)? Yeah, that's Valeria--or Val for short--and based on the script file (because it didn't get buttoned up nicely into a compressed and encrypted RPA file), she gets one hell of a long and fleshed out ending. Maybe a little too long, but you get my meaning. Speaking of endings...
There are 11 possible endings, with 10 of those endings having a post-credit clip at the end depending on if you make one decision during the course of the game. One of the endings cannot have that post-credit sequence because that decision you make is actually front and center as the major contributing factor in the building and locking in the remaining ending.
Of the 11 endings, six of them are traditional binary relationships with two people (one each for all six LIs). Four more are polyamorous (two throuples, one quad, and one quint; not really a true harem as the quad and the quint contain a pair that have fun with each other instead of focusing 100% of their attention on the MC). The remaining ending is a--spoiler alert--solo MC ending.
Finally--of the six LIs--four LIs can be a part of a polyamorous relationship with the MC. One will absolutely reject it outright--because she is a one-woman show--and for you to continue with her, she will insist you break it off with anyone you've been intimate with. The MC likely infers that the other LI rejects it, even though she never implies it: Her issue is with the specific sexual partner who informs on your dalliance, that she's the competitive type that just wants to "win" and would rather gloat than have a healthy relationship. In either case, neither of those two woman will end as part of a polyamorous relationship.
Graphics are phenomenal. Lots of small details in each environment, the render quality is excellent, the LIs all have very unique looks. For instance, one LI was a fat kid, and she starts this game in the same way; she has noticable stretch marks, and her diet largely contributes to her acne (most prominent on her forehead). She loses weight as a result of working out with the MC and actually trying to restrict her diet to get healthy, her acne may almost entirely go away, but some of those stretch marks do not go away. Animations are excellent and plentiful.
Music is pretty much the top of the spectrum when it comes to AVNs. So much so, I've read that the developers are going to have to pull it for the Steam release; pretty standard thing to do really. Can't necessarily commercialize some of the music in this, but if you get it from here or from something that isn't Steam, you're probably fine there.
All told, you're going to love this. Easily one of my favorite VN's to date and I've been playing them basically non-stop for five years now. Five stars.
I'm giving it 5 stars but overall it's a 4.5 for me.
The story is simple but decent.
The girls are nice both in renders and different personalities.
There are good animations.
The music is a very nice touch.
I think sometimes the jump from a scene to the other feels a bit sudden.
The game sort of "bugged out" on me, toward the end I break up with Athena and Heidi to tell them that I'm going exclusive with Mora and then a few scenes later the endgame starts with Heidi as my one gf.
Seems like the game has a lot of choice combinations to change things around which is definitely a plus. I don't think I'll replay personally but I'll likely check the scenes I missed through the gallery mod.
This is the best Harem VN ever I have seen. Even the individual endings are great. I also enjoyed the lesbian sex from the beginning of the story. Apart from these the models and renders are A-class.
Now, the story itself is not super dramatized or action packed but, I thought, it was more concentrated on MC's love life. However, it was good enough for keeping interested. I also liked that the title Bare Witness really represents the whole story and its enigma.
Gameplay
Sex scenes are animated. The renders are of very good quality with shadow and lights.There is also some background music that change from one setup to another. What I like is that the game is not set to be a all harem game, but actually make you choose from few presets.
Story
We actually have a story. Something to look into between the sex scenes. There is some traume that the MC had and we discover that as the game progress. Something to be liked here is the ending that is not rushed. A lot of other games on this website suffer from this issue: they start well but end to early or they are rushed to be finished. Here the ending is a reward for a well done journey.
Girls
All of them are lovely. The fact that we are able to discover them a bit more as the game goes on adds depth to them. MC has the chance to get involve in some threesomes (Heidi & Sadie / Zenda&Medie / Athena & Heidi) which I find very good
The graphics is improving through the game and in the end is very good. The characters are quite attractive. The storyline is not great not terible. The game has decent flow and is quite entertaining but I am missing something extra to get 5stars
It's not that this game has problems per se. It's well made, overall. It's complete, what a rarity. It's not buggy. The dialogs are in human language, The models are a bit off at moment with the anatomy and the texture are a bit too invasive (too many fucking frecless!) but the girls are mostly cute.
So, why not 5 stars? Well, the story is so fucking boring... It's about a hot guy who move to college and being hot and with heavy caliber cannon all girls want him and they don't sweat if he builds a harem.
Very well done AVN. Giving it a 4.3 out of 5 and highly recommend it.
++ High quality models, each with a unique personality, expressions, and so on
+ Well done renders, scenes, and lighting
+ A good (but not deep) story that will keep you going with your love interest choices
+ Very nice sex scenes with animations, each of good length
++ Excellent group sex scenes depending on which girls you chose (I recommend the MASH path)
+ Decent background music that changes with locations
+ Well done ability to choose which girls you'd like to be with (though there are a pre-set number of combinations)
- Only a small nitpick here: you can't be with all the love interests you meet (not a true harem game)
-- Game could have had a much longer runtime by extending the story. In my opinion, it was too short for the high quality it presented. I finished it in under 1 day without rushing, and found myself wanting 6 more.
- Very few kinks overall, and while someone who loves a lot of kinks I felt that the quality of the rest of the game mostly made up for the lack of them
If you like dating sims I think Bare Witness is decent enough that it could be worth a play. If you aren't into dating sims, would I say you're truly missing anything by not playing this? No, I personally don't think you would be.
I'll mention first I played the harem path only. Normally I hate choosing, but outside the four girls you can end up with in the harem ending, one I just didn't like and the other had a nice sort of side path with a satisfying closure. There's like ten other endings and parts of other paths I just didn't see, nor did I want to really. Onto the review.
The overview mentions a "major upheaval" and potential "further disaster" This is my first problem with the game. Long story short, the MC has been placed into witness protection due to a traumatic event and is forced to sort of begin a new life. On paper sure this sounds interesting enough for more unique spin on a dating sim. In reality? The game did next to nothing with it. If you maybe had the idea that this would be full of thrills and intrigue you would be very wrong. The game is actually 95% dating sim. Where all the events are focused solely around the different girls, and that remaining 5% randomly shows up only to say "hey don't forget the MC still has this mysterious past and is in WITSEC!" Queue another bit of backstory reveal and hint at future danger that only ever comes around in the very end of the game (which then gets a very weak conclusion). This aspect feels shoehorned in to a detrimental degree.
Though as much as I ragged on that part, it's still only a small part of the game as a whole. It wouldn't be a huge problem for me if the actual dating sim /romance plots hit and managed to make up for that. Unfortunately they did not.
There's a couple reasons for this, but my main one is as follows: When I'm sitting down to play what is mostly a vanilla romance game, I want that romance to really build and feel intimate. I want to fall in love with the girls as much as the MC does. Playing this game did not give me that feeling. When I really thought about why, I think it's a pretty clear answer. The game feels rushed.
Never in my life have I played a game with this many montages. I can't fathom it was done for any reason besides wanting to save time and actually complete this. Which is fair, but I think it has harmed the game as a result. It feels like literally almost every date begins, gets cut short with a montage, and them abruptly jumps to the next event. This SUCKS dude. I want to watch these cute dates play out in their entirety. Especially in a dating sim, this is what would have gotten me attached to the characters. But that's not all. The game also thought "hey lets have like three time skips for no reason." So now all these sudden love bombs, established feelings, offscreen events, yaddah yaddah, you're just supposed to accept. Great if that works for you, but it makes these relationships feel so empty to me.
My last point of contention is specifically with the harem path. I was kind of disappointed by it. For a large majority of the game it didn't feel like an actual polyamory, but rather you're just on four solo paths that occasionally all intertwine for group sex. There were very few scenes outside of sex that showcased them all doing things even as simple as hanging out together. There were scenes, like Heide's dance, where I thought "cool, one of the other girls are here to support her, where are the rest?" as just one example. When you did get those scenes towards the end of the game, most of it was montaged yet again.
With that out of the way, is this game awful? Not at all. Genuinely I think the girls are pretty cute and they do have personality, which is why I'm actually disappointed with how the game handled itself. The MC, while a little bland, also wasn't bad to play as. The sex scenes specifically are probably the best thing about this game, and I did like the inclusion of some lesbian stuff. Renders looked good and the animations weren't bad either. I will also say I turned the music off because I disliked most of the song choices.
TLDR: It's going to sound a little ironic considering this is a VN, but I want to watch the romance build up and play out proper, not be given constant summarized slideshows in the form of montages combined with multiple time skips. I do give props for this being a complete experience, but by the end of the game I found myself just skipping around to see the ending as I had lost interest.
Great writing, beautiful renders, a story that makes sense, is interesting and captivating.
A beautiful game, I enjoyed every moment of playing it.
What stood out for me was the length of it. It isn't as long as most other games and because of that it never runs the risk to feel boring or tiring to play. Sure, because of the short length, there is a thing or two that only makes so much sense but can be easily overlooked and doesn't disturb the pace of the game or how it feels.
5 stars are more then earned for this game in my opinion.
It was pretty good right up until the end, but the final chapter was a slog to get through - excessively long sex scenes, every woman squirted like their pussy was a god damned decanter, and in a lot of places it was clear that the artist didn't bother reading/listening to the direction the writer gave for a particular scene (wearing a light-coloured sweater and blue jeans when told to dress dark, and taking off a hoodie when he's not wearing one, for example).
Writing was a bit frou frou in general (especially during the confrontation with Joey Smiles), and on a lot of paths it didn't make sense that in the dream before said final showdown showed Joey Smiles by face when the protagonist apparently had no idea what he looked like.
After the drama was resolved (in the first 30-60 minutes), the rest of it was basically an art gallery to click through; it felt far longer than it needed to be, and just came across as the team going "oh shit, we made our patrons wait over a year for the release - we can't just put out an ending chapter that takes 1.5 hours to get through" and padded it out with unneeded images and sex scenes.
All in all, a fairly average game. Had some bright moments, but felt in the end like the devs were sick of it and wanting to move onto their next game.
First of all I wish to thank the Dev and the crew. I loved Bare Witness.
I have some minor issues.
All the girls just jump on the mc, no efforts, too easy.
I would have liked the chance to choose the girls i want in the harem.
I think the sex scenes would be much better with moaning.
That been told, I will rate 5 stars, story is decent, i loved the girls, the renders are great and so the animations.
Sorry for my english.
There have been a lot of games that have been shared on this website but unfortunately with the sheer volume of games there will always be good games and bad games. Personally, I find it the most disappointing to see games rush to end, or stop development. I found this game in completion, so I cannot judge based on the game's development. But what I found so nice was how much care the developer took in how he ended the romance. It was not just a single render with a title card but a series to reward the chosen path. I found myself playing the game multiple times just to see how the ending differ.
TLDR: Renders and Characters are beautiful. Consideration put into endings puts this game on the top of my list.
Excellent AVN, I like the overall feel good story with the LI's. The renders are great and the lewd scenes are very good. Definitely one to check out. If you dont like mushy I love yous, you might get an overload of it but I was ok with it. I will be looking forward to the next project from AlterWorlds
I really don't get the high rating of this game. I understand that much effort should be put in the sex scene since it is a porn game. And there are a lot of sex scene in this game. I am all for that. Trust me, my username says it all. But there is a reason people like me choose to read a visual novel like this rather than just straight up watch porn. We want the story, the connection to the character, the chase of the girl and of course the sex. This game barely provide the first 3 things.
Story and connection to the character are barely there. The dev kind just brushed off the background of MC, and his story never develop further than just a hot guy with big cock stuck in WitSec.
The chase of the girl? forget about it. There are no chase. All the girl practically throw themselves at you. Zenda, the girl you met on the train, called YOU and asked you out. Heidi, who had male stalker problem in the past agree on a male roommate without a second thought cuz she thinks you are cute. Which you then can choose to behave like the male stalker by creeping on her while her girlfriend eating her out. Not only will she condone it, but also encourage it. Athena, who is a hardcore biker chick with ton of tattoo and kinda standoffish in the beginning thinks she falling for you after a few online gaming sess with her. The cougar Val, will have sex with you at your first encounter in the afternoon after lunch. Your cousin Sadie, already had a crush on you for the longest time when the game start. Mora invited YOU to play DnD at her apartment after she uber you a few times. No chase for what so ever.
And there are so many "I love you" in this game and there are no build up to it. There is also a time skip element that make everything feel even more rush. Nothing feel earn. And If you choose the harem path (4 girls), you literally say "I love you" to each of the girls, one after another. They will say it back to you and they will say it to each other too lol
Most of the effort were put in the sex scene, and they are alright. Nothing special, most of the animation are quite stiff actually.
This is an excellent game and is worth playing if you're into the art. The devs put a ton of subtle visual detail into every scene, which doesn't always get commented on in the text, so it makes the game feel a lot more alive. It's not always perfect, but the sheer amount of content given to each different route is astonishing. The girls all feel incredibly unique and their quirks come across very well visually. Show dont tell and what not. This game also has some of the longest and most satisfying sex scenes ever, particularly in the poly routes.
That being said, the game does suffer from a little bit of girl bloat. IMO this game should have just focused on the four MASH girls and cut the rest. The biggest strength of Bare Witness is it's poly routes and while what we got was amazing, I would have liked to see more nonsexual interactions between S/M and A/H. I understand that it happens in timeskips, but it makes the initial groups scene feel a little off. Everything after that is amazing, though.
Shoutouts to the "Cuck Queen," who was, surprisingly, best girl.
Well this is an excellent implementation of the tired old genre of Harem games. What sets this game apart is that it (mostly) avoids falling into the traps of the genre.
The characters and the relationships develop organically and you don't need to suspend your sense of reality to follow the story. The writing and art are extremely proficient.
If I had to criticize it, I'd say that this doesn't apply to all of them. The game works best if you go with Athena/Zadie and maybe Mora and/or Sadie. Even then, there's a few disconnects in the story. Sadie's suddenly just there in a few scenes and a lot of important developments happen off screen for her. (Trying not to spoil anything here)
Zenda really doesn't make much sense and is more along the line of "Magic Dick MC" trope. The story would be better without her and more focus.
Either way, it's refreshing to see that something this good can come from this genre. It's just an excellent game.
