VN - Ren'Py - Completed - Bare Witness [Steam Build] [AlterWorlds]

My first time rating. This game is excellent. Enjoying the story and humour as much as the renders. Looking forward to seeing where it's going. Excellent job by all involved. Mora and Sadie are my faves so far.

Such a great read. I love the housemates harem route personally. The way the little blonde firecracker is written is really well done. The renders are amazing and any time that an author will go the extra mile to add a soundtrack just makes the experience that much more enjoyable. Look forward to more updates.

play v0.4 with french trad (which explains my poor written English, sorry)

story: 3/5 The story didn't captivate me; I'm not a big fan of "drama" in this kind of game. I prefer it when there's more comedy (there is some here, though). However, it's worth noting that everything is still sufficiently well-written that I didn't feel the need to fast-forward through the scenes.

characters: 4/5 The characters are sufficiently different both in terms of their physical appearance and their personalities. Moreover, almost all of them have a well-developed background that makes us believe in/understand the character.

sex scene: 5/5 They are in good quantity, but above all, they have an excellent length and are extremely well-written, which makes them very erotic.

renders: 4/5 The locations don't seem empty and have beautiful details. The characters are quite well done, although there's something that bothers me about certain faces, but I can't quite put my finger on what it is. The clothing is also quite varied, but sometimes their "positioning" on the characters can look very strange.

animation: 3/5 I really hesitated to give it a 4. There are a good quantity of scenes, and the loops are decent, although I would have liked them to last a bit longer. It's smooth, but I do find that there's a real problem with certain movements that look really fake (the bodies not really "merging" but more like two different animations that have been stuck together).

sound: Good music, with few pauses.

gameplay: 5/5 Truly excellent for this type of game, with many important choices.

Has Heart, but also a lot of Flaws

Bare Witness is a fun play that delivers on all the necessities of a decent, semi-memorable adult VN. There's an abundance of attractive love interests, a decent variety of cast and situations, and enough animations to keep the scenes going. I'm glad to have found it.

The artwork is very nice, which is probably the best word to describe it. None of it lets down the experience, but also very little of it is exceptional, meaning don't play this game if you need to be blown away by the visuals. It'll get the job done, and there are ever some scenes that are very good, but it's all pretty generic. Lighting and textures are average, though there's at least some appreciable consideration for them. Some faces, like Heidi or the brief cameo of Mira, can look a little strange, but there's some care put into their expressions and posing.

The overall premise of the story is not unique: it's another "young man sets out on his own to start a new chapter of his life" story. He starts school and meets a host of beautiful women who are all over his dick instantly. Despite being bland, goofy, and utterly unexceptional, the game treats him as if he's a Golden God with a Midas Dick. It's the same power fantasy we've seen countless times before, though at least this one is done reasonably well, without drowning us in exposition or treating the audience like we're idiots.

The twist comes from him being in Witness Protection with an active crime family hunting him and his father. It only kind of works, as most of the time it feels tacked on. You never even see him meeting with local PD or any marshals. Everything is handled through the dean of the MC's college, for reasons nobody understands. Nor does it show how he's sustaining his lifestyle. He's not employed (something expected of most adults in witness protection), nor does it show him getting money from his parents. Yet he's able to buy things and [presumably] afford rent.

Everything about the witness protection arc just feels kind of useless and arbitrary. It's either there solely for plot contrivance or convenience, or as a vessel for the MC to show the barest amount of emotion.

Even when his father is ultimately killed, it just doesn't land. The MC is sad for a bit, then there's a time skip, and it's barely brought up again except as a vehicle to express MC's manpain, usually with immediate sympathy and sexual healing to follow.

The writing is passable, but takes a lot of porn liberties. The MC is simply assumed to be uncontrollable horny by default, especially at the idea of lesbians (because they exist to titillate men, obviously...). Him being creepily interested in the idea of his roommates sleeping with each other is viewed as a positive quality, at least for the sake of advancing his relationship with them.

He's also immediately walking around in his underwear in a house where they loudly have sex the first night he moves in. Valeria is instantly willing to jump on MC's dick and claim him because... he's single in a bar? No clue, just tack it on to the growing number of conveniences brought about by the game's power fantasy premise.

Everyone is already in love after a couple of dates. Relationships move at mach speed in Plattsburgh, apparently, because no one finds this weird. The game also seems to encourage this breakneck pace, because the only choice in the game is go along with it (earning positive points) or rejecting the girl (negative points or ending the route), which ostensibly defeats the point of playing the game. If you do go along with it, and of course you will or you'd be playing a different game, be prepared to be drowned under an avalanche of I love you's from every girl involved.

Thankfully, the characters are all acceptable. In the giant pot of middling soup that is adult VNs, they're probably above average. Valeria is a highlight, as a mysterious and intelligent older Latina woman, though somewhat underused in the story that defaults to reducing women to their trauma and sex appeal. Mora is relatable and sympathetic, though it's difficult to identify her personality beyond workaholic (by necessity) and tabletop nerd. Zenda is a well-traveled posh girl with a domineering exterior but a gooey center. The other characters are a little less well rounded, but no one is egregiously written. They'll keep you in the story and not a whole lot more.

Most characters in the game have a few personality traits or quirks and they're consistently played up, but relatively few dimensions outside of that. That's how you get constantly horny Heidi, or never swears Sadie (outside of all the times she does), or always gaming Athena. I get it, since all of the characters are completely smitten with the MC and are all a part of an ensemble cast, it's difficult to give them a variety of traits and a depth of personality, but they need something more than just "hopelessly in love with MC" to draw you in.

The game delivers on having a "harem", or rather a poly relationship with the MC in an established relationship with up to 4 women at the same time. But as much as the developer wants to harp on "the tag is right", it's not really a harem game, emphasis on the game part. The distinction is akin to a role playing game and a game where you have some random player stats.

A harem game expects you to romance all or most of the love interests in a single playthrough. It doesn't mean, "there's a poly relationship somewhere in the jungle of LIs, along with a bunch of other girls who are unwittingly exclusive." Games like Bare Witness too often presume their content is interesting enough that players will make a half-dozen playthroughs for each combination of girl.

Yet, they rarely are. And this game is not an exception.

In fact, several of the best love interests—Valeria, Zenda, and the often-sidelined-but-still-on-the-splash-screen Nicole—are completely absent on the harem route. Even if you get in a relationship with all 4 girls in the poly, you're missing a huge chunk of the game, and some of the best scenes in the VN. Meanwhile if you pursue Val or Zenda exclusively, you miss out on a supermajority of scenes. It's ultimately very disappointing.

Games are all about the user experience. Realism is good, though consistency is better. It's easy to suspend disbelief if the game follows through on its premises, even if there's some liberties taken in world building or character arcs. The important part is that the experience of the player is preserved.

For instance, you can have a game that requires choice between love interest A or love interest B (in this case, Zenda vs Val or Athena/Heidi), but the choice itself should be made apparent to the player. In the moment, not fifty slides in the future when you're forced to close a route. This is especially true in a game where the love interests represent the majority of the gameplay. Arbitrarily locking players out of content they want to see is simply not fun gameplay. And a game will always live and die by its gameplay merits.

I don't have a problem with a game saying that you can either romance Valeria or Zenda. But it is frustrating when there's zero indication that these are competing routes (in fact, just the opposite, with how much Valeria insists that it's just casual fun) and then, all of a sudden, they're competing and exclusive. If the developers don't want to submit to the ultimate harem power fantasy (despite already writing a power fantasy MC), it would make more sense write two competing routes: a harem of Athena/Heidi/Sadie/Mora and one with Valeria/Zenda/Nicole, and you would only need 2 playthroughs to essentially see all the main content. As it stands right now, Zenda and Val feel like loose appendages in an erotic novel that depends on its LIs.

This feels especially egregious because the main poly contains some of the least developed women. Athena likes video games. Heidi likes dancing and sex. Sadie is a cousin who want to get in shape and is head over heels for the MC. So much of their personalities are wrapped up in liking each other and liking the MC that they can sometimes come across as flat, especially in contrast to the more meticulously developed Zenda or Val. But if you pursue either of those two you're essentially locking yourself out of at least 75% of the rest of the game. It's a feels bad, either way.

I understand the developers' desire for their game to have replay value, but ultimately these decisions hurt the game more than they help it. A linear VN without stats, RPG elements, roam, variance, or radiant events is simply not a good vessel for getting someone to play the same game through many playthroughs, especially one with the harem tag. No one wants to see the same scenes over and over because of FOMO for another girl that they thought they should've been able to romance in the first place.

The other major flaw with the game is its pacing. There's a number of timeskips between the chapters. While you can appreciate that the game doesn't try to condense a whole-ass marriage into a week's time, having an arbitrary title card with "several weeks later" doesn't really do anything. Not to mention it creates this kind of staccato storytelling where nothing fucking happens for weeks at a time and then six events happen in a week's time. It would be much more reasonable to intersperse events more evenly and let time pass in the background.

Instead, it tries to combine real time (e.g. the MC experiences each day during the non-skipped gameplay) with months of time skipped in between, and trips on its own feet. Combined with how quickly all of the LIs fall in love—not to mention the MC himself, if he's playing their respective romance route—it still feels rushed, even with the timeskips.

Having said all this, the game has a lot of nice qualities. There's an earnest, genuine attempt at telling love stories here. It tries to make the characters sympathetic and likable, replete with showing them go through actual emotions, and there's some genuine tender moments. While there's an abundance of lewd scenes, the developer also puts effort in setting them up and writing through them, so they don't feel out of place or abrupt. There's also a decent variety of scenes, so it genuinely feels like the MC is exploring and living out his life in this small college town with his multiple girlfriends.

The game is worth playing because of the amount of effort that clearly went into the creating it. But the storytelling and characters could use a little bit more seasoning. The developer is one to watch, especially if they improve in a few key areas.

A solid 3.5/5.

This is an excellent game with a bunch of sexy models. The plot is simple, yet effective in this genre of games. Lots of potential LIs, sexy poses, sexy clothing...In one word it would be: entertaining!
The character development is slow paced but I don-t mind. IMO in the end everything makes sense. Generally, the potential this game has is big. The renders are amazing, I wish it had more animations though!
Keep up the good work!

Great story so far, and like it says YOU CAN NOT have them all.. at least at the same time and honestly that is refreshing. Great graphics, and writing. Looking forward to where the story goes from here.

(Version Reviewed: v0.4b)

What I enjoyed:
+ Art. Excellent work on the artistic side. Both the environment and the characters look good. There is an issue of the renders not matching the narrations, but overall the art is a win for the game.
+ Animations. The animations aren't long, but whatever is on there is pretty smooth.
+ Music. The track selection is a strong point in the game. A few great vocal ones too.
+ Lewds. It was pretty erotic. Not a fan of the 3+ girl orgies though.

Meh:
= Characters. All the characters are not fleshed out. The game spends a lot of time with Mora, Val and Zenda while Athena, Heidi and Sadie are somewhat sidelined for majority of the game. Out of the fleshed out characters, I found Mora to be likeable, Val to be somewhat desperate + forgettable and Zenda to be annoying. Athena and Heidi do not have much of a personality going on for them apart from their love for each other and the MC. Never could get into Sadie's storyline. Perhaps because since she is MC's cousin but extremely smitten with him.
= Premise. MC is in witness protection. But, we do not explore the intricacies of the limits that he's restricted to or that of his fear that he should feel about those who wish to kill him. I feel the devs should've kept this game as a slice of life story and used the time spent to develop the witness protection storyline into developing the LI storylines..
= Romance. The romance with Athena was pretty good with them slowly bonding on their shared interest in video games to their love of Heidi. The romance with Heidi was my favorite, but there isn't much development in it. She's pretty much smitten ever since she saw the photo of who would be applying for a room. The romance with Mora was very well written with a good bit of character development and shared interests being displayed. The relationship with Sadie was not my favorite. She's MC's cousin and she's desperately in love with him. Not my cup of tea. The romance with Val was forgettable and she comes off too hard at the beginning of the story. The romance with Zenda was poor. She forces the MC to drop every other thing and friendships that's important to him to romance her and she does not appreciate if MC is nice to someone else either. She just wishes to control him under her thumb.

What I did not enjoy:
- Plot. The story is not the best out there. MC is in witness protection, but rarely acts like it. He even goes out of state without even informing the local PD. The emotions that he displays are rarely impactful. He loses someone important to him and he's sad for about 5 renders before he's living a normal life once again. This event is barely ever mentioned again.
- Time skips. This was one of the most frustrating things about the game for me. The game essentially employs time skips of a few weeks between each chapter. The meat of the relationship building is told in a few renders and a small narration of what MC did with the specific LI. The game could've used another chapter or two worth of content to develop the story in time in between each update.
- Cast Size. I think the story could've been told in a much better way if it were just 3-4 characters. BW not only has 6 LIs. It also has 2 other semi-important characters in Val's and Zenda's paths.

Overall I'd rate it at 6.5/10. The art is excellent, but the writing needs a lot of work to be considered as a good game. It's worth playing for the fap though.

How can I jerk off when I'm busy feeling?

'Bare Witness' introduces you to a host of interesting, emoptionally complex and endearing characters that will both put you in in a bind as to who you love the most, but also get you deeply involved in their stories to a point of incredible sympathy.

The game features an intersting overarching narrative for the main character that had me twisting my brain to figure out what was going on before it was revealed, while also enjoying the ride the game took me on.

The girls you meet are all emotionally rich and interesting and had me thinking deep about who to go with when crossroads arose in the case of two vying for the MCs attention.

The scene renders in this game are high quality and was an absolute pleasure to experience, further augmenting the fantsatic story on display.

All in all, 5 stars. Stupid sexy touching game.

This game is fire: Breathes you in,
sucks up all the oxygen in and around you,
then burns you to a crisp in a matter of minutes.

The awesome girls that munch on your crispy jello reddish self
as you startle and feel a thousand fold their sweet caresses,
their ample kisses and soothing love words,
as they will guide you through a very standoffish,
deep adventure of battling your own insecurities,
baffle in awe at the consumate devoted nature and interest
of all the flavored honeys around, fall hard for them one by one
into a rollercoaster of emotions and tumult of desires, wants, needs
and powerful scenes making your experience a bundle of joy
and great ample feelings of fulfillment all throughout.

Finished the chapter 4 just recently and have to say that this game has built with one of the most lustful fantasy in mind.

It may not be the best in class when it comes to writing, in-depth character development including MC, but models and intimate scenes are near perfect in class and last in pretty satisfactory lenght.

Only thing that some might have wished for is more natural progress in overall character and releashinsihp build up because it can feel rushed most of the time. But given the solid foundation for each chapter length (the game is going to be completed with upcoming chapter 5) vs number of girls and paths you can pick and choose, I think this would've been an unfair request for what it is.

Very pleasing to look at models, believable anatomical features and proportions are most distinctive and strongest suit of Bare Witness. There are handfull of popular and already established titles you know of out there fails to deliver this appealing aspect. Other devs needs to learn from Bare Witness and stop adopting unrealistic anatomical proportions from hentai animes into their realistic looking projects. Avoiding to stop body features sliders at far end is enssential for creating beliaveble characters in games that seek realistic look.

Rating per-game feature:

• Render quality consistency : 4/5
• Music tracklist and quantity: 5/5
• Animations: 4/5
• Story and character build up: 3/5
• Model likness: 5/5
• Realistic model proportions: 5/5

Bare Witness is in my current top 3 AVNs of those I've recently discovered, and I am both excited and sad that the final chapter is dropping soon. Here's what I love about the game:

1) The characters. Each one is compelling and unique, and they often defy cliched expectations. For example, Athena fronts as a tough badass girl, but she's a vulnerable person underneath, not a girl power stereotype. They really come off like they have their own lives and personalities, and there are reasons to fall in love with any and all of them.

2) The graphics are gorgeous, especially the girls and most especially the sex scenes. It might seem like a generic thing to praise an AVN for, but a lot of love and care obviously went into these renders.

3) Some might feel that the pacing on BW is breakneck, but in my opinion it's just lean. A lot of AVNs pad out their runtime with constant clicking without much new information -- BW is not one of those. Every scene suits a purpose, and the ones that you want to last do, while the stuff that doesn't matter is dispensed with quickly. It's tight.

4) The sex scenes are some of the best I've seen, not just graphically, but in terms of emotional content and realism. Characters don't talk like porn robots. They talk and crack jokes during sex. They have fun! Too many games fall back on cringeworthy porn dialogue and it's such a relief to have a game that doesn't.

Anyway, Bare Witness will leave a hole in your life once you're done playing. Highest recommendation.

Such an underrated game. The characters feel so alive with each one of them having their own quirks and you really feel that you care for each one of them.
This game needs to be way higher in the ranks because it has everything you need to this game genre

I've never played an AVN with so many scenes per update for each branching path. The LI models are outta this world, and their bodies could make your head explode. Additionally, the writing is engaging, and I never felt like I was stuck in an exposition dump. The character back stories are mostly unfolded by actually showing the scenes briefly instead of staring at the characters while they tell their story.

However, my only complaint comes down to repetitive positioning of characters during sex scenes because there is a lot of missionary in the game, and sometimes it's the entire scene. The love interests tend to have these amazing bodies, but we don't get to see the view from the back as much as I'd like.

I do not understand how this game has such a great rating. The story feels bland. The story contains witness protection, which can be cool but when it comes up it comes out of nowhere. The sex scenes feels bland, when it says its animated it is barely so. Overall the game feels bland.

Bare Witness is one of those games where I think it does better at interactions with love interests than actual story progression. Don't get me wrong, the story is incredibly unique, but the execution so far has been majorly flawed. The dialogue is decent, the renders are good, and it's overall quite fun, but I wish there was a little more... spice. Hopefully in the final update, I'll change my tune.

Really good story and artistry is fantastic! I can't believe it took me this long to find this game. I will be looking forward to the upcoming chapters! Cool move to shout out other games during the end credits. Checking out their games as well.

So after playing game i wanna say one simple thing wtf is happened this game ? like its was not 5/5 game but still its was good start was interesting yada yada then boom its turned into bad really bad game.

Story not good nor a characters .

Every chick wants MC D and nothing more they falling for him like nothing makes no sense here.

Mc classic tall and handsome plus he goes to gym yeah theres more to say here ? go to gym eat protein powder/vitamin become fake and girls gonna love you yeah every story of collage game out here.

Mc is boring nothing about him makes sense or interesting its just boring.

I dont wanna even talk about girl here they are even worse than MC they have no personality they fall for mc instantly after that just SEX nothing more.

I have no idea why this game have high score with this boring story/mc i trusted 4.5 star here and played then i regret ever playing it i am not even joking its not bad but its boring its same as other 100 collage games handsome tall MC gets girls intantly no one question anything then story happens.

İ give 4 star for quality of character models and nothing more STORY MC OR GİRLS JUST BORİNG AND THEY JUST CARBON COPY OF EACH OTHER.

I am not insulting author or game its just boring nothing more i miss normal characters i really miss them not every MC needs to go gym or needs to be handsome/tall yada yada they just need to be not annoying nothing more if you like this kind thing play it if not its up to you.

Bare Witness is a choice-based VN where you play as a socially inept sex god as he goes to college and a dozen different girls throw themselves at him.

Choice-based is honestly being a little generous. There's no resource management, stat grinding, or tricky dating where you need to actually impress the girls. The choices are simple to the point of being opt-in or opt-out of the various girl's paths. There are a handful of harem paths in the game, but some girls won't be cool with that. Outside of the choice in girls, the story is completely linear, who you end up with won't change the overarching plot save for a scene or two or maybe an ending.

Fortunately, the girls are very pretty and rather interesting. They all have stories and personalities and getting to know them is a pretty good time. There are excellent sex scenes available with each and even some three and more somes. I can't complain about the sex or girls.

The rest of the game tends to come across as a non-fiction power fantasy though. The MC is shredded with a massive dick, literally every woman around him checks him out, four of the women in the story are willing to share him, and he is simultaneously confident and humble in a mixture that frequently comes across as unrealistic. Bad things happen in the story, but rarely anything that the MC had control over, and even those things tend to be resolved in his favor.

Overall, Bare Witness is a good game that's definitely worth playing. There's a pretty good amount of content that'll take you several hours to get through, especially if you follow all the paths. Nevertheless, there's just a little too much unrealistic harem/power fantasy to the game for me to unreservedly love it. If that's your cup of tea however, I'm sure you'll love it.

A very good story sometimes struggling to get out of a few logic loops.

TL;DR : play with a walkthrough recommended.

I've been playing this for a while now, exploring all the different routes. If you follow the right route, you get a comprehensive story with a lot of lewd scenes (nothing very kinky for now). But it's nice and actually sort of wholesome.

The renders are pretty good, some very good writing in there, with attention to small detail.

But if you are not playing with a walkthrough, you might sometimes get scenes where you go 'huh ? But I broke up with her yesterday!' (happened with Mora) or scenes that seem a bit 'weird' as they don't really fit with the previous one.

By playing different routes, I discovered more of the story for each character, but not everyone wants to do that.

Anway, I think this game could do phenomenal if it was better playtested - meaning that you play test more extensively, and fix the logic errors, and fill up some (plot) holes if you follow a different route.

First play and I can only say the banner that I saw sucked me automaticly the the devs game!
After I saw these very beautiful woman and read a bit I can´t otherwise and must DL it .
The playthrough so far hade made so much fun and it is so soothing, with all the different personas from the chars and they all are so lovley in all ways.
I really can´t wait for the next update and play further the even very nice story with the even really good dialogs in the game.

I hope to see "name_here?" (banner 4th from the left) Heidis and my roommate more often with less makeup, then she looks even cuter then she even is!

I can only recommend this beautiful game to you guys.