VN - Ren'Py - Bare Witness [v0.4b] [AlterWorlds]

After seeing Athena make a cameo appearance in Come Home I knew this would be my next stop and I gotta say I've no regrets about it.

The writing and overall narrative is pretty good thus far, though it kinda plays second fiddle to the interpersonal relationships of the characters and a whole lotta fuckin'. Though the cliffhanger ending of the last chapter gives me some hope that things will get back on track.

That said as good as the writing is I was irked by some perceived inconsistencies. For instance MC is seemingly known to be a bit of a gamer and early on gets roped into playing an MMORPG with Athena. Later another girl asks him to play an RPG.

Now if she specified a TTRPG right off the bat maybe MCs confusion would be justified. But she just says RPG and doesn't elaborate until further in the conversation. He should, gamer that he is, at LEAST know that little three letter abbreviation. He should NOT be unironically guessing that she's talking about rocket propelled grenades.

Also there's a point where MC talks about that ginger chick being the only Uber driver in town pretty much right after being driven into town by someone else. If he was meant to be joking or exaggerating it didn't come across that way in the writing.

There could well be more examples but those are the only two that jumped out at me as feeling especially wrong. Anyway..l

The renders are great and the animations largely satisfactory.

Perhaps the biggest compliment I have for the game is that I didn't wind up muting the music as I often do. I don't know if I could go as far as saying that it actively enriched my experience, but it wasn't obnoxiously out of place or overly grating. Can't really ask for more than that.

Anyhoo - great stuff, well worth a gander.

[Reviewed 0.4b]

For a game first posted exactly 3 years ago, it still holds up well with high production values and a compelling story. It is undeniably inspired by that massively-popular, college-bro, multiple love interest other title and it doesn't quite measure up in overall quality, but there's not much wrong with this one.

Premise: A young man is off to college with a new identity as part of a witness protection program after watching a grisly murder -- but can't shake his past while pursuing new relationships.

The Good ()

• Really high production value -- the game just looks great
• Gorgeous models and renders
• A diversity of love interests with different personalities, ages, body types and kinks
• You can pursue multiple love interests and form a poly- / harem relationship if interested
• Well-executed cinematography and visual storytelling
• An original story that has familiar elements / setting but still feels fresh
• Characters are generally sweet, good-natured and easy to root for
• Hours and hours of content
• Charged, erotic H-scenes with smooth, seamless animation

The Not-So-Good ()

• Hasn't been updated since Dec 2022 - dev's Patreon suggests something is around the corner, but with 4 chapters in 3 years, don't expect anything after the next update until 2025.
• It's possible to close off certain LI paths early in the story in ways I didn't realize were happening in the moment
• Some aspects of the story aren't super realistic and the main LIs quickly come around on the idea of a harem-type arrangement

Overall, an outstanding title with a lot of content and beautiful character models. Can't go wrong.

The renders in the promo material caught my eye, and the scene on the train, where you start, looks ok too. But everything after the initial part looks horrible.
The story is ok so you can get through quite a bit without getting bored too much.
The renders get much better in the later chapters, just a pity you have so suffer through some bad stuff before getting to some acceptable level of renders.
The music is ok, not great, Sometimes it feels a bit easy sleeping with women

nice girls, with good written characters. Also really nice written Storyline.
Real benefit of this game are the details: like little movement in the background in each scene, which makes the game sless static (except the shower scene...). The Dev really put some effort in it, you don't see it in many games.

Far too few games have a proper polycule rather than a bland MF-only harem. This game does it very very well.

Can't comment about the other side characters who aren't part of the polycule because I didn't play their routes, heh.

If it was for the looks alone, id give it 6/5 stars, especialyl the girls are damn good.

My biggest problem is i devolves from a run of the mill story into "fuck anyone, everywhere, all at once (literally)". The last chapter basically skips anything coming close to story and goes through some events fucking around without any real choices.

It is a ok play and honestly miles above 99% of most other games, but nothing to write home about.

PS ... stayed for Heidi and was not disappointed.

Starts strong and manages to get better with every update in quality and plot. The girls are all beautiful and every aspect is made sure to be paid attention to and doesn't detract from the overall quality.

Recommend this game to fans of other high-quality AVNs and am ranking this among them, as well as adding it to my watchlist for the final episode to see how it ends!

Wow. Just wow. This is hands down the best AVN I have ever played. I'm extremely sad I've finished what is currently available. I'm not super active on forums, I don't really post things or rate things, but this game is that good, I had to give some love. Let's break it down:

Writing 5/5:
This game hits so many beats. I felt all of the feelings (the music helped, see the music section). I was so invested in all the characters, and genuinely liked the MC, which is rare for me. The main story is compelling, and all the LIs are unique and have their own voice.

Music 5/5:
I had to lead with the first two categories that I think are the best. The music really takes this game to another level. No exaggeration, no figure of speech, this game has the best soundtrack of any AVN that I've ever played. I cried both happy, sad, and laughing tears from the combination of the writing and music.

Renders & Animations 4/5:
Now this is very much my own personal preference here. I docked a point just because there are some angles that I'm not a fan of, and moments where there is some sexy talk that I'd like to see over an active animation rather than a still image. Quality wise, everything is top notch.

General/Personal Notes: Just gonna put it all in a spoiler tag to be safe.

Story: ★★★
Dialogue: ★★★
3D Models: ★★★★
Sex scenes: ★★★★

Additional Comments: The music is 50/50 meaning some of
the music I really liked and some of it I'd mute. The models have
a more realistic look, and even if a woman in the game does
have large breast they are not the typical ginormous goofy
breasts often seen in porn games. The game does have sex
scene animation which I liked.

Some of the best scenes in the game were the snow
event with Athena, music fit perfectly for the scene.
Also the event where MC and Mora meet with her ex-bf
and the event reminded me of something from a soap
opera episode and the music fit perfectly. I can tell
that the developer put in a lot of work on the game.

Not good and not bad, but a masterpiece compared to 99% of DAZ VNs.

Writing is competent. I didn't notice any dodgy spelling or grammar. The story is boring. The characters are bland.

Renders are fine. There's a slight bump in quality from chapter 3.

3.5/5.0

Great graphics and great stories. First time i played, i was totally into the story. I just can't believe it the devs' first game.
They kept improving release after release and are active on their Discord
Keep going gents

Review of version 0.4

I have rather mixed feelings.

Choices - Only when it comes to girls/relationships, although with one girl the dev heavily ignores our choices, which leads to pointless consequences that I as a player eliminated (explanation in the spoiler section).

Story - Basically there is none here, we get some information about the MC's past and that's pretty much it, then we jump around events because the girls keep inviting us somewhere, you can refuse invitations, then we get a black screen with the day and the fact that I have nothing to do, then we wake up the next day.

Characters - They basically fall in love or want to seduce us the moment we meet them. We can meet several, but at some point we have to choose one.

Graphics - Very good.

Music - Very fitting.

MC - A cool guy, nothing to complain about, the big drawback is that the developer did not come up with the idea to give us the option to choose our last name, and we play our name Beck.... I had to dig through the code to name myself appropriately.

Choices that dev ignores which leads to consequences that I predicted, but happened anyway.
Spoiler alert.

I liked it!

The story is Great and god I love the chara design

Hell, there's even animation!
Render are great and Lightning is too !

The thing I wish this game had is jiggling, in the X scene, the animation seem stiff.

The things that I disliked are:

I couldn't get all the girls, god I worked hard and though I made sure I had a good path, (at some point I did, but then around the end of ep 4... all of that disapeared)... (its not a bad thing at all from the game tho, its me lol)

Anyway,
The game is going in a good direction, I really hope to see more of it, take your time, and I thank you for taking your time to show this and making this game

AlterWorlds delivers us a unique AVN, which honestly deserved a GOTY prize.
Bare Witness resonates with it's players, highly unlikely one who plays it won't feel connected with the MC or the LIs.
It's a rollercoaster ride of emotions and the perfect mix of drama and comedy that could make even the toughest person both laugh and cry in a single playthrough.

It deserves it's place on my top 3 AVN list
10/10 must play!!

Some lovely looking characters in this game. Mora, the ginger, is stunning.

Has an interesting background story that doesn't seem to actually have any relevance to the girls but doesn't detract from your aim of 'getting to know them.'

Pity 'cousin' was hard coded. Allowing the player to define that relationship would have made for a far more interesting interaction, I think.

One thing I really don't like is the way the game constantly forces you to let one of the girls down. Whenever you arrange to go out somewhere, you almost immediately get another invitation from another girl, nearly every bloody time, and have to choose between them. I know it's stated that this isn't your typical harem game but that method of choosing between them gets very old very fast.

Renders and animations are great, story is not the most engaging, below average/decent I guess. This VN has some scenes that are written really well on the different romance routes tho so its more about general plot.

Needs same love in the story as it has in the art. I may change my rating to 5 stars depending on ending.

Good adult VN, alot of different lewd content and scene variations.

The renderings are decent, though details like hand holding are sometimes awkward, and the facial expressions are more uncanny than the best. The animations are pretty stock and lack atmosphere after seeing 25 of them.

The storyline is full of VN tropes such as broken families, nympho mom-figures, hard-to-gets, and a weak non-sex plot. What dropped this from good for me is that the further I got in the story, the more rushed it felt. I sense the developer(s) bit off more branches than they could handle, and lines repeat or plot-points are dealt with in one screen. It all leads to a feeling of not caring about anyone by the time the end-version credits roll.

Quite a boring game, I don't know why the game is rated so high, there's literally nothing worth the hype here I went in with a few expectations looking at the posters and screenshots but it turned out to be a disappointment after all.

Story: 1/10.
There's no story at all. Its just teased at a few places that you're a witness for a murder and later shown in the newer chapters but that's it. There's no futher story or continuation to it. .it's just like a background thing . No one literally no one talks about MC's past or asks him so the story never progresses. As of now all you get is a typical teen mc that goes to college with a bunch of girls to explore and build relationships with that's pretty much it for the story all you do is talk to them and fuck, no seducing, no efforts in trying to win them over, girls just fall for you while talking about burgers and how mc almost peed himself in a situation.Nothing new. I figured story might progess as your relationship with characters improve but surprisingly story never progresses. Meet girls and fuck. That's it. But the writing sucks so the sex isn't worth in the game either.

Characters:6/10
I guess I'm being quite generous giving it a 6 considering most of the characters designs are just copied or too common. Athenas LI was in "being a dik" Todd the bartender guy is just CHAD without hairs from "being a dik" again. Most of the characters are written bad and annoyingly boring. And looks wise they're quite ugly and out of proportion at times. The renders improve in later updates but the writing still sucks.

Writing:1/10
Really disappointed here. Honestly i don't rate so low but i just can't bring myself to like any of it. The conversations between the characters was unbearabely dull. i wasn't invested in it at all, their humour and jokes didn't even effect me let alone make me chuckle. Idk how can the writing be so bad. Most of the times the conversations between characters are so boring and random idk how they lead the MC to sex. Its like literally everyone is throwing themselves at MC with little to no efforts from our side. Choices you make don't really affect the game much besides choosing a girls path. Story wise there's nothing to lose cause there's no story being told. Its just boring conversations with girls then straight up sex.

Sex scenes:4/10
They were too short, i don't really like sex scenes without a story or a plot to go with but i still gave it a shot. Out of proportions in few scenes and ass looks weird. Whoever decided zenda's pussy should be black did a really bad job, it looks like burnt or fried skin. There's like 1-2 sex positions and you'll see the same position in 3 different angles to make the scenes look longer. The writing at sex scenes was dull too. No foreplay no build up. Straight up sex. Typical"you're so big ,keep going" kind of writing at sex. Author really needs to start reading smut for better understanding of writing sex scenes.

Animations:7/10
Earlier in the game animations suck but they improve overtime and made them bearable for the most part but still bad writing couldnt save it. Animations are smooth but slow paced with just a few different angles.

Conclusion: i rate this game 1½/10. A lot of people here overestimate this game and it's story when there's little to nothing to be called a story. Storytelling needs a lot of work. Boring conversations between MC and girls needs to be fixed. Overall I don't recommend this game to anyone who's story driven like I am. If you like quick sex and girls that fall for you with little to no explanation or just cause they find you attractive for no reason at all just based off your looks or dick then this game is for you. However there's a lot more better games out there.

Ps:English isn't my first language but i understand it better than i can speak
Thank you<

A top notch game with a very good story and unique characters, you have a few different paths you can take for love interests and the renders are great, some of the female characters i have never seen in other games which is a plus.

Story. 9.5/10
Characters.8.5/10
Art/renders. 9/10
Sex. 8.5/10 needs more anal and some rimjobs.

I didnd't play until last chapter yet but 5 stars for my girl Heldi!!

PRO
-One of the best Character design AVN!
-My girl HELDI!!
-Choice do matter!
-Story are good
-Great Render
-Kissing scene are dammm
-Fap material

Cons
-Very short animation for one scene
-Too little teasing and too straight to sex for my taste
-A little more slowburn would be nice