VN - Ren'Py - Being a DIK [v0.11.1] [DrPinkCake]

I'll say this VN outexceeded my expectations, pushing the limits of Ren'Py engine beyond what I thought was possible. This game moved the bar up for me in VN category. Story is great, renders are clean, and I laughed my ass off quite time.

Conclusion: Play this.

One of the best adult games we have here with good story, engaging characters and a lot of funny moments that make the game so much better. I can't say that every episode was perfect but for me the first couple episodes are really good. The only problem i have with the game is that there are so many female characters that the mc can fell in love with and i hate how there is nothing going for them unless is drugs cheating and having sex with whoever they can. Also this becomes a problem cause trying to choose a different girl meaning new replay of the game and all you do there is 90% skip scenes and wasting hours hoping to see something new that it will be couple lines here and there.

Perfect example of how big budget means little if developer does not have enough brain to make a good game.
High quality renders does not matter if there is no story or interesting characters. What we have here is messy VN about gullible daddy's boy going to college and random shit hitting the fan.
Choices barely matter because whiny MC falls for every girl he meets and is pushed in to dumbest shit.
All the drama is nonsensical, the way characters act is often unnatural and forced.
Affinity system's only purpose is to get in the way, mini games are boring and annoying, free roams get old quickly.
My advice is to avoid this trash.

Being a DIK is easily one of the most popular and influential adult games of all time. At this point, it is widely considered a classic. That being said, it begs the question: does it still hold up today?

The answer is... not really.

Since Season 1, there have been substantial flaws with the game's design that have not been addressed or resolved:

• The free-roam sections are long-winded, tedious, and often just feel like a way to artificially stretch out the length of episodes.
• The mini-games aren't fun and, like the free-roam segments, are just a chore. They are technically skippable but you miss out on a lot of content if you do decide to turn them off.
• The sex scenes are incredibly outdated. Animations are stiff and lack real physics, there aren't any SFX, and I could probably find better erotic prose and dialogue in a 50 Shades of Grey novel.
• The story juggles way too many characters at once and the constant changes in perspective are nauseating. The rapid tone shifts from "funny" (that is, if you find crude slapstick and fart jokes humorous) to horny to melancholic give off the vibe that DrPinkCake thinks what he's writing here is way more intelligent and interesting than it actually is. At the end of a day, it's a game about dating and fucking college girls. We don't need entire subplots about drug dealing, legal problems with tuition, divorce, etc.

To make matters worse, in Season 3 - the latest season - almost all of these flaws are exacerbated and way more apparent. Free-roam segments are significantly longer, mini-games are more complicated and annoying, the story is more convoluted, and the sex scenes - while slightly higher quality - happen less often and are more spaced out from each other, especially if you are committed to only one girl's route. Typically, this would add replay value, but when the gameplay segments are as arduous as they are to get through, it makes going back to see the other branching paths a lot less enticing.

I do somewhat respect it for the amount of influence it had on the genre, but once you take the rose-tinted glasses off, you realize that despite the high-quality production and polish, Being a DIK is an incredibly flawed experience that has a clear lack of focus and suffers from character and feature creep. Over the past 6 years of working on this game, DrPinkCake seems to have learned all the wrong lessons. Here's a good one for free: Less. Is. More.

One of the best AVNs out there, with well deserved main stteam success. The plot is fun, the character models are good, but not necessarily the best out there. Where the game shines is in its writing and humor.

This is a solid game with a surprisingly engaging story. The writing feels consistent, the scenes look great, and the overall atmosphere works really well. The characters grow on you over time, which makes progressing through the game genuinely enjoyable.

BEING A DIK: The Official PatreonGamer Review

General Verdict: One of the most creative adult games ever made — and one of the saddest examples of watching creativity wither and die before our very eyes.

Oh boy, here we go... deep breath... okay, ready or not, here I come.

Although I normally dislike reviewing, much less giving an overall judgement to, games that are as of yet incomplete, it is probably high time (maybe even a bit overdue) to spill the proverbial five cents on Being A DIK, one of the most revered and admired AVNs of the past decade. I have at least two pretty good excuses: (a) judging by the current speed of Dr. PinkCake’s updates, it is less and less likely with each day that the game will ever be completed in my (or his, for that matter) lifetime anyway; and (b) running a little ahead of the story — I strongly believe that the game’s greatest, finest days are long since over, and I am not really sure what kind of miracle is needed to get it up to the benchmark-setting glory days of its first two «seasons». So while I certainly reserve the right to update and amend this review anytime in the future, I’ll also try to write it with a bit of a conclusive flair. If the future proves me wrong on any counts, hey, I’ll be glad to be proven wrong. (But I doubt it).

THE HAPPY PART: BECOMING A DIK

Its the gold standard, a no brainer 5 star.

Well polished, innovative, and with some surprisingly deep writing at times. Would recommend, without a doubt.

The only issue at this point is the pacing of updates, its really been a grind in recent years.

Honestly one of the most overrated VNs to date on this site. The reason why its gets raving reviews is due to the amount of content it ultimately has and while DPC is a pos irl you can't deny his effort.

Badik kick started the quintessential college VN format and also it caused every dev out there to think updating games in 1-2 years is normal. Lets go over the pros and cons.

You'll like this for:
-huge ensemble
-plenty of replayability
-characters that have more depth than porn writing
-production (sets, backgrounds, small details)

You'll hate this for:
-Riverdale levels of cringe regarding the plot and subplots.
-characters that nobody asked for getting alot of content (madame)
-insanely long wait times. 2 years
-aged renders and models, its not hitting the same when you realize just how out of date some of the models are, the writing carries them.
-huge file size for some VN, its literally bigger than any AA game on steam
-minigames and DPC's anti mod stance because he wants you to jerk him off.

One of the bast adult games I have played. Believable characters, college setting done almost perfectly, lots of decisions and branching paths, great dialoge, relatable themes... and hot girls
Huge Thank You to Developer for effort and ideas, keep doing the good work.
Few nitpicks, not worth mentioning, it could be, maybe a little better in some segments, but there are far far worse games to choose. All in all, not enough to decrease enjoyment of the game.
If you are in doubt, or searching for something special, that will pull you in,make you remember, or give you an inkling about that period of teen life, don't miss this, you won't be sorry.
Game is absolutely for reccomendation, one of a kind!

I don't usually like 3D games, but this one is so complete, with so many different scenarios and emotional involvement, that it deserves its place as the best erotic game. I've replayed the game four times and I'm still discovering new scenes. Its only flaw is that now I have to wait for the sequel.

It's really good game with soo many routes with good characters , renders are also good , nice friendship ( male) .

The one thing i fuking hated about this game was the mini games , wtf created those ? Why make those hard ? ( I don't know why they weren't loding fast like painting mini game on the fence) ,i fu*king hated it. It's a porn game ,just make simple games please.

tysm for these last episodes! Just wanted to say that Season 3 Compressed v0.11.1 (~4.5gb) has fully worked for me, so that def saved like 14gb of dls from other places!

Criticisms:
Episode 11 initially lagged quite a lot, like ton of CPU usage, then later was fine. I think it's cause of the snowfall animation (e.g. from the MC's room window and other places). I don't have anything nice to say about the fish minigame which feels like a pure money sink and actually no benefit at all -- like why would you offer player to sell the young rather than the already evolved...? I miss the longer time allowance for English, as well as letters temporarily disappearing as words are being built.

Positives:
Thank you for bringing back more story for my fav characters like . I found their dialogue really entertaining! Though the dev favored the first character over the second, what little of the second was nice to see!

In general the writing was quite entertaining, and aside from some odd "quick action" minigames that made me actually suffer on mouse-less laptop (in earlier chapters such as drinking maze or tennis), most character interactions were clever.

Some moments were painfully far-fetched, like . Most moments were much cleaner, and one could predict the affected characters from chosen actions.

Overall, ty for the tremendous effort, and five stars. Yes, maybe I'm criticizing a bunch, but only because I care! Will definitely tell my AVN-interested friends about Acting Lessons and Being a DIK.

[v. 0.11.1 - 3 complete seasons]

The best avn at the moment

You won't get bored till the middle of season 3. A lot of mini-games, enjoyable graphics, lots of good music and sounds to highlight different moods, exciting story with well-written dialogues and texts.

Some of the advantages become disadvantages especially in season 3.
Hidden objects without guide you won't find by yourself without spending huge amount of time carefully searching every scene.
New mini-games take your time without any reasonable meaning. Just to stretch out the episode. You won't make profit from aquarium maintenance even with every bought equipment. Party management looks cool at first glance but if you chose useless items and perks you should replay half of prolonged episode with other mini-games.
About choices and paths. You can't be a DiK and date with some girls. Even if you made them happy. You can't restore it later only replay from the 1st episode. And it's not finished yet. So to complete every path without rushing you should spend like month?
Like someone of the LIs said "If there are a too many parties they become boring and ordinary". The narrative pace gets lost with so many activities. And the most offensive thing is that you don't feel the impact of your actions.

Visual and graphics

Not great. Especially in sex scenes where girls look like plastic dolls with glossy layer.

Animation

Impressive. Animated glances create impression of motion capture. I think in ep.11 the author cut corners in many scenes.

Sound

Well-chosen tracks with sounds. Better could be full voiced dialogues but you know how expensive it would be.

Text, dialogues

Great. I can't find any disadvantages.

Gameplay, replayability

I like mini-games and free-roaming in games but in 3d season there are too many of them without great rewarding so it becomes boring and irritating therefore you'll want to turn it off on your second playthrough. And without guides it's nearly impossible to complete some of them.

Conclusion

The best AVN with great story, many activities and cool sound.

This game deserve to be the number 1 ranking in terms of likes. This game has comedy, good characters, good sex scenes, everything that you expect from an adult visual novel, the thing that I like the most about this game is the ability to give everyone nicknames to your choice, it is pretty realistic considering the fact that in real life we tend to give people nicknames if they are close enough. The only complain That I have for this game is the vast amount of dialogues. I am not a fan of reading too much. I understand that the dialogues are necessary for character buildup and story but there are a lot of ways you can condense a full paragraph into just few lines.

Overall, an excellent game. I admit, I'm looking for sex scenes in my game downloads from F95 Zone. Dr. Pink Cake (Dr.) interestingly provides a number of scenes that range from flirtation to quickies, to elaborate scenes allowing you to repeat positions. It acts as a reward system for achieving key relationship goals with characters. A few pros of this game are:

• Very attractive characters.
• An offering a "character paths" allowing to a range of relationship types from carnal (Dik) to sweet (Chick).
• While you are required to pick a single romance path at the end of Season 2, it doesn't seem to stop you from having fun with side characters.
• While many games attempt to give you humorous sidekicks, I did think Derek is one of the better ones.

When Season 2 ended for me, I sincerely felt a little tinge of loss as I knew I wouldn't get to interact with those characters for a while. A good sign.

Oh, and more Rose!

if you are starting out playing AVNs or adult games in general. DO NOT PLAY being a dik. the quality difference will turn you off from a majority of the AVNs on here. this game is way to good. i couldnt even finish the game. now im trying to play other games and unless they are really good story wise, im losing interest within 20 minutes. fuck this game for ruining my palette. i was not ready for peak

ok this was one of the best games when I played it some years ago that was at the end of Season 2 than all this stuff with the interlude started to happen in which I had absolutely no interest so I dropped the game for some time to so that the game would have a lot of new content when I would go back to it I just played the first two seasons of the game again to be back in the story which after some yeast I had forgotten I am totally confused by the ending of season 2. I have no idea if that is hard coded or I just did stupid stuff in my playthrough but after deciding that I truly want to be with jill my dude looks at some pics and goes fuck fuck fuck and than at the last summery there was some text that he didn´t love any of the girls he dated than I go download the 3 season start the game and after having to play thru the interlude I don´t like and care about the first thing I have to see in the 3rd season was some minigame about planning some shitty party what about that confusing ending of the 2nd season? why the mood switch? that just showed me why i liked the 1st season the most no drama of heavy plot points just some partying and some fights between the assholes jocks and the DIKs and boning some girls by the side while you see who of the main girls you want to date

This is so good well done dev keep it up. I wish that it was 2D instead of 3D but that is just personal preference and it is still most certainly five stars I will be playing this for many more months or years I hope! Also if you add more ntr content I will love it even more

Every so often, a visual novel comes along that reminds you why this medium exists — not simply to titillate or entertain, but to move, to stir something quietly human beneath the surface. This is one of those rare experiences.

The writing is evocative yet restrained, weaving intimacy not from the obvious, but from the subtle — a glance held too long, a line of dialogue that trembles with meaning. The characters feel alive, vulnerable, achingly real. The art, though sensual, never feels gratuitous; it celebrates connection rather than consumption.

What struck me most, however, was how the story lingers. Long after the final scene fades, its emotions remain — tender, bittersweet, and impossibly genuine. It’s easy to make a game that excites; it’s much harder to make one that understands.

This one does.