VN - Ren'Py - Between Humanity [v0.2.1] [DebatingPanda]

Simply put, WOW.

This is the first game outside of Desert Stalker to continuously cause my jaw to drop throughout different sections of the game. You can tell a lot of love and effort went into every aspect of its design, everything from each character being top-tier beautiful, engaging story and mysterious happenings, excellent use of sound design and effects, and fantastic visuals.

I was blown away by how many different renders there are, many times a slightly different one for each bit of dialogue which helps the characters feel like they're reacting more to what's going on around them. Heck, even a driving scene in the second half of what's currently available has a looping background animation through the window that really makes it seem like you're in the car as things wiz past. Additionally, often when you're talking to someone, people in the background are moving around and doing things as you advance the dialogue.

This is truly an exception game across the board, and is worthy of a thousand 10/10s. Don't sleep on this one, folks.

Very lovely characters and decent renders. Story is intelligent and well pieced together, now if only the writer could pay attention to word count because the sex is like 30s scenes every 30mn of reading through fluff details that really don't impact the gameplay much.

It´s okay very standart.

TThe story is boring, predictable and nothing new.

The characters are very boring and cliche, the MC is annoying.

The music is boring but mostly fitting.

The gameplay is bad, the choices are just so standart and mostly "want to peek? yes or no" or "be nice, and increase stat which doesn´t feel like it matters"

The models look okay nothing creative.

But the animations and quality of models both look very good.


I wouldn´t really recommend it, it isn´t anything special but I feel like a lot of effort is used in the development .

[Review for v0.2.1]
I find this game to be enjoyable but frustrating.

The premise is interesting, but the setting is very confusing because there's this mix of meta comedy with futurism that makes it hard to distinguish what's real and what's just a little meta joke. I get the feeling the whole thing is a simulation, but the MC's reaction to the meta elements is so mild that if it's later revealed as a simulation, it'll fall really flat.

The characters have personality (though they're mostly clichés), but they're lacking the agency and initiative that would actually make them people, and the glacial pacing at which the relationships are progressing doesn't really help with that.

The MC's kind of boring, passive and reactive, just aimlessly drifting through the story, passing out every 10 minutes, and being dismissive of all the weird shit happening around him like he's deathly allergic to plot hooks. When Naomi was describing him during his little unconscious episode where they fucked I couldn't help thinking "Can I play as that guy instead?"

In conclusion, while the presentation is great and the idea is interesting, the slow pace, passive MC, and general lack of progress make it a bit of a slog. I still think it's worth playing and will be keeping an eye on it, but for now I think 3 stars is fair.

This game is still in the early stages of the story/development, but it definitely feels like there's lots of potential to be had with what's been shown so far.

As of 0.2.1, there's enough setup here that the story can lead to several paths. I'm generally not a huge fan of stories that dance around mysteries for too long, but I think Between Humanity does it well. There's enough fun little interactions with each of the characters and weird happenings that toy with MC's perception of reality, that it keeps me captivated throughout its runtime.

To sum it up: You wake up from an accident and find yourself moving back in with your mom and sisters. From there, you keep having flashbacks on what happened before the accident and visions that overlap with reality.

I suspect that the story is going into the direction of androids/cloning and neural implants for its underlying mystery, at least from what context clues I've received so far.

The dialogue between MC and the girls is solid. They talk like actual people and don't feel out of place. I will say that they can seem kind of one-note or that they fit specific archetypes as of now, but we'll have to see in the future. As of this update, I just think they're cute/hot.

There's been alot of setup for your dynamic with what I'm assuming are the key players in the story. A total of around 10 girls iirc. None of them feel really out of place as of yet, but that may change in the future.

The animations is solid and serviceable for the sex scenes. On top of that, I think the models/clothing/environments look great. I will say it looks a LITTLE weird to see robots and outright mechanical people now and then in this semi-futuristic world, but I'll forego suspension of disbelief for now. If the dev continued to sprinkle in the futuristic stuff with each update, I could understand why.

There's lots of choices, and sometimes you can't get them all for each character - thankfully the game lets you know which choices you missed at the end of the chapter, alongside your relations with the characters. I think this is meant for multiple playthroughs, along with later chapters splitting off in many ways later on depending on your choices. As of now, there's nothing to really be missed besides some conversations and small scenes that give you more context to "what X person was doing at this time".

It's worth the 2-3 hour run time. I wouldn't go in with jaw dropping expectations, there isn't much sexual content yet, and I think the dev is looking to build up the world/story before it really gets going.

The game is a very nice experience overall, simple as.

Art is great and the world actually feels like plausible (not empty stages in ghost towns where no one lives). Then the models... Man, the girls are amazing, even the non-LIs are very easy on the eyes.

Story is definitely more engaging than the average AVN, and with plenty of easter eggs and clickables to enrich the experience.

Also, twins, Basil, twins. RED. HEADED. TWINS.

I played v 0.2.0

I quite like this game. A classic style visual novel executed competently. The art is good, the characters compelling enough, and the story is engaging. I'm curious to see what happens.

solid, great animations, great characters, interesting plot, even if some stuff is a little predictable, its interesting enough to work just fine, only issue is it ended too soon (me issue not game issue haha) instantly one im going to be checking on regularly, and added to the pile of ones to support when i have the money to do so

Awesome game. Can't wait to see what's to come from this one. Extremely impressive considering how early into development it is. Fantastic graphics and cast of characters. Really left me wanting more.

The renders are really good, but I honestly find the story kind of boring.

There's an attempt at intrigue, but it just doesn't hit for me. I can't explain why, I just don't care about Lilith or the mystery stuff pumped into the MC because, as of yet, it has only resulted in blackouts - nothing really meaty.

A clearer weakness is the girls. They look lovely, but none of them seem to be anything other than a collection of personality traits. Their wants are nebulous, and they have nothing they are pursuing that the MC might later come to help them with (except Lucy who seems to desire... The MC. Which is kind of an easy solve).

So my feedback to improve the game would be:

1: Absolutely start building out subplots for the girls. That's how you make people love them - right now, they are boring. They need to have goals of their own within the story.

2: Get to the "hook" point of the story asap. At the moment we just don't have enough to get invested - there have been no real consequences to fear or anticipate, and without this, you kinda think "whatever" when you ask yourself if you want to click to the next image and text.

Fixing these things could give another heavyweight AVN, IMO, but it's not there yet when it comes to the writing. The HS2 artwork is perfect though.

Just finished Ch 1, and grabbing the latest version. Excellent game so far. Cannot wait for more updates and development.

Models are very pretty, and the characters' personalities come across genuine and authentic. It's refreshing not to have an imbalance between inner monologue, outer dialog, and narration.

I do wish there were more lewd content, but with only one chapter so far that's OK.

Between Humanity is an exceptional visual novel that masterfully blends engaging storytelling with stunning visuals. The artwork is simply breathtaking, with every scene meticulously crafted to capture the essence of the narrative. The smooth animations add a dynamic layer to the experience, making each moment feel alive and immersive.

The characters are well-developed and relatable, drawing you deeper into the story with every interaction. The plot is intriguing and keeps you hooked from start to finish, with a perfect balance of romance and drama.

I am eagerly awaiting more content from this talented team. Between Humanity has set a high standard in the genre, and I can't wait to see where the story goes next. Highly recommended for fans of visual novels!

Beautiful renders, mega cute LIs and a cool story.
Story is building up but the few released scenes are very hot with very well done animations.
I will for sure consider supporting the project as soon as I can, as this is a dev that truly needs it. Keep it up DebatingPanda!

Figured it would be a nice habit to leave a review after playing through a VN I like. I played through it rather quickly though, I'll update my review at a later point in time, when I'll take more time for it (and w/o ipatch).

[version, env] 0.2.1 / PC/Win/mouse/ipatch
[play time] ~ 4.5h (estimate, fast playthrough w/ some skipping)

TL;DR: this game/VN provides a highly polished package, good stuff & recommended! Don't expect a lot of H-scenes, it's more of a slow burn with most characters (but not all ;-)), but there's some good stuff in there already (really nothing to complain about).

Story
Entertaining enough, but not going to rate this, as I played fast / skipped bits here & there. I did slow down on occasion, and enjoyed it / the interactions between characters.

Some dialogue I found hard to follow, seemed to make some jumps, but that could've been related to me playing with the (unofficial) ic patch (which is doing an okay job, but I wouldn't recommend it per se - still some things feel off, esp. with 'mom')

Characters 4/5
They're pretty much all sexy & likable. Reviewer below me commented how they're visually similar. I can see that, but I really didn't notice that much while playing / it didn't bother me, still felt different/unique enough.

I do find that, at the end of v0.2, there are a bit much girls already; when Mia entered the scene I felt a bit like 'really don't need another one'.
I dread a bit there will too much LIs to (properly) cater for? Like there are the main girls, and there's e.g. Larissa which I'd totally dig to pursue ;-)

Graphics, animations 5/5
Good stuff, nice renders, smooth animations, bouncy boobs.
Played on potato; still somewhat decent in performance, but it did totally choke on the checking-out-Anya panning scene (meeting her).

The Lilith hallway walk anim was totally cool and surprised me (felt like total quality; things like this sets this apart and above the gross of VNs).
The drive in the car with Jane was also nicely done, giving that extra polish.

Music, sound, voice acting 4/5
The whole package: bgm throughout, sfx during (H) scenes. No voice acting. A certain later scene has moaning sounds as well (awesome), whereas these are missing in earlier scenes.

Other, extras
The polish here is A-grade. Kudos to the dev! Things like the characters 3D view, setting your phone's background, how the gallery's done, the extra settings like text size etc.


Ideas/suggestions for improvement
[QoL] Make the (mouse wheel) scrolling through the list of characters faster. And/or remember your last scrolling position. Or, perhaps as an (optional) alternative, have a single screen (w/o scrolling) where you can quickly find & check on a character.

[fix] Make 'Clickable Hints' the default (shouldn't it be?) It's explained in the tutorial, but then, running with default settings, you'll only hear the sound, but there's no visual queue. (And in the game itself I believe the sound is only there when Clickable Hints are enabled?)

[wish/nice2have] Moaning sounds added to earlier scenes (Naomi).

[wishful thinking] Able to decide to have Raven or Venus on your side (I was more into Raven, and was like fuuuccck ;-)) (The bar lady is nice as well of course ;-))

I'm really torn on how to rate Between Humanity. It had a good presentation, clean and smooth animations, some likable characters, and even a story that intrigued. But good god was it glacially slow.

Going to give it a 3.7 rating for now based on the following:

+ Clean and interesting renders with nice textures and lighting
++ Great animations for scenes, but they were often shorter than I'd like
+ Story had some nice twists for as far as it went
+ Music and sex scene sounds were decent, and appreciated
+ LIs and other characters were well designed, if a bit too similar to each other visually

- Story is extremely short (v0.2.1), around 5-6 hours tops depending on how fast you read. It's just where it is on it's dev cycle,
-- Not enough sex scenes to really keep attention, and too long in-between. A few BJs, a few hand jobs, and a few penetration sex scenes were all I counted (and two of the scenes were "dream-like" with poor visuals). For that much reading, I'd normally expect 3x as many scenes.
----- The one major complaint I have is the glacially SLOW progression with any of the love interests. Some of them still blush if I reach over and touch their hand (yeah, it's that bad). Feels like trumped up Japanese anime shyness for most of them, and it really left me disappointed. And it's probably why the game is so sparse with the sex overall.

If the game currently had ~20 hours of content as opposed to ~6, and was shooting for 50+ when complete, I'd say it might turn out epic (with of course 3x the number of sex scenes it currently has). But at the rate of progression with the LIs right now and the short play time, it's just agonizingly slow and unrewarding as anything other than a "feel good teen sim" with a tiny bit of sex.

I'd recommend to the author to step up the progression with LIs massively if you don't want to lose readers in the slog. Add in a lot more sex scenes per hour of reading.

Other than the few critiques I had and the 3.7 rating, the game is probably worth playing. But don't expect much sex or progression with the LIs right now. It's mostly day-to-day story with a small twist behind it.

Excellent game so far. Going into this, I was a bit disappointed that I caught this game so early on. It seems like if a game has good renders, an interesting story, attractive LI's, and no sandbox element, then it's bound to be woefully short or have no H-scenes. Was pleasantly surprised that this game didn't suffer from either of those qualities.

While we seem to be just scratching the surface of the story, it is by no means too short to enjoy at this stage, and there is enough H-scene content to satisfy a lot of the tension being built up.

The LI's are all pretty nice, though a bit samey in their appearance (they dress differently, but they do look quite similar) and I wish the twins were a little more attractive. They're definitely not bad though.

The story is pretty captivating, and it's nice to see a lot of my theories regarding what's happening being subverted in interesting ways. Definitely looking forward to chapter 3.

Very good graphics... excellent visual representations of the LIs. Very good character development/personality in the LIs. Good story development. Scenes transition smoothly and work together well. Very good quality work in this VN.

BH is currently only at version 0.2 and thus a short experience, my review will be short as well.

Summary:
As for a summary. We have a “mild” in-medias-res start to the story with our MC having been involved in some type of traffic accident (intentional?), waking up in the hospital where he starts to experience or observe certain oddities right from the start. These include changed personal physiology, vivid dreams/flashbacks, blocked/painful memories, blackouts and strings of suspiciously favorable outcomes, depending on your choices. With barely any worthy family member of his own to rely on, he instead gets unofficially adopted into the household of 2 female classmates and their mom. MC rushes back to school despite the health concerns and ends up suffering for it, not gravely, but learns his lesson. We thus get introduced to most of the characters in this update, with most of them being classmates. Minor events happen at home, there’s a mall shopping trip and birthday celebration with your male friend at a strip club.
0.2 ends ominously with the reappearance of a character that were with you during the “accident” seen in the flashbacks.

Pros:
- Interesting glitch interaction mechanic.
- I did not notice any grammar mistakes or awkward phrasing of any kind.
- Very hot gallery reward mechanic that pans up/down and around the girls so you really get to enjoy the character models.
- Mostly linear progression, the decisions you are given allows you to follow 2 or 3 general pathways, horny, noble and I guess a more mixed one, lets call it cautious.
- It may feel a little rushed with how fast you are able to get lewd scenes, but they are certainly well crafted. At least it isn’t the relationships that are rushed, you simply get lucky by having the god of porn logic on your side. If you make certain choices things early on, then you aren’t able to make specific ones later on. During my second run there were also a lot of extra details that were revealed due to making different decisions. The game has only been out for 2 versions yet, so I am not certain how it will pan out in terms of a branching narrative.
- High quality animations for the H scenes. Occasionally also for general events. There’s even dripping lady bits.
- Well balanced H scenes in terms of the length, amount of dialogue and sound effects. Enticing chemistry between characters as well.
- You know it is probably a good story and good worldbuilding when you start formulating elaborate story theories based on observations of inconspicuous small details. I have several theories about what happened to MC and why he sees and experiences certain things.

Mehs and hit/miss:
- The classic trope of “MC’s big PP” is present once more. Magic PP also applies. Somehow it didn’t annoy me as much as usual. But still enough to be MEH. It’s possible that this will tie in with the plot and thus make sense, beyond this being another AVN with high wish fulfilment levels like most of them.

Cons:
- Maybe how extremely advanced technology seems to be for a game that is only 5 years into the future? Unless this is merely a matrix style world illusion, then it kinda breaks suspension of disbelief.
- During the mall café scene there were 2 soundtracks playing on top of each other. A bit distracting.

My rating ends at just barely 5, because i am wary of giving a title 5 stars this early in its developement. But the flaws seen are at worst "big nitpicks". Panda seems to have all the key areas of making an AVN under control and at a "good" quality level as the minimum. If there was a 10 point system, BH would be a uncertain 9 rating.

Excellent

This AVN appears like cute slice of life, but it also contains a bit of mystery and I am all for that .

The atmosphere in mysterious and creepy situations is immaculate, it really kept me engaged and longing for more .
I also liked the fact that it is set in 2029, (but you have few things wrong, the hyperfast train was made in July 2028 and the casualties were horrible... Anyway...)

... Wait what ?...

He he he.




Seriously though, it wasn´t made until November 2028.




D_D

I really like Lucy and Anya (Lucy more, but don´t tell Anya hi hi hi)
This AVN is like a diabetic comatose attack waiting. Because my blood sugar skyrocketed through the ceiling throughout the sweetnes and adorablesness I have witnessed xD.

It is so heartwarming and beautiful to just immerse yourself in this (plus the cameos - CoD = Amy and Clara and Eternum - Annie).

Music fits the scenes, even more in those mysterious/creepy passages.

(Just my rant here... But I really hope that you have in store, for this one, some mysterious and perhaps conspiracy like setting/plot or something dangerous in mind, as I believe it adds the depth and extent of the story and would be quite interesting to see unfold).

((I already have few headcannons of how this will unveil xD))

But even if you don´t aim in this direction with this AVN, it is still so much enjoyable and endearing to play.

Thank you DebatingPanda for your work and good luck in future.

Oh, almost forgot... This also has some of the most realistic and cute animations - Anya eating donuts, spinning Lucy in clothing shop and us MC falling in train on Lucy and such... It´s just so damn cute

I played through v0.2.0 in an evening. It is a fun, well-crafted harem game, and the dev looks to be laying the foundation for an intriguing story.

Pros include slick animations, sexy color-coded HS girls, some appropriate sound-effects, and a straight-forward progression path.

It has a CC elevator-music track, which does not add a lot of value, but is pretty innocuous.

I didn’t note any cons.

It is a little early to award it five stars yet, but I am comfortable giving it a four-star (good) rating now. I will revisit this after further updates, and am hopeful this ends up being a great game.