Ren'Py - Blood Ties [v0.2.10] [BaconLake]

This is my first review here, so I'm just jotting down some honest impressions after diving in.

What I Love:

- Visual style & character designs
Piercings and tattoos are spot-on, it's clear the developer shares my enthusiasm for them. The gothic vampire LIs are smoking hot, and visually, the majority of the girls look fantastic, even if some personalities don't click for me.

- Lore and worldbuilding
The Lore/Families section is a standout. I probably spent more time poring over it than actually playing. The way major historical events are extrapolated and woven into the backstory is well done. The background lore feels thought out and gives the plot a solid foundation. It even made me want to read more about ancient mesoamerican civilizations like the Toltecs, Mayans, and Aztecs (smth I wanted to do long ago).

- Story and atmosphere
The story itself is solid. It’s not Shakespeare and there are a few contradictions here and there imo, but it’s engaging enough that I’m genuinely interested in where it’s going. The cliffhanger at the end definitely got me hyped, even though I’m not fully convinced The House was actually attacked.

- References and details
I enjoyed references to movies and other games, as well as the small visual details in the backgrounds. You can tell the developer enjoys making renders - little signs, jokes, and environmental touches add a lot of charm.

- Maya
Enough said.

My Concerns:

- Pacing
The pacing feels very fast and keeps accelerating. We meet a lot of characters in a short time, but don’t really get to spend enough meaningful time with them before new ones appear. Some plot points also get pushed into the background, for example, I'd like to know in details what happened to the MC’s father and how he died. It also feels like both MC and "mother" don't seem to be bothered with it, at least from my - the player’s perspective. I’m hoping the story will slow down and stabilise a bit as it progresses.

- Control over routes and fetishes
It has already been mentioned - some LIs are pretty depraved, which is fine by me as long as they are not forced on me sexually. For example, I’m not interested in Chloe and likely won’t pursue her, but there was already a forced french kiss, which I personally consider intimate. I’d prefer full player control over who MC becomes intimate with.
The same goes for fetishes (group sex, lesbian content, sharing, etc., if those are planned). I’m curious how this will be handled later. Another example - some LIs are bound to MC through blood rituals (Maya and the twins), which makes me worry that at some point they might be forced on me regardless of my choices. While I absolutely adore Maya, I’m just not into twins (yes, can you believe that, I'm as shocked?!).
So overall, my concern is mainly about control, it would be great to have the option to avoid characters or fetishes I don’t like.

- Music
The main menu theme (For Elise) doesn’t really fit the game’s atmosphere for me. I turned it off almost immediately. I think the game could benefit from higher quality, more thematically fitting music overall.

Overall, I’m enjoying the game and I’m interested in seeing where it goes. The foundation is strong - especially the lore and visual design, and with some adjustments to pacing and player agency, it could become something really special.

Story is just starting out so i wont be too harsh. renders show some continuity issues not addressed in the story like missing articles of clothing shown in previous renders or missing piercings that appear in another render. speaking of renders i believe the dev has added just a tad too many characters with piercings. although that is just personal taste. adding an option to remove or reduce piercings would be a nice touch to the game.

Very pornbrained game, over the top taht it makes you feel stupid for even playing it.

Everything with a vagina is a slut, and you need to hear about it in detail, and even in actual sex scenes shown, you know, the sex scenes that the MC doesnt have yet, all sex in the game is voyeur stuff basically.

The LIs are disgusting and unlikeable, the MC acts like a buffon and isnt respected by any other character, the vampire plot is weak as fuck, they are not even vampires, just superhumans without any weaknesses at all that are obsessed with sex, basically, what a porn-addicted 14-year-old virgin's idea of a vampire would be.

Theres nothing to look forward to in terms of story or even sex since the girls have already been fucked in all ways imaginable and weve seen it already, mc is just the 99999th dude to go in there. So any anticipation we could have for when it happens with the mc is thrown in the trash, because we already saw it with some random retard npc. Boring fuckfest with pretty graphics.
TLDR:
Characters -999/5 the women are just walking vaginas that only care about sex, its all they do and all they talk about. They are basically all the same character with different haircut.
Story 1/5 pornbrained, no stakes, boring, unimaginative and stale
Writing/dialog 2/5 mediocre at best
Renders 4.5/5 the only reason I played the game

The dev is aiming at the wrong audience basically. If you want a decent story, interesting/complex/memorable or likeable characters, or any kind of decent romance at all, then just go look for another game. This is only for people who turn their brain off and cant go 2 min without seeing some tits or any kind of sexual stuff to jack off

V0.2.10

not sure i can add much more than has already been pointed out, but i will add my tuppence worth....for immortalisation purposes.
first off, what's with that version number? why 10? does adding the zero make any difference beyond length of version number? if not then it's just fluff for the sake of fluff. would calling each update or release version 1 then 2 then 3 be that hard? many devs change the number for some type of storybook of a number with seasons, chapters, parts, segments and fifty six numbers per version. then we play it and find THAT was the best part! they set a high standard of imagination and then failed to live up to it. why switch focus from your project itself?
i dunno., I'm having a brain fart. a mental ramble. don't mind me.

*insert noise of mental flossing here*

there is not much wrong here visually as the images are all well done seemingly. not top notch but good enough . above average for sure. there is certainly a strong focus on imagery from this dev.
the writing is why. no issues at all with the dialogue and delivery of the plot....but it is also one of the most dull openings here. i love a good read and this has not even woken up yet and is apparently two chapters in? holy sheep biscuits fatman!!
your dad is dead and you are the boss. that's it. i got the impression that the dev had an idea and skipped over much of the delivery in an effort to move it along and the skipped bits are the bits we wanted to see. the sex, the intrigue, the actual plot.

lots of tease and no please for me. obviously a slow burn as it says so little

*it makes that squeaky sound you get when applying chalk to a pool cue and tastes like the smell of fried avocado

Currently, the game only has 2 chapters, with very little content in each chapter. However, there are a lot of female characters (having too many can also be a bad thing). They are all promiscuous vampires, and I can't really see any differences in their personalities—they're all equally lewd. Honestly, it's not very appealing. For example, the mother character looks way too young; maybe it's because vampires don't age, but there's no deep emotional storyline here either.The developer is telling a story about a vampire world full of sluts. Among the many erotic games in the vampire genre, this one doesn't stand out—it's quite superficial.

I thought the protagonist would have some conflict and adventure erupt from the plot where the mother hides the fact that the father is about to die—for example, the mother losing emotional control during the conflict, the father dying, and the protagonist becoming the mother's pillar of support, leading to some emotional warming. Who knew the next plot point would be the father dying, and the mother taking the protagonist to perform the conversion ceremony? I thought the conversion ceremony would involve some steps requiring intimate interaction with the mother, but there wasn't any. I have no idea what the developer is doing. Honestly, I predict this is a very superficial sex vampire genre game.

First of all,,, Vampires.... <yawn>. As you can imagine when you have a bunch of immortals with the powers of the vampire, doing whatever they want and everyone is beautiful, you end up with a fuckfest.

There is no thought or challenge. All the females throw themselves at the MC and he either fucks all of them or not. The women are all a bunch of vapid sluts and they all seem to be perfectly fine with this arrangement.

I mean, the dev is talented and the women and images are all really well done. It is also clear they have put some thought into the world building aspect of it, but at the end of the day, it's just a shallow fuckfest. If that's what you like, you will probably love this AVN. If you are looking for a story with characters that have at least a little depth, then move along, nothing to see here.

Let's get it started with some of my initial thoughts:

• Some parts of the UI, like the heart icon in the top right corner, look kind of cheap. You could definitely generate a much better version using AI or just polish it a bit more. (barely an issue tbf)
• The "Click to continue" label in the bottom right is a bit annoying. Would be great if there was an option to turn that off.
• Some of the poses feel a little too over the top. A bit more subtlety would go a long way in making the scenes feel more natural and immersive.
• I'm definitely a fan of nipple piercings. But it’d be nice to see a bit more variety. If every character has the same or very similar piercing, it starts to feel repetitive. For example, the twins, imagine if they had different styles, that would be such a nice touch. You could even tie piercing styles to factions or backgrounds. Like a preference or something. That kind of detail, where a sexy visual element has some in-world logic behind it, really adds depth. Unless of course, it was a conscious design choice.
• I think there's a mix-up between "chapters" and "scenes." Right now, each "chapter" seems like it's just a single scene. It might make more sense to group this whole part as a prologue + Chapter 1, since it mostly reads like an introduction.

That said, the writing is decent, the renders look really good, and the story so far has me interested. I’m definitely looking forward to the next update. Just hope you’ll keep improving as you go. I’ve seen promising games go downhill because devs only focused on pushing out more content, and a few years later, nothing actually improved. Would be awesome to see this one grow in quality too.

I personally don't like what I have seen MC is not in a single one of the five scenes we got, so we pretty much only get to see different LI whoring around with different folks.

The scenes as they are, are a dour affair we get some basic animations with different angles without any text, sorry not sorry when i want some plain sex animations, porn has it covered and does so better.

The rest of the story is a head scratcher, as is, we got Vampires without any weakness, a Vampire normally possesses, which brings heaps of problems with it from a worldbuilding perspective. None of which gets explored in what we got here.

The English is serviceable but needs more work.

The graphics are great, which pains me to no end because most devs think they can coast by on graphics alone. Man, I wish we would get a great game with this level of graphics, but it is not this game.

More like an intro than "5 chapters"

English can be a bit rough, but its not Engrish, the writing is otherwise alright - Im sure it would read better in native language.

Mostly world building so far, seems interesting, will see where it goes

[Review for v0.1.0.Alpha]

The Good Stuff: Writing and smut, the core of an avn is very well done here. Little things like expressions during dialogue and scene framing have clear intent and are on point.
There are a variety of LI dynamics, some are very open with their sexuality, some are loyal servants bound to the mc by a blood ritual. All are drenched in hedonism and can mostly be shaped(romantic/domination) by choices. Looks like there'll be plenty of kinks too.
World building follows typical VtM styled trope, without the usual weaknesses of a vampire, it will be interesting to see where that goes story wise.

Concerns: Many LIs are already quite depraved, so how the devs handle pacing remains to be seen. Other than that, some of the quieter and lewd scenes could benefit from more fitting music.


Overall, a very promising start and a must try, unless... having your LIs show any life outside the mc's orbit gives you the ick.

Wow. Girls and renders are really hot, and it seems there are multiple choices to shape your relationship with the girls. Scenes could use some more work, since they are basically just videos that are skipped the moment you click. It would be good to mix renders with videos and to add options during scenes (where to cum, position etc).

starting off with a 5 star with it being subject to change as things move forward..

promising start, some great visuals, the whisper at the start is annoying and unneeded, the current LI's are likeable enough although maya could use some work, maybe add some makeup to complete her style..

A lot of effort has been put into the menus.. and by that i mean the lore and family tree sections.. its clear that the dev has actually done the ground work for this title before getting started, i just hope there is a story as well as character building and not just a excuse to thro characters into provocative scenes.. as much as they are good, this title could have a rich story with such a well structured lore system behind it..

This is my impression based off the 0.1 release of the game so far, first off the game looks pretty good, the girls are absolutely gorgeous, the story and setting seems to be thought out well and is more than the typical stuff you see on here as there is some background on what vampires are and it differentiates a bit from your standard stuff with things like pregnancy and "affirmation", as well as various factions in it. There are some really cool shots in the game that actually impressed me, there is animation which is always a positive, but the main strength of the game as mentioned and what we are all interested are the girls, lots of beautiful likeable vampire girls.

Again this is just the first release, so the game can go in many different directions for better or worse, but so far i am impressed with this game, looking forward to seeing more, really good start.