VN - Ren'Py - Bonds Between [v0.5] [Obsidian Fox]

Version 0.5

Superb character designs wasted on a game that struggles to anchor its position. The unconventional frequent reliance on third party "executive summary" style narration to fast forward the story and horrendous animations don't help with the overall experience either.

Story
MC joins a new company under the management of his ex-girlfriend's current fiance and during the course of his work interacts with various ladies along the way.

The story is all over the place with a heavy dose of porn logic which is fine for an adult game, but the developer wants to have his cake and eat it too by forcing a serious romance plot between MC and a MILF colleague which conflicts with what he's doing with all the other girls.

It doesn't help that the VN relies heavily on third party narration in an executive summary style to tell us what happens and how MC feels. Instead of role playing as MC through events and interactions, we are just told to accept that MC loves the MILF deeply, making the whole experience detached.

How this gels in with the fact he's happily fucking his ex, lusting after his mum, encouraging the MILF's son to think of his mother sexually or preying on the MILF's daughter at the same time isn't addressed.

Basically it's one of those games that is trying to cater to as many preferences as possible without thinking through whether they sit well with each other.

Game Mechanic
Standard VN choices that allows you to opt in or out certain sex scenes. There are also a few points related ones, but so far they don't seem to affect the story / dialogue much.

Background / Character Renders
This developer is seriously good at character designs - all the LIs including the two MILFs and two young ones are simply gorgeous, which makes it all the more disappointing that they are wasted on a directionless piece.

Both backgrounds and characters adopt a softer tone and more refined features than common Daz3D assets and that's a very refreshing visual direction different from competitors.

Character Development
Quite confusing and lacks focus. We are told via third party narration MC loves the MILF colleague and vice versa, but there isn't much evidence of it. Next moment we are again told he loves his mum sexually, then the guy is going after his lover's daughter and FWB with his ex as well!?

The LI's are standard two dimensional porn tropes - the ex fucking MC to get back at her fiance for cheating, daughter slut jumping on MC, mum saying we shouldn't do incest and dropping hints she wants more etc.

Sex Scenes
For a game that builds up like a romance plus orgy / swinging porn forcefully mashed together, the sex is surprisingly sparse and tame. The secenes are ok generally, not particularly passionate or wild, but there's good enough dialogue, renders and music to carry through.

The animations though (oh dear) are really really bad - super low fps videos that look like jerky stop motions which spoils the immersion. One of the mod downloads tried to smooth out by AI interpolation, it helps to a certain extent but it still looks somewhat unnatural and short with 1 - 1.5 second loops.

BGM and Sound Effects
Standard unmemorable BGMs that do their thing with minimal / no sound effects.

Conclusion
Bounds Between features very good refined character designs, but they are wasted on a AVN that tries to be everything to everyone.

The game summary promises a lot on personal bonds and intricate human relationships, but what we get is a collection of typical porn scenarios / characters put up together held up by a flimsy premise that they work together in the same company or are related to someone who does.

I'm also doubtful whether the romance and porn elements can work together well over the long run short of the usual MILF girlfriend getting corrupted and finding out she likes porn style sex with everyone.

Argh... if only these gorgeous models can be utilised on a good story or at least in well-done lewd scenes for a sex romp.

I stumbled upon this game by chance. The reviews are pretty polarized, but I decided to check it out myself and, honestly, I got hooked.

The Good: The visuals are top-tier—hats off to the dev. The female characters look absolutely gorgeous, mature, and "classy." They aren't plastic dolls; they feel like real women with great textures and expressions. The renders and lighting are excellent, a real treat for the eyes.

Story-wise, it feels more like a high-quality erotic novel (kinetic novel) right now. Yes, choices are scarce, and there isn't a ton of content in v0.5 yet—it’s a fairly quick read. But the writing itself is great: themes of swinging, sharing, and relationship tension are handled well—spicy without being too dark or "heavy." It’s an easy read.

The Not-So-Good: The animations are a bit wooden/stiff right now; there is definitely room for improvement there. And as I mentioned, the game is short, and the story is just revving up. I’d love to see more player influence on the plot in the future.

Verdict: Objectively, it’s a solid 4.5 right now. But I’m giving it a 5 as an investment because the foundation is excellent, and you can tell the author is putting in the effort. If you’re looking for a beautiful story about mature women and open relationships, and you’re willing to wait for development—definitely give it a shot. Looking forward to updates!

The game surprised me in a very positive way. An interesting and engaging story, beautiful women and high-quality renders. The sharing element is one of the best.

This game seems to have a lot of potential. I recommend everyone to try it, it's definitely worth giving this game a chance.

Review for Bonds Between (v0.5)

Bonds Between shows promise, but it’s also a clear example of an AVN that’s still finding its footing. The foundation is there, but several areas—especially the writing—need refinement before the experience can truly shine.

Writing & Script Quality
The script is where the game struggles the most. Dialogue often feels awkward or unclear, and gendering issues crop up throughout, which is a common problem in translated AVNs. The biggest issue, however, is the overuse of internal thoughts and descriptive narration. A visual novel should rely primarily on its visuals to convey setting, tone, and emotion. When the screen is flooded with unnecessary descriptions or constant inner monologue, it pulls the player out of the moment. Thoughts are effective when used sparingly; here, they feel excessive.

Visuals
The strongest element of Bonds Between is unquestionably its imagery. The renders are consistently appealing and do a great job capturing the mood of each scene. This makes the heavy descriptive text even more redundant, since the visuals are clearly capable of speaking for themselves.

Audio
The music is solid and fits the atmosphere well. Sound effects are used effectively when they appear. One improvement that would significantly enhance the experience would be the addition of a separate volume slider for intimacy-related sounds. Many AVN developers mistakenly group those effects under the general "Sound" slider, but a dedicated slider would provide better control for players who want to fine-tune their audio experience.

Overall
Version 0.5 of Bonds Between is not a bad start, and the visual quality alone gives it potential. With a tighter script, clearer translation, and some UI/UX improvements—especially in audio controls—it could become a genuinely compelling VN. For now, it’s worth keeping an eye on, but the writing will need the most attention moving forward.

I'm absolutely thrilled with this game! For me, it's one of the best games in this genre.
The characters only have a short backstory, but it's enough to give you an idea of why they behave the way they do.
The protagonist doesn't just jump into bed with every woman; there has to be some tension before anything happens. So far, there's still plenty of room for more in terms of sex—which I expect will come later in the game—but the sex scenes are very erotic.
The characters are graphically superb, and I always know why the protagonist is doing what he's doing.
I want to experience more of this setting and see how the story continues. Thank you, Obsidian Fox!

The Bad:
The writing is all like the opening of a book or movie. You know the bit where the writer is setting up the context and details of the story... Exposition in other words. This entire story is all exposition presented as narration; it's jarring and impersonal. Furthermore, when there is active dialogue, the writing is stiff and presented like a redditor roleplaying. Do away with the (relaxed/casual) bullshit in parenthesis. If you want to convey that information, put it in a sentence. IE, "Hey, this writing is poor!" he exclaimed angrily. What kills me is that the writer also does it correctly sometimes. So they know how to write, they just didn't do it most of the time. Often times it also simply doesn't make sense. It just needs to be rewritten from the ground up.

The neutral:
There aren't many animations, and the ones that are there aren't the worst I've seen, but they're certainly not good. They do improve as the game goes on though. With just a bit more work the animations could slip down into the good category. The premise/plot of the story isn't bad, but it's not really compelling. I think the plot lives or dies by the writing so honestly, if it wasn't a chore to read I'd probably have enjoyed it more. I'll also list the characters here in neutral. They're given individual personalities, but because of the poor writing they don't really come to life... You're mostly just told what they're like instead of them being what they're like. I was kinda torn on whether to add this to the neutral or bad section.


Finally the positives and the reason it's not getting a 1 star:
The art is good. From the models and posing to the environments and framing. It's all mostly really well done. The parts that do feel out of place or weird, I can at least see what they were going for even if it was forced, like the scene of girl practically climbing on top of the ice cream.

One of the rare games that's engaging to read and doesn't have unnecessary fluff. Engaging NTRS and sharing, without unnecessary suffering on the part of the protagonist, because he admits he wants to share his girlfriends with others, as long as there are no unpleasant sharing partners. I have high expectations for this game.

Decent story, very good looking women, nice theme. If you like it's genre I recommend it! It looks promising.

Not much more else to say, its early in its dev cycle.

I am going to update my mini review and rating with future updates.

Current rating: 5/5 (20% best games)

There may be more original games or storylines than this one, but I really like the game, the models are very beautiful, and - at least at this point in the story - there are many interesting overlapping threads. 5 stars !!!

I can't be doing with a novel where the writing reeks of machine translation (AI/LLM, whatever). I'd rather have wonky English than robot English. Of course I don't know for sure that the script has been written in (eg) Russian and then machine translated. But it sure as anything looks like it. The dry, dead, neutral functionality of it all is such a turn-off.

However - the pictures are pretty, the women are hot, including your not-Mom, a former pornstar who's presumably 45 going on 25. So there's that.

Almost 100% kinetic novel.
Cheating, sharing and swinging are main kinks with almost no option to avoid it.
Plot is meh, teasing is done well, models and animations are great.
If you don't mind being a cheating sharing swinging bastard, your rating could be higher.
If you do mind, or would prefer to be given a choice...well there's plenty of fish in the sea.

I honestly cant think of a single thing i liked about this "game", None of the characters come out of it being people i would even want to meet let alone have to play a game about, starting with the MC's prostitute/porn star mother to the scumbag MC who will help a guy cheat on an ex who has been really good and supportive to him while sleeping with said ex while also trying to date a married woman at the same time, the ex herself who then cheats on her boyfriend for revenge instead of just leaving him, her boyfriend obviously as hes a cheating piece of crap, MC's new love interest who goes on date with him even through shes already married and finally even two bartenders who had sex with a guy they knew was already taken, they seriously are a bunch of the worst people you can think of.

Besides the horrible characters the writing is the next big problem, in a word its "pretentious", super mega crazily pretentious, all of it is over the top exaggerated nonsense with not a single sentence coming off as natural.

I couldn't get through it long enough to see if there are any choices but if there were none already by the part i stopped at then there probably wouldn't be any that do anything as several main events had passed with no choices.

Story 1/5 (none that i could find)
Sex 4/5 (visually good but not with characters you hate)
Characters 0/5 (the worst)
Art 4/5 (great)
Choices 1/5 (none that i found)
Kinks 1/5 (none)

So to cut right to the chase, this game is essentially a kinetic novel. There are maybe 4 or 5 choices you can pick, and they are minor. There is a LOT that is happening and you don't have any agency at all in what's going on. If you are gonna make a game about threesomes, sharing, swinging, cheating and whatever, you are definitely gonna have to give CHOICES in what you do. Currently, you are forced into a 4 some (sharing two girls with another guy), cheating on your on/off again ex ish girlfriend (forced), forced to agree to a threesome with your new fling (it doesn't happen yet, you're just forced to say yes you want a threesome), and some forced incest with a milf you're seeing (her son getting involved with you and his mom). Oh also it's immediately established that your mom is a huge whore because after your dad left your family, your mom got into porn and was getting gangbanged by a whole bunch of random dudes. No choices in how you deal with your mom either btw, you're forced to accept that you still love your mom despite her getting the cock carrousel. Terrible start to say the least. So there's basically no gameplay, and it's on rails with some minor choices so what's left? Well, the girls do look good. They don't look samey and they do look like they have detail to them so that's really nice. The writing is gonna be a hit or miss for you because again, it's all forced themes, no major choices or steering the story. For the most part it's just bland really, it's just slice of life content that leads you into forced cheating/sharing/threesome/foursomes. Honestly I found the game pretty repulsive and even bland.

hot models and some kinky action. plot seems a little rushed but still hot and i will continue to look for updates. i can't wait to see where the dev takes the plot with thigs that have been setup from the start.

(Review of 0.4)

Now this is a pleasant surprise. A very story-driven novella about relationships with adult women, almost impecable writing, very interesting characters that remain believable, and a steady rythym to it that keeps you glued to the screen from the beginning to the very end. On top of that, renders are excellent, leaving animations as the only con. On Linux at least they aren't fluid at all; the mod helps somewhat but they need to be tweaked or redone to make the game justice, right now this is the only thing in need of improvement to get the max score.

0.4 is indeed a very promising start, here's hoping updates arrive sooner than later! Excellent work so far.

in a word: Outstanding....

This is a really great game.. It doses push up on NTR without crossing the line. The sharing element is one of the best done I have seen.

The characters are likeable and the visuals are really well done..

The sex is hot..

There are not a lot of choices so it's mostly an AVN which I like.

**Wishes could be better? **
#1 would be nice if during dialog the characters looked like they were speaking.. The renders as are, are great. but could add some with dialog to improve the "Visual story telling"

#2 the POV, it would be nice if he could be or learn to be more Dominate like his buddy.

Really lot a lot else to ask for.. Really enjoyed this one

The drawing quality is impressive, and I also like the structure of this story. It’s a good piece of work, and I’m really looking forward to its future development. That said, maybe the main character could trim his beard a little (laughs — but it’s actually fine, haha). I’m also looking forward to seeing how things develop with Oscar later on.

This review was posted on v0.3

This game seems to have a lot of potential. First of all, the graphics are very good, and the mature female models are very attractive. I think this is a work worth paying attention to. However, since there is not much content at the moment, I need to continue to observe it. For now, I will give it 3 stars with reservations.

Excellent product. Beautifully made, interesting plot, there are games where your hand automatically reaches for Ctrl, and here you read the story with pleasure. There is enough content to see that this is not a dummy made quickly. Play without thinking.

This game isn't terrible, but its not that good either. First the good. As others have stated, the renders are nice and serviceable. I also haven't caught any spelling mistakes.

Now for the bad. The worst part is the exposition. Good god I was singing, "exposition expositon, get it out A S A P" in my head until the first sex scene. The dialogue in that scene was also jarring. Who tells a girl that she's "pliable"? A nice choice that the author could have given the player was their response to their... ahem, "teacher", doing porn to give them a better life. Even if later when she's in the hospital you could have the MC feel bad for not supporting her if thats the route you want to go. But instead its just kinetic which means no drama.