Ren'Py - Bright Past [v0.99.8.1] [Kosmos Games]

A mile wide and an inch deep.

Such a shame as there's a lot to like about this game but it's lack of focus and linearity hurts the pacing massively.
Where you have interesting catalysts for relationships you're quickly met with endless dead-ends.
Where you have interesting tasks you're quickly met with arbitrary quota filling grind.
Where you have interesting characters you're quickly met with a lack of forethought on direction for the characters.
So you just end up constantly being initially excited but then blue-balled or just plain boner-killed..
This just makes the pacing just plain not enjoyable.

I really do believe that the final product could be fantastic but my major concern would be that the dev has bitten off more than they can chew and spread themselves way too thin to realistically ever bring this game to it's full potential and give this game the payoff it needs.

For now it's a 3 star from me based really on potential more than anything. Could end up 2 star, could end up 4 star. For now I'd advise waiting... although evidence suggests that could be for a long time.

Good luck Dev.

Initial releases were pretty appealing but as it progressed too many characters whether actually part of the main and sub storylines or npc..Dev does a lot of poor focus for sticking on storyline/quests for example it's been about 4 updates since the revealing of Val being lesbian and longer since for any growth for Jane or Amanda with Alex. When I play a game it's smooth for the transitioning not a cluster which will deteriorate the player base.

Some decent models and a cople of sex scene that feed exclusively on the context. Not bad the writing.

On the other hand:
Pointless grinding for overpriced stuff. A hint system that makes you think there is a lot of content when you see all those dots, untill you find out that many of those dots are events are small conversations that wont lead to anything of sexual nature until 2035.

Pointlessly grinding stats for a lot of stuff taht gets used in 1 or 2 specific events, but when the girl is getting raped, you can not run with all the grinding in speed, can not fight despite all the grind in combat or strength, not retoric to defend yourself, not charm to make your out out of the situtation.

Pointless grind of insane amont of repetitions (25 vocal training, i think 15 guitar lessons and 15 rehearsals) for concert questline, that has maybe 1 sex scene when training arts adn that sex scene has 1 render, or 2 renders with the same posture from 2 angles.

You invite girls to the concert and for some reason all you get is a kiss and thats it. It is at least 15 days of grinding for that for a couple of nudes.


The game is more interesting at the beggining whe you are still unlocking repeatables. Once you are done with Valerie and Barbara the game has pretty much nothing to offer, and Valerie and Barbara dont offer nothing extraordinary, but keeps you going.

I would say Dev run out of ideas, or decided to stretch the game beyond his capabilities, purposedly or not, i dont know.

I really liked this game at first. Lively interesting characters, a simple but tasteful plot, adequate quality of models and rendering.

But the more I played, the more irritated I got. The main drawback of the game is the grind, which is actively supported by the lack of internal logic. Game has unbelievable tons of grind, its kill everything. A box of six eggs for $ 42, a towel for 200, a bottle of wine for 210, a car for 10 towels or 10 bottles of wine, the inability to watch porn more than once a day and the inability to increase lust more than 7 (5 for porn and 2 for an event in the library), while in the cafe toilet, we need 8 and no less. Why, we have a sports uniform sold separately, and sports shoes separately (I never found where to buy it, there are no shoes in a clothing store or on the Internet, then my logic goes on)?

After 1,5hour game turned into a constant repetition of the same actions without any progress in the plot just in order to save money for food in monotonous shifts in a cafe and first pay a debt of 600 bucks, then buy a laptop for 1000, then cosmetics, then again eggs and cigarettes. then two bottles of wine ... a grind-grind-grind, after which the plot and characters are completely lost. And even cheat mod not helps us well.

At the end, I absolutely do not understand why you need cards that are permanently activated, if you already have 7-8 lusts, you pick up a card and it burns out for now. Why not make them manually activated at least once from the collection menu, so that the player does not need to memorize locations with maps, then, if necessary, raise the lust to 8, make dozens of unnecessary mouse clicks to return to this location and pick up a map, raise the indicator, and only then ...

There's a lot about this game that I like, the story and writing are alright, the girls look great (mostly).... but what destroys any chance of me having fun with this are two things.
1. The grind, the grind, the almost unbearable grind.
2. A sandbox game (especially when it's not finished, so a lot of content is missing) NEEDS a proper and working in game hint mechanism, that stops you from constantly hitting a wall, without knowing what you need to do exactly to continue.
And yes, there are walkthroughs, but honestly, with those I still can't find the patience to grind through this again, especially considering how often my saves just don't work, when a new version hits.

I know not everyone has a problem with this kind of sandbox gameplay, like I do and some for whatever reason I can't fathom, also don't mind grinding, even if it is boring as fuck, but a hint system wouldn't destroy what those people like and would help me and others who feel like me, so much to really enjoy this game. It's not like you would have to use it (or eventual cheats to pass the grind).

As it is, I can't rate this higher than 2 stars. It has A LOT of potential, if only some quality of life changes would be implemented.

Great models. Writing include MC's thoughts which for me is a big plus.

If not for the grind and lack of proper hints and item descriptions it would be a great game. And the mood system is kind of annoying.

Decent renders, writing, etc.

All held back by ridiculous grind. Even with a walkthrough the game is just tortuous to play.

Also, even though it's tagged with Vaginal Sex, its clear the game expects you to go the lesbian route.

Just a look at the male models can tell you that much. The female models are well done across the board. The male ones, look slap-dash at best.

Interesting game with a clever plot. User-friendly interface helps to enjoy the gameplay. Support for the Russian language is a big plus. It is interesting to read the text and follow the story. The theme of rock music is revealed gradually, giving charm and charm to the game. I have been following the game since the first version was released.

I am enjoying this game so much!!

PROS :

• The characters, especially girls are bomb!! Barbara is the best of all for me. I love how you could modified the MC with tattoo, i wish we could 'modified' her a bit more in the future.
• The scenes are hot especially the lesbo scenes
• It does not take long for the MC to turn into the dark side
• The pace of the story is also great, liking the character development.
• I don't mind the grinding, because you have a lot to do in the game so you could focus on other event that not grindy while preparing for event that req some stats

I don't have any real complaints about the game so far, i enjoyed this game to the bone and definitely could not wait for more

If you could handle several tasks at the same time this game will test your organizing and planning skill

The renders look great, the game is full of characters and cool events that MIGHT happen

The problem is it feels like you have to be a complete masochist to enjoy this gameplay, and none of the things you want to happen will actually happen. I don't understand why anyone likes to spend hours and hours navigating a UI for such little reward.

And when you finally think you're going to get a reward, the developers think it is "fun" to encounter a last minute additional requirement.

Case in point: there's a place you can go swimming. Great, "I need a swimsuit." Makes sense. In this universe, bathing suits cost several days pay. So you get up in the morning, being careful to make the 8am breakfast so you don't have to spend all your money eating. Then you go outside, smoke, go to work, wait until 11am, go to the back, change clothes, go back to the front, click, "work," 4 times, go outside, smoke, go inside, eat ice cream, click, "work," one or two more times. Click outside, click smoke, click neighborhood, click home, make sure you are in the kitchen around for 21:40 or you'll miss dinner. Eat, then click around the house to look at things you can't do. Then go to bed. Rinse & repeat for like a week. Click outside, click bus stop, click subway, click map, click downtown, click mall, click clothing, click the girl, oh wait that was a mistake, you can't do anything with this girl, go back click the basket, and click on a bathing suit. FINALLY! you think, looking forward to to the next day.

Next day, get up, smoke, eat breakfast, go outside, go to street, next street, swimming area. Click swim or sunbathe. "I need a beach towel." Congratulations, you get to do it all over again. WHY does anyone think that sequence would be fun for anyone on the planet?

It's not

Positive Points:
+The story with the goal of being a singer and living different situation around the city.
+Lots of different character with their own personality and story .
+3d model is pretty good.
+Sandbox with lot of different places.
+Sidequest that give you more content.

Neutral Points:
*The vision of lesbian relationship is totally cliché, full of dildo and strap-on, everything is about penetration for the dev.
*Some strange reaction of the MC due to natural courage system. She's okay to get fucked on a gloryhole but touching herself in the park at night is too much for her, try again later when you have suck an unknow truck driver for no reason.

Negative Points:
-The grind is quite important, hard to get money and everything is quite expensive.
-No or poor animation for the sex scene
-Unbalanced character developement, some are near the end (Barbara or Ruby), some have low developement (Sister or the bus guy that help the MC)
-Natural Courage mechanic forced you to have sex experience or sex relationship with specific character destroying your choice or other game mechanic like sexual orientation (if you re not bi-sexual you progression is quite impossible. Version 82.1 give you more choice without getting stuck but not enough)
-Anarchic developement (see in conclusion).
-No real men character for straight relationship.
-The integration and reaction with the rape scene is a complete disaster. (Scene can be avoid since ver82.1)
-The hud that change every two update and is a total mess. with error in the hint.

Conclusion:
I play bright past since a moment (1.5year) I had a really good time on it but I'm really afraid of the developement direction. I think there is no plan for the story and the dev are unhappy with the work already done. Since 1 year they do a lot of correction in the story or mechanics already finished. Each new update you can lost hours of grind, revive past scene that has been modified, crash in your save or in the case of the last update : no old save compatibility. Also can have unlogical change in the story, for exemple Valerie is at the begining in a straight relationship with her boyfrind, telling Ruby she has no interest for lesbian experience but instead of a progressiv "corruption" in a new update she suddenly become lesbian, broke up with her boyfriend and had a relationship with her female dance teacher from nowhere.
For all this reason I put only 3/5 stars and do not recommand to play the game till dev isn't finished or more stable.

Test done on version 0.82.1

I would say top 5 games with female protagonist. Beautiful story with many characters and lots of sex and andventures. Now has even an easier guide to what scenes and how to get them. I do hope dev doesnt get bored or quits in half way, there is so much to explore and do, so much more potential to be the best game playing as female.

Bad stuff is the money, and getting them, so much farming at start it gets boring, also really dont know what to start doing first cos there is lots of stuff and quests to do and explore.

5/5 Game, hope dev continues to deliver us new updates with loads of fun and sexy stuff

Great game, a bit of a grind at the beginning to get going but once you get mid game everything seems to be easier and content the is great, can't wait to see the different endings once the game gets that far

review based on 0.81.1 version
played using russian lang
PRO:
-good cg
-good code
-great ui
-ig hints presents
-story present
-russian lang readable (but some slang present)
CONS:
-too many side chars ig- hard to guess, how many of them ll got expansion in future development
-code is ok, but much more optimal write that code using objects/clases/functions etc. othervise, mby 10-20-30 updates later game ll bugged, cuz code ll be overcomplicated
-some hints show not all details
-whole code on russioan lang- for me is ok, i can read it(but not so fast), but 99.9% players cnt read this code...
-grinding present ig, not so much, but some things like car (20000$) unable to get w/o cheating...

one of best games in sandbox/lifesim genre.

Version: v0.80.1

Review:
This game made me think twice about whether I really want to play with a female MC, the reason for this is that this game is quite boring to be played. Most games with a female protagonist other than games for lesbian content are to make the protagonist become a slut or have a pleasant sexual content for a male audience. So, think how boring it is to have to do the same routine over and over again. Honestly, it should be called ''Girl's Life Sim'', because the biggest part of this game is to be managing the resources of the MC.

Gameplay:
Very boring, very tiring and very annoying. At first you may think the things you do are cool, but after a while you realize that you are in a repetitive cycle. You will always have to do the same thing, so it ends up being very tiring.
Anyway, the gameplay is not very satisfactory, because you will lose a lot of your time for little sexual content. I say this because there are few actions in the interaction with the NPC's, there are too many characters for too little content and not much to enjoy about it. The game is open world, and there are places that you go to once and then there’s nothing to do, but that is not very important either. The main focus is how this game works, in a way of interacting with correspondence to the game, which seems to be a long way to go before it is complete. In fact, the game needs to have a focus as well as focus on the story, because at the moment you have no interest in the story.
Graphics & Sexual Content:
I could say that the girls' renderings are good, but, you realize that they are practically all the same. What makes it change is the face, breasts and skin color. But you realize that when you see that all the girls have the same pussy shape, but other than that, it's ok. The sex scenes are reasonable and there are no animations. There is not much sexual content in the game, there is a slightly low amount.

Why I did gave 1 star?
I thought this was a porn game and not a female life simulator game. The fact that you have to do several things ends up being quite boring in that you wonder why you are playing this. This game could have the potential to be a good game, but it seems that they preferred to put a boring life simulator that the developer thought that nobody looks for porn games to have fun. It's not just making beautiful renders and a sexy body for the girls that will make it a good game, look at this boring gameplay, just the story and its plot is very uninteresting to follow, and you still have to keep grinding and wasting a lot of time in devoting yourself to the MC's resources. Anyway, the game for me is very poorly organized, there are many things to grind and several characters to interact with few actions.
Unfortunately this game is far to be good.

V.0.80.1
- First of all: as another reviewer says in a previos comment, this game is going to make you suffer. YOU ARE GOING TO SPEND LITERALLY HOURS OF GRINDING IN ORDER OF GETTING AN EVENT THAT ALWAYS IS GOING TO BE TOO SHORT AND DISSAPOINTING. You are advised. Now, the review.
- 3D face models: are great most of them. All the girls and women are breathtakingly beautiful. And that's the reason you are going to start playing the game. Well... it's a trap. The rest of the game is not on a par.
- 3D body models: the dev uses the old trick of using only one 3D model for all characters, changing only the size of breast and bottom and the color of the skin. Also, some bodies are more ripped than others... that's all. There is no real variety in age, weights and shapes. Some of them aren't even shapely made, with way too huge melons in skinny racks.
- Story: It's OK. A young girl wants to be a rock star. There are two basic paths: the "pure" one and the "corrupted" one.
So, you can play as a regular girl with regular jobs, (bartender for example) that studies music, dance and rhetoric, doesn't mess with wrong people and doesn't gets into big troubles and finally enters in a band and play a concert. The problem is... who wants to play like that? With that path, the game is just grind, grind and more grind without events...
... or, you can play the "corruption" path: you whore yourself giving head to the truck drivers in a motorway or in a gloryhole, become a webcam porn model and have sex with all people (men and women) around you. That way you get the events and scenes that, as I already said, are always too short and dissapointing.
- Gameplay: the game is about management of resources (time, stamina, hungry, mood etc). There are several sceneries (pretty well done) and you make several activities there (work, train, study, shopping, eat...) all of them cost you time and other resources, or gives you resources, like money if you work. If you don't cheat with the editor of saves or something, the amount of grind in order of getting money or points of different stats is terrible. Also, you have to remember that you have to go to X place at X hour of X day in order of getting an event, and when you arrive, you discover that your stats are too low for that even, and then you have to grind again and again until you get the points you need... Also, there is no walkthrough and the description of the tasks in the game are too short and confusing, so a lot of times you just wander around the places waiting that something interesting happens.
The story is lineal, even if the appearance of the game is "sandbox". You can choose if you do something, like whoring yourself or having sex with someone, but can't choose the way you do it. If you don't do it, you just don't see the event and, if that event gives you some kind of stats or money, you have to grind even more in order of getting it.
- Updates: frequents, but disappointing short. This game has been in development for more that two years, and still seems to be in a early stage of development. A lot of open quests, but all of them waiting for future updates.

Conclusion: DO NOT PLAY THIS GAME NOW. WAIT UNTIL THE YEAR 2030 OR SO, WHEN THE GAME WILL BE (MAYBE) FINISHED, AND PLAY THE COMPLETE GAME CHEATING IT WITH AN EDITOR OF SAVES, CONSOLE COMMANDS OR SOMETHING TO AVOID THE WORST OF THE GRIND. DO NOT PLAY NOW UNLESS YOU WANT TO WASTE HOURS AND DAYS OF YOUR LIFE THAT WILL NEVER RETURN, ONLY TO BE BLUEBALLED.

The story is intriguing - there is some translation error and typo, nothing game braking
The girls characters are gorgeous and interesting.
Something I don't like is inevitable sex scene or rape scene it grossed me out, I though it would be avoidable.

Beautiful art and interesting characters, but if you don't buy an umbrella early in the game you die of starvation, because rain is instant death I guess. The city is impossible to navigate and there's huge resource costs to barely advance the story. The cigarette addiction is utterly retarded, it's disruptive to gameplay and illogical... MC wants to be a singer, remember? There's so much grinding for resources I lost interest in the story.

Many moons ago, I saw a late night program discussing the relevance of russian poetry versus those of other languages.
One of the attendees attested the russian language the unique quality to put into words the hardships and melancholy of life itself.

This is the attitude that must have a huge influence on russian game developers, especially those of adult games.
They just love to make their players suffer.

In this, Bright Past is your typical russian game, it makes you suffer.
The amount of grinding it expects you to engage in is truly soul crushing.
All to, at long, long last, be rewarded by short moments of story, moments that pass all too quickly, facing the player with yet another round on the grinding treadmill.

The early parts of the game are especially harsh, before your courage surpasses 10. Then, the game plays most of it's cards in a very short amount of time, and you are left with a ton of stalled quests "in development" and even more grinding to progress the few remaining ones.

Most of these things could be greatly improved by (s)pacing things out better. You'll very quickly run into quests that state you cannot progress them (wait for next version), which is quite disheartening and gives off a worse impression than the game deserves. It has a fair amount of content, but it's spaced out too thinly (like butter on too big a slice of bread, as a famous hobbit reportedly said), but as of now, I'm not sure it's worth the time investment.
Reading the changelog for the next version, the developer seems to take baby steps, adding single scenes to a quest chain at a time, which means you should wait many versions before giving Bright Past a go.

It's a bit of a shame, really, as the renders are quite good for the most part and the game has some interesting features and some questlines that show promise, it's just that, right now, there are no highlights and you are left with a bland taste in your mouth.