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

For me, it's a great game.
The scenario is quite the same as "Bright future" but with no real porn stars.
Some improvements are needed :
- More customized clothes, according to the different situations.
- It's impossible to avoid the two rape events, since you need them to progress in the game
- A detailed walkthrough is mandatory (The last one is outdated), and it is tricky, even with the walkthrough to have access to all game's opportunities until about 05/04.
After, it's a sandbox, but here also a guide is needed.

The progressive corruption is perfect and with a compete different scenario we can find in most of the games like this one (Coming of age, Lolita gone wild, Glamour, Valentina's story and so...)

Pictures are top
Sounds are quite limited.

So, some improvements are needed, but I consider this game as at least one of the best in the category of gradual voluntary corruption.

Seriously?

If someone likes sandbox style, this might be a nice game.
But the hint section is broken, so you have to run around everywhere at any time, sometimes it's even important if it's raining or not.

Making money. Giving blowjobs, working in a cafe and a casino.
With good stats, you will earn about 600$ a night in the casino. A Strapon, you will need to buy this to progress, will cost 700$ (if I remember correctly).
A car will cost you 20000$.

If you are into this ... try it and you will like it.
But without a proper hint system, a mod or an walktrough .... good luck.


Renders are ok, no animations.

Female MC is constantly swinging between bi, lesbian, straight.
(No idea if you can stay on one path, as the hint system guides you to every path)

*Update 0.80.1


The dev promise, that with the new update some of my points are being adressed.
Sadly I will not be able to see this improvements, because old saves don't work.

Version 0.8, this game is nearly 3 years old - and the dev decides to change the code so you have to start a new game?

Perhaps I will try this again whenever it's finished, but for now it's a no, bvut no thank you.

Quite a hot game. I don't like rape stuff, so the rating is one star short. It would be cool, if there would be an option to avoid that scene(s). Apart from that, I like the game very much. The graphics are good, and I like that the main character has a target in her life.

Amazing game but it can be a bit redundant with the constant grinding and courage points can be hard to come by since it is challenging to progress the main story. The best part IMO is the freedom to do whatever you want and how much there is to do. Some of the translations are pretty bad too but it's not so bad it makes it unplayable.

Good game,

I played approximately 40 hours before giving in to the cheat mod.

The renders are absolutely gorgeous, I knew that the game lacked good walk through but I made very little progress while passive playing and so I started notepad documentation to track characters to actually start enjoying the game.

Pros:
1. Great story, Georgeous MC , NPCs.
2. Great renders, great effort on small details.

Cons:
1. You will struggle without a good walk through.
2. Repeated actions are tedious, "grinding", compensated by great renders and story progress but still too much effort.


Overall, Enjoyed the game but this game does need improvement a lot, I would of rated it 4 stars but night scenes were awesome, hence the 5 stars, start with a good walk through perhaps.

My previous game: Chloe
My future game: NTR Knight

GoodLewd

Story so far was interesting. Great job on the models. However, some elements do get a bit repetitive. The constant need for buying, cooking and eating food and earning money gets tedious at some points. Overall enjoyed it a lot with the work done so far. Can't wait for the next update.

This game is a complete grindfest. It is also my first experience ever where I played a game with cheats and it was still extremely grindy. Figuring out what to do next is not always intuitive and the story itself is nothing special.

Very good and challenging game so far! The character design is great, although its quite hard to figure out the next steps some of the time, i had to go to a hint guide, there should be better hints, (See Barbara in the morning on weekends wearing sexy underwear). I cant wait to see whats next and where it goes.

Nice pictures, but grindy and boring AF. Playing for 2 hours now doing nothing than going to work so I can buy a laptop because I desperatle try to find out how to increase the f*cking courage from 5 to 6 or higher. I literly can do nothing else since 2 hours, than work.
Edit: I run into a CTD-bug within 5 minutes into the game. A bug that is known for a long time (rain-bug).

One very pleasent game !

Pros:
-well done and nice playgame, with enjoyable questline
-Story around this girl is good and dialogues are good
-Graphics are very nice too

Cons:
-should have some more sex scenes with animations , but is not bad overall
-I just finish

Hope to see more....

Game is good fun.....oh well..how bitchy Alex can get ^^
Maybe it is not possible to come forward without the walkthrough document...well I finally needed it badly ...

Hower...Greate ONE! Looking forward for an update and maybe more clothing for Alex XD *smirks

This is a proper game - a sandbox, not just a visual novel. Content-wise it's already pretty huge (at version 0.4.3). The game mechanics get introduced at a comfortable pace and you quickly learn to balance the different needs of the MC. For a quicker play-through, you may want to enable the console to help with money and arousal (thus avoiding some grind). Apart from that, it's a highly enjoyable experience.

Visually, the game is top notch. The world is huge and feels well fleshed out. The different locations are pretty and the renders utilize quite a lot of "extras" (characters you don't interact with), thus avoiding that feeling of emptiness which is so common in these games.

The number of NPCs is pretty massive as well, which makes it even more impressive to me, just how much work has gone into making them unique. While you may recognize a few of the DAZ models, I'm sure you'll appreciate the little tweaks that have been made to them.

Of all the characters you interact with, only one so far has what I consider to be "abnormally large breasts" and even she is fairly reasonably proportioned, especially when compared to other games. (There's also a real dickzilla in there, but my focus tends to be on the female characters.) Overall the characters are varied and well posed.

Story-wise the game offers a lot of side quests, in addition to a fairly long main quest. Most of these are set to be expanded upon in future versions. The writing is perhaps the only negative side to this game as of now. Don't get me wrong, the story itself is novel and well structured, it's the translation that suffers a bit. There's some strange use of idioms here and there, as well as some grammatical quirks and awkward sentence structure. In other words, nothing really major, but currently the game's weakest point in my mind. With all the other aspects of this game being so well made, this point is too trivial to deduct a whole star.

Bright Past started as a beautiful game with great art, interesting locations, quests, and side quests.

Whilst it still looks fantastic it has unfortunately turned into My Boring Band Simulator 2019.

New content is now usually hidden by being triggered by speaking to specific people at very specific times and days of the week.

Grinding includes working boring jobs, sleeping, smoking, going the gym, getting haircuts, buying groceries, travelling on buses, travelling on trains, cooking food, and managing the mood of the main character. What's fun or exciting about that?

e.g. working at a casino could and should be fun in a game. But no, no random events or progress, you're literally just clicking to complete a shift and earn a few bucks at a casino.

The main quests are now concerned literally with the logistics of starting a band e.g. practising guitar, hiring someone to light some fireworks at a gig, finding cover for someone's work shift so they can do some PR for the band.

Most side quests started as exciting but there is no new content to be able to complete. Dates, secrets, and deliveries of suspicious packages are more exciting than the main quest of finding someone to play bass.


Suggestions to fix?

Indicate which characters have new content with an icon appearing above their heads. I don't want to see "I'll come later" for every character. Instead they could suggest a hint what you need to do or speak to next.

No more time and week day specific content gates. If you need to talk to someone to progress a quest you should be able to find them easily.

Complete / add content / or just remove the side quests!

For every new boring band task event add one exciting sexy event.

Pros:

• Top art quality
• Right amount of text
• Pleasant story (except one event)
• Very good pace of MC corruption

Cons:

• To enjoy the game, walkthrough is a must
  • I can understand that though - to have some interesting grinding in adult game, it would be some adultery - that would break stable pace of MC's corruption

The game in its unfinished state is really fine.
A bit buggy, a bit blatant, extremely grindy, but still has its charm with attractive models and delicate encounters.
What it lacks as of August 2019:
1) interactions with males.
2) full lesbian, not just bi, character development.
3) influence on NPCs development.
4) quitting smoking (or I didn't find a way); maybe simply by purchasing a nicotine plaster, maybe turn it into a quest.0.87 Not anymore! The character can quit smoking by simply abstaining for several weeks.
5) random encounters valuable for story.
6) dominant/neutral/submissive routes of development
7) scroll-back to check the placed order (bypassed by UNREN, but still...)
8)

Looking forward to new content. It's more complex than just a VN slideshow, but without the obtrusive mechanics of some (especially RPGM) games. I guess the reason so few people write reviews is because they are required to be excessively long.

There are a lot of things to like about this game, especially
1. The female (and male, sans the absurd mutant penis syndrome) character avatars. They are attractive when they are supposed to be, and different from one another. You never have the problem of trying to remember who this character is.
2. Attractive and appropriate backgrounds. They are mostly static, but they give a good feel for the areas they are supposed to represent, and there are variations on many of them (like the bus stops) so you have the feel of a living world.
3. An interface that is intuitive but not intrusive. I don't recall ever having to try to think of how I was going to do what I wanted to do. A good blend of point-and-click and click-on-icon.

The problem with all of these good things is that they are deployed in the service of a story that is very unclear and a game play that is boring. The player feels like a mouse in a maze, trying to unlock the next mysterious threshold that will make the next "wait for story" event to unfold. What causes those to unfold isn't clear, so the player never knows if they are making progress or treading water. Quest log hints are uselessly vague.

None of the NPCs are fleshed out at all. 99.9% of the player's intereactions with NPCs will give the player only the choice to "come back later." A few have a few vague hints of backstory (and one, the band leader, has a very-well-fleshed out backstory) and it doesn't seem like the main character is relating to real people, but just puppets spouting lines once some threshold has been reached, after which they are "come back another time."

I'd rail against the absurd mutant penises, but what's the point? Compared to the bland gameplay and frustrating "quest" system, mutant penises just don't register.

I remember the developer's Bright Future QSP game with some nostalgia. It never went anywhere, but the player always had a goal and could plan how to meet it. In this game, the player is blundering around blind, just hoping to get a threshold stat or repeat an action enough times to get something to change and some progress to be evinced. The vast majority of the time, the player will be disappointed, and they won't know why.

If I were writing a game like this, I'd have a LOT more internal dialogue for the MC and a lot more (even if random) dialogue for the NPCs. I'd have a story that was slowly unfolding in front of the MC so that she would have a sense that, while she felt her own situation most keenly, there were other people feeling theirs just as keenly, and maybe she could do something about that. I think that it's probably too late to do that for this game, though, so I will just wish the developer good luck, thank him or her for BF, and move on.

Very good game! Keep going on! Beautiful characters, good story! Nice gameplay, instresting quests. need more girl on girl scenes, play this game only for G/G and not disappointed thanks author for this game.

Version reviewed: 0.2

Plot:
Seems it´s about a girl who is new in the big city but we have almost no details of her life before. I know it´s one of the firsts versions but at the beggining Dev should put an intro to more or less put everyone in situation, at least is what i think. I only saw when she had sex first time in the past.

Renders and animations:

Renders are awesome.
Female characters are perfect quality and very realistic (leaving aside that almost everyone is a gorgeus model) but male ones i guess cash were lower there i don´t see that quality.
Animatios: I only saw 2 animations and i think they are very short one of them is literaly 2 frames in a loop, give us 4 or 5 at least.

Characters:

The most important THING is that i don´t like Alex because she says she is from a worse neighborhood but is naive as hell. And i saw in the stats she only had sex i time and orgasmed one too so why she becames incredibly wet looking at everyone and has to masturbate so many times at that pace she´d had done it 10000 times now.
And being so naive even in a normal neighborhood she would be a fucktoy.
And i can´t get why she is all calm when she has hard sex with Leo if she had sex only one time before in her life and time ago. She have to be so sore down there.

I like most of characters because i think they have nothing wrong, but maybe the only thing is that I don´t feel them. I mean they have very short dialogues or references to them and i like to see deeper characters.
Example: Valerie is a close person to Alex but i know very little about her. Some photos that makes Alex remember and her sister thing but ...

Females are like models I only saw a thing like that when i were in Moscow that seemed like heave with so much angel babies in there XD but is ok. Moscow district for me gg.

Males dick are humongous i mean it´s not real Rudo have a trunk larger than both of Alex arms and almost thicker than Alex when his trousers are normal.


Gameplay:

I think some activities like reading should be better achievable not doing same thing for ever. but i heard Dev was changing it so i´ll pass it.


So much dialogues in everything is necessary but especially in sex scenes the are empty. I like to see what she say or thought deeper or what the other person says to convince her or while having sex with her.

In conclusion it has potential but has some things i don´t like i i would like if dev improve this on the future.
Like in sex scenes or in meetings Alex reacts to other person smell and other person to yours. Or if you get cum in you to get bad smell but with the option to palliate without going home this cleaning yourself with the wet wipes.
And other reacting to your cum depending onn where it is.

Grind and unnecessary game mechanics..Dev is trying to fit in a QSP game-like mechanics in renpy format. Creating renders for all possible scenarios is going to be difficult. We will see V1.0 in a decade at this pace.