Ren'Py - Cabin by the Lake [v0.47d] [Nunu]

Very big fan of the core mechanic of this game and how it retroactively changes your past with the characters. There are certain points where progression is unclear but I have been and am still willing to put hours in.

Review of v0.45d

Cabin by the Lake is a difficult game for me to score. At times, I really I enjoyed it. At other times, it frustrated me endlessly. I'm equally excited and worried about coming back for future updates. Let me explain.

The first thing you'll notice about the game are the low quality visuals. Nunu has done an admirable job in making each girl look unique and emphasizing their busty proportions, but there's only so much you can do with PS2 level graphics. You can tell most of the development time has gone into writing. Many scenes set the models against flat png backdrops, which I don't mind but some will find annoying (but come on, even DokiDoki does it).

The second thing you'll notice are the giant breasts. For me and for many others, this is a great draw to the game. Nunu does these well; they don't look out of place (to me), and are weaponized well in the lewd scenes. I found they were sometimes pretty hot, especially towards the end of the current version. Unfortunately, they take a lengthy grind to get to (which I'll explain in more detail later), and are not always good. The animations are basic, and the scenes are sometimes short. However, you do get to know the characters well through the course of the game, and that emotional connection and personality definitely aids the lewds. And it's worth saying that towards the end of the game, you can get very frequent lewds (including great pregnancy ones), but unfortunately you will probably have already seen all the scenes before because of the nature of the gameplay (which I'll get too, don't worry).

The writing is pretty good. The mc is a traditional blank slate (which works well), and the girls each have distinct and likable personalities. The game mainly focuses on dialogue rather than description, and it sounds natural (with a helping of horniness of course). The game is a timeloop story where (more or less) no one, including the MC, is aware of the looping. But the story still progresses via a "corruption" system (though I would describe it more as "love + horniness" than your typical darker corruption). So you have a sense of coming to know each girl better and pursuing your relationships with them. This feels rewarding.

There are hints of a deeper underlying narrative. but these are extremely few, easy to miss, and often can't be repeated. This is an interesting approach to storytelling which I've never seen in another AVN. The problem is that it works in popular games like FNAF because there's a large community around to piece together clues, and while those clues may be overlooked, enough of them are made easy to access that most players can at least get intrigued. But the clues in Cabin by the Lake are just too hard to get, and this community is far too small to help collect them in one place and piece them together. So it left me curious but narratively blue-balled.

Okay, I've put it off long enough, I have to talk about the gameplay. This is the most frustrating thing about the game by far. This game is exceedingly grindy, but not in the Runescape-esque mining for resources way. Instead, you have to do loop-after-loop, trying to progress each girl's corruption. Each corruption level is unlocked by doing something which can theoretically be completed in 1 or 2 loops, and each level unlocks a whole bunch of new content, which is great. But the clues to unlock each level are obscure, and I can't even begin to imagine how difficult it would be to do without using the in-game cheat which unlocks the whole in-game guide, so you can see all the decision trees. But I didn't want to have this active on my save, because then you can't see which dialogue branches you haven't been down, and which scenes you haven't seen, and you can't undo the cheat. So I resorted to having two instances of the game open at the same time; one on my main save without having activated the cheat, and the other with it activated, which I would switch to everytime I got into a new scene, so I could work out which dialogue options to choose to unlock the next level. And even seeing all of this it was still very confusing to unlock some levels! And if you want to see all the interesting dialogue and scenes, beyond just unlocking levels, you're in for a massive slog. I mean you might want to see what the outcome of pursuing some interesting dialogue is, but if it doesn't progress a corruption level, you might have to reset the entire loop again. If you wanted to do this efficiently you'd have to do a whole lot more planning in advance than most people are willing for an AVN, and no one to my knowledge has written a quickest path guide.

The grind also stretches out the playtime of the game to an absurd degree. And it's not like you're getting new content that whole time. No, for the most part you have the skip key pressed, and are just clicking through decision after the decision, referring to the guide and clues so as to not make any mistakes, until you finally get a bit of unseen text. Hot take, but I don't think any RenPy game should be built around the skip button.

For me, the pros outweighed the frustration of the grind, but only just, and I had to put down the game multiple times. So I can't recommend this game to anyone except those who really really really love big ol' titties and/or pregnancy. Not because you will definitely hate it, but because it might waste your time and leave you feeling unsatisfied.

Endnote 1: You need to install the incest patch for this game to make sense.
Endnote 2: It's a shame there's no audio.

Edit: Now I've finished the game, I actually kind of miss it. By the end of the game, I really loved the relationships you got with each of the girls. And I really enjoyed the pregnancy content. Maybe I was too harsh in this review...

The graphics suck - even for HS standards.
On top of that, it's just sprites over static (and boring) backgrounds, making this not immersive at all.
Show, don't tell! Especially with lame ass openGL HS.

How anyone (other than the dev... ) can gives this 5 stars is beyond me.
This sets the bar super low.

Phenomenal, Hits every note a porn game should and I love the massive Tiddies, as far as an incest game goes its a little lackluster but that doesn't detract from the experience much. I love all the characters and your interactions with them.

A very unique concept. Average CGs, but a nice story, not too slow, not too fast.
The menus are a bit bloated but nicely organized and the game can easily be navigated with one hand.
The optimization isn't great, but if you're into incest impregnation like I am, it's worth it.

I love this game. It's been a while since I stumbled upon a game here that I liked as much as this one. It's got great writing, the characters are well developed, funny, and all around enjoyable, with their only fault being a bit tropey, but still very well written and with more depth than one would expect at first.

The Groundhog Day mechanic is very well executed. A very polished set of mechanics that really encourage the player to keep playing, despite being the same weekend over and over again. It also wastes no time to explain why or how it is happening. So many games with similar mechanics waste so much time trying to explain it (I'm looking mainly at you, Lust Theory). We don't need to know why it's happening. Groundhog Day never gives an explanation. It is fine.

If I had to nitpick, since no game is perfect, the visuals in this game are just fine. There's not a lot of body variety, with breast sizes ranging from ridiculously big to impossibly big. If you don't like massive breasts, this game might not be for you. The sex scenes are also nothing to write home about.

...and yet, every other aspect of this game is so well executed that I can't give this game anything below 5 stars. At the end of the day, I find it really enjoyable, among the best, most original games here.

Props to the developer, can't wait to see more.

[ Review for version - v0.38 ]

TL;DR: Cabin by the Lake is one of the best character development visual novel I've played. It is densely packed with character stories and detail that increase in amount iteratively as you progress the game. It also has really sexy scenarios that keeps you coming back for more. I have been following the game for over a year now, and sadly it seems to be nearing the end point.

The Good: If you love rich character development, and an air of mystery this is the game for you. Double so if you also love enormous breasts, which I do. The game tugs at your heart strings often, both for the better and the worse, and you will guaranteed find at least one character that you absolutely adore!

The Average: The game has a time looping feature which is interesting, but it will not appeal to everyone, and it can get tedious to grind outcomes to progress the story as you can only achieve a few of them in a single loop. You can very quickly develop the story, but you need to know what you are doing or follow the in-game guide.

The Bad: There is so much text – more than a novel’s worth – and a lot of it remain the same between each loop in the later stages that it becomes easy to hold skip and forget the nuance of certain events when trying to reach others. That’s only bad because the stuff you end up skipping is great content, and it feels like a shame to not read it again. Some character content is also locked behind developing other characters first, and while that may make sense, if you aren't interested in those character (for some reason) you may struggle a bit with the first half of the game.

Wishlist:
> More. MOAR!!

Loved it, the loop mechanic was fun to mess around with and see all the different dialogue you could play through just based on what state of corruption you have each girl put to. The female characters all feel different and are fleshed out, making the interactions with them unique and endearing. Sex scenes are great and all the women are hot as hell. Looking forward to seeing this game completed.

Loving the game and the fact that you turned what is just a looping weekend into such a long, complex and enjoyable game is amazing, the characters are all enjoyable in their own ways and the main character doesn't feel super bland to me. Only complaint I do have is cause the game has grown to such a complex system that it's very easy to miss or skip conditions for unlocking content or story unless you are constantly opening up the menu to see where you are and what you have to do and sometimes you miss something cause you didn't click the right response that would extend the tree either making you restart the loop or just get through it as fast as possible while trying to get other story points and unlocks. Currently 4/5 for me simply cause while difficult it's only when you get far into the game and have a better understanding of the system that it ramps up and waiting till the content of all girls have more or less reach a near end point.

Nice idea about looping, but guide hints sometimes too overloaded, and sometimes not understandable. Visual style are 50/50 because of poor source of images. But gameplay are really satisfying, except i cant progress some routes because of bugs

Great game. Honestly very please with the progress of this game. The storyline is very good and gives the player lots of hours to figure out how to seduce a lady or they can cheat and use the hint option. Nunu has been clear with the goal of this game.

Creator is actually actively bringing updates. Nunu has been transparent with supporters about goal of game. Characters are very busty and have nice face. I would advise everyone that love this style of hentai/sex game to support it. Very good storyline, it’s like a sex version of Groundhogs day.

The sandbox aspect is already something that I personally think plagues way too many of these kinds of games, but here it really hinders the experiences to the point where there's no enjoyment to be found at all. The timeloop aspect of repeating the same vacation over and over again, getting different results each time would be fine if it weren't for the fact that it feels like getting any kind of notable change at all feels impossible. The guide is completely useless because of how confusing it is, where it genuinely seems like you should be all set to finish a route only to realize you must have missed something because a scene or option isn't triggering.

The game needs to just scrap this confusing guide and have a step by step guide on how to unlock everything in the best order, rather than showing us a map, the corruption requirements, etc.

If you're into the kinks and fetishes this game explores, it has some great content with some very hot and passionate scenes. There's also a lot of it and plenty variations that are very interesting to explore. The format of the game is pretty different than most in the lewd genre, though, and I imagine that might put off quite a few players.

It's essentially a puzzle game where you explore the same weekend over and over, unlocking new events and situations for future runs by doing certain and often quite specific things in the current run. Each run is quite short, especially when ctrl-skipping through the scenes you've already seen, so it becomes more about experimenting and trying out new combinations to get access to new scenes.

It's different and great fun when you figure something out, but can also be frustrating when it doesn't work out. And while much of the content is fairly easy and intuitive to unlock, there's also quite a bit that unlocks in pretty weird and opaque ways, so much so that the dev includes a walkthrough in the game and a lot of instructions about the mechanics, the various symbols and colour codes etc. Without this the game would honestly be very difficult and even with it, I feel many unlocks are annoyingly convoluted and vague. This can lead to runs being wasted because you didn't do one specific thing Friday night that was necessary to get a certain scene Monday morning, sometimes something the in-game guide didn't mention either. And when you're already doing dozens and dozens of runs in order to unlock the content even when getting everything right, the "failed" runs can be pretty frustrating.

But the characters, the writing, the kinks explored etc. are sufficiently good for me to stick with it. I do hope that the dev opens up the game somewhat, making some of the requirements a bit less restrictive, so it becomes a bit easier to enjoy the great content they've created.

Version: [v0.34d]
Surprisingly fun considering how grindy it is.

In 'Cabin by the Lake' we get the chance to experience the same weekend over and over again, but each time we get the chance to influence the LI's, corrupting them more and more with each repeat.

Each LI has a corruption level, to progress it you need to achieve a bunch of goals ranging from getting x in a specific stat to finding a way to cheat and win a poker game against said characters. we only have a few 'time slots' to do so, so you get to plan and attempt to reach that goal before the weekend is over, sometimes you'll fail, sometimes you can progress 2 LI's at the same time, either way its takes a while and it is pretty grindy.
I really dislike grindy games, but this one is built very well, its never too easy so you got to plan a bit, progressing corruption level with a LI can and will improve your ability to unlock the rest, and you get to unlock new scenes and dialogue changes often so it stayed interesting even 5-6 hours in.
I will say some of the unlocks felt pretty silly and IMO should be streamlined (Lisa's) but overall for the most part it was pretty damn fun.

The writing is pretty good, the models are... acceptable even though they aren't great and they all have weirdly massive tits, the scenes are good and combined with the nice build up to them they are very hot.
I did encounter a few bugs when it comes to unlocking new content, but there's an easy to use cheat/debug menu that fixed the issues that did come up.

I stayed away from this one for a while because of the massive tits and the grindy aspects, now that I give it a chance I found a charming game that I had a lot of fun with.
I will definitely check it out again in the future.

This is no joke the best h game I have ever played. Love the characters and how they behave and the insane situations. Props to the dev. Not even finished and yet so much already, incredibly absorbing.

Big fan of the big tits and pretty much every other fetish in this game, but the writing and execution is also incredible. Very excited to see what future updates may hold!

My only (small) complaint is that the current time loop structure only allows you to go for 1 (sometimes 2) character corruption routes at a time, which can make the game a little slow at times. Other than that the game is an easy 5 stars for me.

I avoided this game for a long time because usually massive breasts are a big turn-off to me. I don't remember why exactly I decided to give the game a go, but it was the first time in a long time that I skipped most meals and sleep for a day and a night because I was too engrossed to notice the passing time.

I was pleasantly surprised to find excellent writing and amazing character development. I found that I quickly forgot about the massive tits on characters because I was more interested in their actual characters.

I found the story unique. You experience a weekend trip normally, gaining the power to make choices near the end, then you start repeating it with your power of choice intact. If your choices cause a heroine to open up with you more, or if they have a substantial effect on the weekend, when that loop ends the past is changed which changes how the weekend goes ranging from small tweaks to dialog, to new or replaced scenes.

And of course there's something spooky going on; if the time loop and past changing wasn't enough evidence. I was caught completely off guard whefllntlqddktsf-

Cabin by the Lake is an absolutely absurd game. Not just in the size of its... assets... but also in its ambition. Despite being relatively simple on the surface, the game's central form of meta-progression turns that simple scenario into a spiraling fractal of depravity. It's interesting to see a game which weaponizes familiarity and routine in such a potent way, and it makes unraveling the puzzle of this family trip a wonderful thing to experience.

You will be underwhelmed at first. You might not like large breasts or the other fetishes at play. This is still one of the most ridiculous feats of scripting logic to have ever graced hentai. I promise you will be surprised by how far you can go, and by the end, wondering how long it will take for a new update to allow you to go further.

Great gameplay, boobalicious models, and interesting characters that you want to sex up.

I love a game where your choices can affect the outcome and the next play through. Especially when every character is boobalicious.

This gameplay is short, but the fun is replaying it over and over again and changing the outcome based on your choices in-game and before the game actually starts by modifying events influencing the story.

If you manage to complete a route in one play through, you'll unlock a modifier that'll influence your next playthrough. This unlocks more scenes and better endings.