Ren'Py - Cabin by the Lake [v0.53d] [Nunu]

A game that at first confused the hell out of me a couple years ago is now one of my favorite H-games out there.

Reviewing as of version 0.53d

Pros:

• An extremely unique premise about looping a weekend at a Cabin by the Lake with a bunch of extremely well-endowed women
• There's a ton of options and choices for each character (except 1 right now) that gives a variety of different scenes
• The corruption system is unlike anything I've seen before and the way to play this game is something truly special.
• There is a ton of H-scenes to enjoy
• Around 10-12 hours to complete
• The way the world slowly corrupts as you continue the game and seeing how interactions with characters change depending on the world corruption level is awesome.
• Some of the H-scenes are animated. More are being animated as time goes on.
• Each character has their own unique story, personality and traits.
• Nunu clearly wants this game to be more than just an H-game, delivering a fun and surprisingly deep story that evolves as you play the game.
• There's achievements that unlock photos for the girls you can aim for. 100% the game!
• There's a lot of writing and detail for everything in this game.

Cons:

• One of the more challenging learning curves to an H-game, I admit.
• There's technically no gallery in the game
• I got stuck on a few parts of the game trying to progress a certain character's corruption level and took way longer than it needed to for me to realize what I was doing wrong. Game can be confusing for sure.
• There is little to no audio in the game. Some BGM or SFX would be nice at some point.
• The grind for some things, especially fully 100% the game, may feel tedious and boring.

Conclusion:

I wholeheartedly recommend this game to anyone. If you can sit down for like a half hour to fully understand how the game works, you'll really enjoy it. There's a lot of great things happening with this game and the development of the project has been amazing. I can't wait for future updates and see what else is in store!

I love everything about the game even the fact that I do not understand how to play it: you make a progress with the girl but because of that you miss out the content and other scenes, so you need to remove a star to unlock this contect but you can do it by guessing what to do, still being given the hints. I actually believe that the game would be better off without any scenes, it would urge the player to experiment instead of following the specific paths. Every run is so different that I wouldn't be bored because of that, but whatever.

Their boobs are just too big and early on everyone says "tits" every few minutes. I like the tags, but it feels like a guy talking basically all the time. I like big tits, but these are way too large, it's kind of off-putting. I'd love to see a version of the game with smaller boobs (still big, but not comical).

Edit: It improves after a while and I quite like it overall.

The game basically revolves around corruption and replayability, which is an amazing aspect to have as the main focus, but it's executed in a way that just feels tiresome and somehow makes for a very unnatural development for each character. Anyway the game only lasted for a few days where the protagonist and his family are going on vacation, and during that time you can make all kinds of choices to focus on a specific girl to increase her corruption before the end of vacation to make further progression on them.

Since it only lasted a few days, you don't really have much time and ideally it's best to focus on fulfilling the corruption criteria for one girl for each loop, which later you can carry to the next loop, and then the next after, and then many, many more after that. The idea is definitely interesting and encourages repeated plays, otherwise you won't get anywhere. But the problem is your time limit is very little, and there's so much content that you need to unlock which can take way too many loops.

At that point, you're going to keep getting the same interaction and dialogue in many scenes before you can actually push the corruption to the point where things will change dramatically during every interaction. But the change in question can feel unnatural since by increasing corruption level, that means you already made significant progression for each girl that is carried to the next loop. It breaks the illusion that your protag actually managed to have a development during the trip but instead already has a deep relationship before then instead, which basically defeats the whole idea of corruption in the first place.

The girls are generally alright, except that the variety of figures here is just kind of poor and mostly focused on their boob size. Scenes are very outdated since the game is based on AI Shoujo and their stock animations, except they don't even bother to give sound effects. In fact the game doesn't even have any sound, period, not even music or anything which is just jarring.

Normally I would give this game one star, but the content scope and the interesting loop mechanic albeit with an execution that I'm not really a fan of at least make up for the two star. At least the dev tried to make something unique here instead of just following a safe formula.

A very satisfying game with tons of replayability. I'm so hooked on a game that I replay it hundreds of times just to get all the content available.
All the girls are interesting to get to know through the game, and the models are incredible; it's hard to choose a favorite. The only negative would be that Jenny, with her blue hair, feels out of place, but it's a matter of taste.

I agree with all positive comments in this thread. I enjoyed the game very much.
It is something like a roguelike with dialogues. You try to increase corruption of each girl. And if you succeed, the girl changes and gives new dialogues and interactions in the next run.
Every corruption level I was excited to see how it changes the background of girls. I also really enjoyed the bonus material you can get doing additional tasks.
In general, the game quality is really good. I enjoyed the writing and character development. Also, the game has a lot of hot sex scenes.
Something that I didn't like is the large breast - it is not my kink. But I very quickly got used to this. Now I even think it makes the game kinda unique.
I definitely recommend this game.

Phenomenal game, absolutely brilliant, unique concept, and very high effort with toms of concepts. My only gripe is the backstory isn't explained well and the mechanics are a bit confusing, even after reading the help and guide.

This Is a verry unique game that manages to have really good gameplay that can best be described as a roguelike, with only dialogue options and a map. The premise is, you repeat the same 4 day time loop but with every loop you can influence the girls to try and meet conditions for new scenes. most events have all sorts of scenes with all sorts of conditions so it often takes planning on what stats you need to get for each girl and what your game start settings you should have.

The CG's are kinda bad however. With all girls having enourmous boobs leaving little in terms of diversity, the renders are made in an engine that looks pretty bad overall and the scenes often have only 1 angle and they are over after just a few lines of dialogue. There are quite a lot of them so quantity over quality seems to be the main philosophy with this game. There also are very few fetishes on display, there is a bit of femdom, but most of the time you engage in just vanilla sex or some foreplay. There are some characters tht are focused on different fetishes like femdom roleplay and voyeorism, but I feel like the dev could really attemt to spice the characters up a bit by giving them more fetishized scenes in line with their personalities.

The story is Pretty interresting. Each character has a distinct personality but the time loop gets barely adressed even after hours of playtime.

Also, The game has no sound. So play your own music Ig.

Overall this is one of the best Ren'Py games on this site in terms of gameplay, but falls short in the porn astpect.

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. And I found the lewd scenes 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.