Ren'Py - Come Home [v7.17.3 Premium] [R.J. Rhodes]

Excellent fundamentals, part of the 'Family Harem' sub-genre, technically.

The premise and setup are solid, the gameplay loop with the polaroids to choose scenes is brilliant, and the stories of each individual character are actually really human at their core, just with the horny dialed up to 11 - the biggest drawback is the MC, who is a cardboard cutout blank who doesn't commit to any train of thought in order to optimize the odds of the player projecting themselves into him.

Models are 6/10, animations 3/10, but the menu options, crude as they are, are actually a 10/10 for ease of use, inbuilt gallery, reliable hint system and opt-in system.

While it's not my personal greatest preference in terms of content or visuals, Come Home has such excellent AVN fundamentals that it's still worthwhile as an experience.

I'm copy pasting this review from I did in Steam, cause the review still holds! I'll update a few things tho...

Every now and then, if you play enough of them, you'll find a sparkling gem of a game amongst the the dank mire of atrocities that are the Visual Novel Pronz games of the internet on Steam. Many of them are nothing more than Patreon cash grabs that are written poorly, translated poorly and are utterly ridiculous by even Pronz standards. But ocassionally, there is that GEM...

At the low, low price of FREE, there is "Come Home". This game is mostly quality work. Good looking and mostly realistic characters (the MC is hung like a horse, but hey... it's pron), great visuals, lots of animations, a gameplay system that works, tons of characters, almost complete freedom when it comes to relationships and a MC that actually stays pretty consistent in his personality.

"Come Home" is the story of <insert name here>, a studly guy that is smrt(yes, intentional there), handsome and fabulously well-hung who is almost done with college abroad in Brazil to earn his BS in Quantum Mechanics. He receives a cryptic email from his Step-mother that is letting him know that his Father has mysteriously disappeared and has been missing for weeks. He drops everything to return home to his step-Mother and Step-sister, hoping to find out what happened to his Father and help the family he himself abandoned 3 years prior.

When I say this game is a gem, I mean it. Sure, the story is on rails. But the freedom of the game comes in the harem it offers and the wiggle room it allows you to decide who you wish to bang. There are no fewer than 16 romanceable individuals which include The Step Sister and Step Mother (whom the MC has only known for a few years before he left for Brazil, just so it won't be too weird), introverts, extroverts, a handicapped scientist, MILFS, cucks, a transgender girl, a gay man, college girls galore and a dommy lawyer. Each of these people have unique circumstances and some of them even contribute to the main plot of the game and all of them are simultaneously romanceable if you wish. Are you turned off by the prospect of the gay man being in your pron game? Weirded out by your Step Sister having a crush on you? NO PROBLEM! Go to the contacts screen and TOGGLE OFF the content for any of the characters in the game! Do you want to get with the Skater chick from the park but have no clue how to do it? NO PROBLEM! Click on her contact info and the game tells you how to proceed to the next step with her!

Did I mention this game is free? Yes. It is. No DLC in order to get most of the pronz. The present DLC is strictly early access cosmetic outfits for the girls during dates as well as a few sex scenes as a thank you gift to supporters. Donations on Patreon are welcome to support the author, but it is not a requirement.

The Pluses and Minuses:

++++ Great visuals! Most characters are realistically proportioned.
- The MC is ridiculously well-hung and his penis looks plastic in some scenes.
- Characters will sometimes play to stereotypes
++ Transgenders and gays are represented!
+ Lesbian content is rare, but still there and has not excluded the MC.
++ English and not Engrish! Very few grammatical errors. Very decent writing!
++ Tons of sexy times!
- There's alot of build up to those sexy times for alot of the characters. If you're looking for a game that is "startgame-fap-closegame", this is not it.
+ After you've already witnessed sexy times in game, it becomes a gallery unlock that you can revisit at any time. Some of the characters have repeatable sexy times in game.

Overall, there is a TON of content to the game despite it being early access and very little main story. My 14 hours at the time of this review has maybe a few hours afk-time but the rest is grinding out the game story and the romances and I didn't even get all the romances. I genuinely love some of these characters and there are some genuine LOL moments in the game as well. The game does not pressure you into making choices too often, preferring a relaxed visual novel experience by allowing you to postpone decisions or even toggle certain characters on or off at will without penalty(FANTASTIC design decision!).

So.... We have a pron game that is well written, has good visuals, huge variety of characters, has a ton of content, intuitive interface, near-zero pressure on decisions and is FREE TO PLAY with no pressure to go to Patreon, unless you're looking for the most recent release.

R.J. Rhodes deserves a fekkin award and many donations for giving us this title.

Hell Yeah, I thumbs up this game! You should too! Play it!

A game that feels very much greater than the sum of its parts.
There's a lot of little things I don't like, but in spite of it all I kinda love the game.

The writing is generally fine. The game makes it clear in quick enough order that the overall narrative is secondary to banging as many peeps as possible. And it's a good thing these relationships are fairly engaging, because the aforementioned overarching plot feels like an afterthought at best.

No one seems to give a fuck about the missing father, worse perhaps that they go from not giving a fuck to almost seeming happy that he's gone. Time I suppose will tell if this results in any narrative payoff.

Visually the game is pretty good. MC looks like a chode, as is tradition I guess. All his potential lovers look great though and I appreciate the diversity a great deal.

The animations vary wildly in quality, from great to kinda broken.
For instance there's a scene with Lisa where she has her legs wrapped around MC and her ankles are very obviously clipping through each other.

Audio wise music exists but it's meh, I muted it..

The game actually has a decent amount of voice acting and while it's of decent quality I can't help but feel that for the most part the voices don't really fit the people they're coming out of. Ultimately I wound up muting the voices, but different strokes 'n all.

Perhaps the biggest compliment I have for the game is that it does sandbox gameplay in a way that doesn't make me wanna claw my eyes out with a rusty spork.

There ain't a series of unnecessary maps to navigate, there's no pseudo adventure game or rpg elements - so no pixel hunting or stat grinding. The game is very upfront about who you can interact with at any given time and what you need to do to progress any given route.

Honestly to anyone else making one of these games? If you absolutely INSIST on making a sandbox style game you should look to Come Home for the template. In my admittedly not wholly comprehensive experience, nobody does it better.

Nice games, good render, LOTS of LI, a crapton of scene/positions, dialogues are ok
Sure it's an harem fantasy with the usual magical dick, but I like that
Only complaint I have is that there's no real endings with LI, and the main quest isn't developed enough

v7.17.05

first couple of hours no action. at all. renders are mediocre. the most boring way to make a datesim. you can meet A LOT of ppl. and all you do every day is ask them 1 question out of like 10possibility. very braindead questions. is that supposed to build relationship lol? low effort game.

if you have hours to spend on a boring dating sim with the most cliché characters then you found your game. else just avoid it. typical "sister tsundere" who hates you but still loves you deep down and all the other usual tropes.

BORING.

especially since no action first couple of hours. waste of time.

Awesome game with plenty of sexual content and really hot women. There IS gay/pre surgery transwoman content but it's easily avoidable. Any character is avoidable if you're not interested. A few take longer to get anything sexual (minor grind), but there are others interested almost right away.

Played v6.15.1 through 95%, based on what I have left to unlock under the Heart button in the top right of the screen.

+ Lots of variety of love interests and that includes male+male and male+trans and male+interacial female...if you want it so.

+ On that note, you do get to choose to pursue or NOT pursue any of the relationships and have a copastetic friendship only in most cases.

> Kinks are there, but very minimal. Some anal, some BDSM, cuckold, etc.
This could have been better with so many love interests.

+ The overall plot is light, but where the writing shines is each character has a distinct background and motivation and you spend most of your time getting to know each character.

> Everything is a bit too "nice" with the MC and even though you can choose to go along with the few-and-far-between kinks, there isn't a sense of "dark" or perverted in the interactions.

OVERALL:
I found it a very good VN.
I like buffets because you get lots of choices and this is evident here.
Keep up the good work!

Pleasantly surprised!

I first played this game maybe two or three years ago and quit for some reason I can't really remember. Re-downloaded v7.16.3 and it had a very different feel to it.
After reading through the game threat it was clear that the rework of the UI and gaming mechanic were the big game changers, and what can I say? It's very polished and flows like a charm, one of the best play through experiences of any adult games I know of, amazing!

Storytelling is very good and well written. There's not a huge amount of main plot and that's okay, sitting humbly on the side line of the real objective: humping everything that's not sitting on a tree after counting to three (German saying, sry ).

One thing that distinguishes this game from nearly every other one is a very feministic vibe:
Everything is very consent oriented, nothing will happen without the explicit agreement of everyone involved, nothing to dislike here.
Sometimes the storytelling tends to become a bit preachy, up to the point where it feels like beeing a student's combined social studies & IT project: "Make a lewd game for horny boys, that teaches them how to correctly behave towards women."
You also get reminded plenty of the "strong and independent woman" trope, I don't know if a "harem" style game is the perfect place for such an idealized messaging, when real life already teaches one that there are enough situations, where people are unable to stand on their own feet - no matter the gender, btw.

The way the "harem collection" feels also is different to other games: Instead of "get every love interest" (which you do if you want!), it's more like "everyone can get the stereotypical handsome, well behaved and potentially successful main character (you!), no matter what. No problem with that (and yes, you can decline every single relationship), after all we want to boink a lot, and we do!

The amount of lewd interactions is big, just what one can expect from 20 potential love interests.
I really like the offered selection in partner constellations, the game certainly doesn't stop at the one man & two women variation to basic m & f,. Very good and that's also the game's content highlight in my humble opinion.

Other kinks are quite basic and there's not a lot of them, even very widespread fantasies, like anal sex, are sparse, at one point one should ideally be able to choose the preferred hole in every available penetration scene.
Also way too litte foot stuff, only one scene so far. Mind you, the very funny "show feet!" joke from the ingame cam show is real, I know plenty of other guys who are into it, but not everyone of them would confess it to their spouse.
There's way to little toy play as well and more kinky stuff, beside some light bdsm scenes, is more or less avoided. Huge potential there, grown ups present!

Character desingns and animations/scenes are okay-ish. Some are good, many are a bit meh. There's an overabudance of angles where nothing can be seen, not really adequate for a porn game. If there's a dick and a hole, just show it! Also: "No babe, lights stay switched on, no hiding there!"
I didn't really like the animation loops that combinded two view angles. Make them seperate, so one can choose to stay for a while on the preferred ones.

All in all in many aspects one of the best games I've played so far: ergonomics, feeling of progress, lightheartedness, storytelling, amount of available and generally very likeable characters, all very very good!

Minus one star for visual aspects, lack of non vanilla lewdness and a bit too much of preachyness, that feels like right from the teacher's desk, aimed at pubescent horndogs who can't think straight for one minute and have no clue that women have agency as well.

Wonderful game , try it!

Edit: Grammar. Might edit again.

***This review is coming from someone that had a Mother/Son fetish, so if that fits you then please read on.

From a MS perspective, I can't recommend playing this game. The mother character in this game (Lisa) is actually quite attractive and is soft, curvy and looks older. The characters aren't blood relation if that matters to you. That part doesn't matter for me, personally. I actually quite enjoyed the dialog within the game Knight of Love and there is no relation what-so-ever. But this game misses on the buildup, tension, romance and most of all sexual dialog (the more a woman calls herself Mommy, the hotter it is). The creator has many fetishes in the game but lacks in being able to handle that genre. There is very little eroticism in that particular relationship IMO.

So why do I give this game 4 stars you might say? The rest of the game is worth playing. I've mostly avoided 3d render games because the women look fake (beach ball boobs on bodies), but this one does a little bit better job with that. The women look closer to real with blemishes and all and I like that because I like real women. I started playing this game for Lisa but I stayed for Dana, who I hands down like the best. There are other ones that were great too and worth your time. I like that the MC is not some skinny shota looking guy. He's a solid looking guy. I also LOVE LOVE LOVE that this game is sandbox (mostly. More below), because it allowed me pursue girls I wanted and avoid those I didn't want. I like that it has some voice acting. I don't think it adds alot but still cool. I also really like the hint tracker and that the game shows you when a woman's story is complete. The style on how that's done is clever as well.

Now for the bad. Man! The politics! This creator seems to feel some kind of way and he wants you to know it and there is absolutely no nuance to it. I could have done without that. I didn't like how you had to pursue some girls in order to open locations for other girls. I had to pursue the sister character and Tammy (I had zero interest) in order to open the beach for Dana and I had to pursue the scientist girl to open the Grotto for Dana. I was not interested in any of those women. The writing won't knock your socks off but it's a lewd game; it's not meant to win an Oscar.

Overall I think this game is fun and worth your time. No doubt you'll find a woman you find attractive and for the most part you don't have to pursue any others if you don't want to.

This is an awesome and lovely VN, from the renders that are both sexy and cute, not only the main cast but also the side ones as well. to the writing of their individual stories, I encourage you to give them all a try, I did and let me tell you Adrian is a very lovely girl. if not for the sex stuff, her story worth reading.
The music is your common royalty free stuff, does the jobb well enough but that's about it. I do like the voices of the characters, but at times it seems there wasnt a clear direction on the delivery of the lines, it's not bad, but it bugs my brain a bit since Im a sucker for voice acting.
This game has a great hint system, all is explained in the tutorial, and it's done in a charming way.
Now, if you want to speed run the spicy stuff, theres a few girls that get on pretty quick, I advice patience, this is a VN, not a porn video.
I played the v7.16.3 version for about 20 hours, I like to read the conversations, and still have content to go, and I love it very much. consider support the creator if you can!

Ok to begin with, I have played a lot of games on this site. That means I have experienced a lot of garbage and a lot of good games too. This game is one of the best. The amount of options and choice you have here is nothing short of perfect. You have total control over all situations. You have the final say in all interactions between characters. You can control everything. You can even disable characters entirely and remove them from your game. It is simply perfect. The graphics and animations are great, the girls are all varied in both looks and what they offer, the writing is good and you have a lot of different styles on how you want to answer and treat the girls and even the main story. The game has so many varied fetishes and of course they are all optional and are very upfront about them. Threesome, foursome, pet play, trans, lesbian, camwhores gay bi sub/dom bdsm... It's got it all. Now at first I saw the sandbox tag and was like oh man another one of these click around to fish for events game. This game is not that. When you realize just how much content is in this game, it is absolutely staggering. The "sandbox" element is needed to be able to interact with everything. There is no time limit and you don't have to "fish" for anything, it's just there for you to interact with in any order and what way you want to. You can even look in the girls menu to see what content you're missing and how to get it. It has full replays of not only the dates and sex scenes but the conversations as well. This game is one of the best and it deserves honest praise. After 10+ hours of playing (yes that is how much content there is minimum) I could find no fault in this game and believe me I was looking. Absolutely recommend this gem.

Visuals are good
Choice is amazing ( fan of the choose who you want to woo screen )
Story is good
Sex scenes are good

I bought the game on steam when it released and have been pleasantly surprised to have it moved up to one of favorites and always installed now.

The improvements to the UI have been very welcome. Although I felt their was nothing inherently wrong with the previous versions they just keep improving.

And I like how each Girl/Guy has a unique voice to them so to speak.

Looking forward to future updates of the game

.... more Gertrude... let me take her away and marry

Definitely worth playing. Although I am not a fan of incest and it is poorly hidden in this game, I totally recommend it. The characters are believable, the story is good and the animations are beautiful.

Yay! A game with believable women! That alone makes this stand out in the crowd here.

Now if you add great art, more animations than you'll ever need and hours of content, kinks you don't usually see here and regular updates, what do you get?

One of the best slice of life games you'll ever find here. It really is a breath of fresh air and deserves your support. Try it and consider supporting this.

TL/DR: A relatively enjoyable dating sim that lightly dabbled in storytelling elements. Tons of animations, if those are your jam. Good character focus that built out the relationships. Mildly sloppy content gating with some kinks I disliked and narrative inflexibility related to dodging those topics was slightly annoying.

+ The prose of the title is pretty decent. Author has a nice vocabulary.
+ The author is good at capturing the emotionality of the characters. For the most part they feel like people. There is still some handwavium involved in the plot / personalities to allow for porn scenarios- but that is the buy in to get them. Altogether the progressions felt relatively naturalistic.
+ Nice to play a Mc that wasn't a string bean. Kinda unique build to him- most games you play as a either a really wimpy / nerdy protag or a megachad. This bro is rockin an almost fit dad-bod.
+ I love all the bush!
+ Doggie Hair-pull scene with Suzy was mega-hot.
+ Being able to toggle a character on or off on the UI was quite elegant
+ I was glad the game had a main plot to follow. I would have liked a bit more of that- but it was still nice to be working with Adrian, Jez, and Whitney to try to unravel where pops is.
+ Core plot structure was kinda trope- college bro comes how to fuck a bevy of his definitely not relatives, their friends and the people in the city- but there were enough wrinkles on it to keep it somewhat fresh.
+ VA was a nice element. Game would improve with more of that.

- For me the largest criticisms relate to how content is gated in this title. I have one minor gripe about it relating to UI and one major gripe about it relating to kink tastes. 1) Minor gripe = it was very annoying on a character that I wanted to do *some* of their content- but not all of their content that the pink border indicating content was still available could not be removed. I am *never* going to say yes to this pegging scene. So why can I not remove the *new* content flag- it isn't new content; it is content I have seen is available 10 times b/c I keep thinking there is new content and there isn't. I also straight up turned it down once. So why is it still there? 2) Major gripe = putting a mmf 3some kink on Tammy was boneheaded. You have one of the most pure- lovable character (Suzy) associated with her a priori with no ability to split them up- and now I have to worry about not being able to satisfy her other partner's core kink b/c I hate it. Great. The whole progression gave me the ick. I didn't even *want* to ask Tammy that question b/c it is just not something I would bring up with a girl. But again the pink "content available" indicator seems to imply you cannot skip it to progress. The game's approach of HEY THIS IS MY KINK, but you won't find out about it until you are deep, deep into someones route is pretty meh. I'd deeply prefer to know up front what ppls are into if it is a somewhat controversial kink (like with Brandi or Tammy)- I don't like cam-girls or Gang-bangers either- but it wasn't sprung on me so I didn't get attached and then feel deep disappointment later. I can think of a ton of ways this could have been handled better to insulate ppl who don't like the kink from feeling grossed out, while still allowing the dev to do it.
- I don't find most of the girls aesthetically pleasing.
-Occasionally the author relies too heavily on the MCs internal monologue- sometimes MC-kun drones on and on about some super boring observable detail. I've got eyes MC- you don't need to say redundant things. I can see it on the screen . No need to pad that word-count with fluff
- Bombshell vs petite woman ratio was too damned high. Flat is justice!
- I only liked 13 of 20 routes in the game- which is pretty low for me in a game that I thought was good. Probably a result of it being more bi-sexual (more dudes) than a usual harem game and not being into that.
- The only choices that mattered at all were to decide if you wanted to do a route or not.

The number of romances and the diversity of the romances in story and looks makes this one really stand out. If kinks or fetishes are your thing there's a little something for everyone here, and I found myself enjoying stories that featured fetishes I'm not normally into just because I was enjoying the variety of it all. A fun buffet of porn. Excited to play it again when it updates more.

EDIT Oh also shoutout to that one character that likes Beloved and Homegoing, love to see some good literature in a porn game

I'm a little torn about this one. If I could I would have given it a 3.5.

It has plenty of women and good scene's. And it was definitely playable. Never felt lost because of the sandbox elements.

I just couldn't get passed the concept of being in a small town. Declaring your love to 15 different women and having none of them question that. Also back stabbing drug dealers while you are part of their operation without consequences. Nobody even questions who the snitch was, they just continue going on dates.

Personally I would have enjoyed it more if the number of love interests were cut in half. But with more dept to the interactions. Or.. just explain throughout the story that this entire town has polyamorous traditions. Anything to explain away how all the women love you but some how none care or notice that you sleep around.

I'm not normally a fan of sandboxes, but this does a great job. There is no resource system, no real grind. The plot is interesting and there are a great variety of LIs.

My two star ding is because of lack of choice in certain areas. You can chose to not engage with certain content, but that just locks you out of things, instead of just removing the content. For instance, one LI is a futa, you have no choice in that. I love the trans angle, removing that from her story would be stupid, but I just don't want a chick with a dick. Having the option to have that be a thing or not would be the best of both worlds, folks that like that will have it, and folks that want her to have a pussy will have that too.

There is one other instance of this kind of thing that bothered me enough to ding another star, instead of just one. You have to share one of the LIs. I know technically there are a few like this, ones that wont leave their spouse, or the cuck one, which I honestly thought was kind of adorable. They are a cute couple. But, I don't want to share my "roommate" with the butch MMA queen. She's nice, but she openly states that she does not want a serious relationship, your "roommate" openly states that she loves you more than anyone and does not want to lose you ever again. Then, if you try to deny them the "thruple" relationship, they both leave you to be with each other instead. If I wanted to experience this level of lying and hypocrisy, to be left for another person and feel rejected and alone by the person who supposedly loved me the most, I'd just start dating again. The realism is a bit too much here.

I think it's impressive how there's like 20 love interests and the dev is able to make them unique in some way.

Writing is also pretty good and I like the renders. All in all highly recommended to play.

Edit: I think the voice acting doesn't add to the experience, it really seems out of place tbh. Personally I find it annoying although others might disagree.

This game is aggreable enough. Most of these games that are story-focused, fail to entertain. This game is on the same boat. For how varied these characters appear on the surface, they are quite empty under the surface. I feel like this game is building itself up for an orgy scene with every character involved. The drama is so pitiful. Everyone just agrees with eachother. There's no dynamic. No stakes. Yet this game really wants you to care. For example, there is barely any drama between Suzy and Tammy, even though they both have a crush on you. Polyamorous relationships aren't exactly easy to manage. Somebody is bound to get jealous, and RJ fails to acknowledge this crucial part of a throuple. It's all fantasy, and I can dig that, but there is a point where it is too unbelievable. The MC is God and nobody can touch him. He does not experience any character development of any kind. He is literally the most boring protagonist, and we are suppossed to care about him. He only has his looks which serve in the plentiful of H-scenes that this game offers. However, this game pretends like he is the only guy who is worth while. The game has too big of an ego. However, the renders and animations are good, and RJ is good at releasing updates regularly. She is actually more dependable than most developers on this site. Just don't expect the game to offer much in terms of story. The game also offers a lot in terms of freedom in choice of characters. If you don't like a character, you are not forced to pursue their story. I would recommend to play this game for the animations and not the plot.

Wish:
I wish this game had an animation replay gallery for those who only want to revisit animations and not click through dialogue.