TL;DR:
A diamond in the rough. Still a lot to do and improve, but it's already great fun. A lot of potential love/sex interests, mostly women, one man, ALL of them optional, none of them exclude any others. 4/5, but because of the bi-/pansexual dating OPTION: 5/5
Review for [Ch.6 v2.06]
Once again I will deviate from my usual GOOD/NEUTRAL/BAD scheme and instead look at the good and bad of certain aspects at the same time.
- I like the models. They are refreshingly normal and yet unique. Not another copy of overused assets. Also I like the proportions of most of them.
The MC's penis stands out, because it looks good while he's showering, but becomes a porn ubermegaphallus when aroused. (Dev's planning to change that in the future.)
"Normal" is a compliment here, because too many models in other games look exactly like models with oversized attributes. This game has a bit more diversity. I like it.
- The story is a bit rough, but not bad. Some of the daily struggles of life are simplified, which is absolutely okay for an adult game.
- Incest fans like me have to turn up our suspension of disbelief a notch, because the story is written in a way, that MC's actual mother died years ago and he comes home to his step-mom and her daughter from an earlier relationship. You CAN change the way you call each other to sis/bro/mom, and 95% of the time that works fine, but sometimes the story talks about your (deceased) mom or something similar. It would need a slight rewrite of the story to make an actual iPatch, but since only the dev knows where the story is going, I don't think that makes sense while the game is still in development.
Usually I don't like these "inbetween" solutions, but in this case I can live with it. The rest is just too fine to ignore the game.
- I like that the approach to the characters and sexual situations is rather relaxed. Despite one of the LI's aggressive father I never got the feeling of some main antagonist who is like a Sword of Damocles threatening the MC with raping their loved ones or something like that. There are some obstacles to overcome, some choices to make, but it doesn't feel forced.
- I like animations in adult games. Here I both love them and feel that something is off. The animations are really smooth and have good pacing, but the looping could be better. Feels a bit jerky at times. You can see a learning curve, so I'm optimistic it'll get better.
- As a bisexual man I'm really happy about the option to also date another man. It also doesn't feel forced. It's not blunt, and you get asked several times whether that is something you want to pusue. If you do it will be the first time for MC and the other guy.
- The sandbox UI is slighty different from others I've seen so far. Not in a bad way, I actually quite like it. I'm a sucker for sandbox games, but only if they're done right. This one is close and still being improved.
- I love the consent approach! No non-consensual sleep groping.
- Medium-slow buildup. You can emotionally connect to the characters, but it doesn't take forever to get anywhere.
- In-game hint system. Always a +1 for me.
Summary:
First time I played it I wanted to play for half an hour, one hour max. I ended up playing for three hours and had fun. As I said above, it is still rough around the edges, but in my opinion it stands out - in a quite positive way - from most of the other games with similar development time. I hope it will get completed eventually and wish the dev all the best!