VN - Ren'Py - Confusion - Chapter 8 [v0.8] [AVNSnax]

This game displays a very good story with the sexuality coming progressively and a big focus on emotions and difficulties of being trans.

The characters are interesting with a non-binary personnality.

One of the really good VN's with a trans proyagonist.

I really like the story and how the flashbacks explain the characters over time. Like a big puzzle coming together with every scene. At the beginning you don´t know much, why every character acts like he / she is doing. But in the end you will know the motivations behind. Well done.

It's rare to find this level of maturity in an AVN game. It can get rather dark at times as it deals with the MC (a young trans woman) and various NPCs' past (and current) traumas, some involving sexual abuse. The sex scenes are OK but what I enjoy is the internal molologue, with the characters expressing their emotions and thoughts, during sex. The story is faily linear and choices matter in the development of the MC's personality and character rather than the progress of the narrative. One of a handful of games I would highly recommend.

this game originally seemed to have a great and unique premise. a trans protagonist with a promising story, but also allows you to pursue males and females.. that within itself is what allowed this game to stand out from the rest. as i cannot think of any decent quality games out there with decent animations and a story, that allow interactions between trans and male, without the male being apart of some over the top sissification process. so i clinged to the hopes it would continue that. and unfortunately, the dev back tracked.

the game is now telling a story that is experienced by many of the trans community (from what the dev expressed).. however, its told in a cliche way, and in a restricted sense of assuming the same exact premise of pretty much every single damn trans mc game released. here i thought we were finally going to get a game with a trans mc that allowed us to pursue who we wanted, with some dark content etc. but they even stripped back on that due to player feedback, aka a demographic of sensitive people that would much rather ruin an important but unique take on a game with a trans mc.

this had premise, this had promise and potential. but as much as the dev is a great person it seems from my limited interaction, and they do fine work. this is unfortunately one of the tragic situations where they didnt follow their original plans and therefore the game suffered due to its lack of originality.

the originality is what set this game apart from the others and made it a top tier game. then once the decision was made to restrict the choices further, and strip every unique aspect of its identity away. it became apart of a HUGE over saturated catalogue of games that do the exact same thing, with some being ten folds better and more developed than this. the question you should always ask yourself this, "whats gonna make my game stand out" "whats gonna make players want to pick this up over the tons of games that have more content in them" "whats gonna make players wait on this development".. and unfortunately it lost its originality and played it too safe. and therefore suffered due to it.

now there are alot of folk that will enjoy this, great animations (and plans to animated the entire game once development is finished), a passionate developer.

however for me, it went from "id buy this" "wow finally a game thats different" "its exactly what i wanted", to then "well now its like all the rest, except nothing in this is standing out on its own to make it worth the investment nor wait"

Probably one of the best stories with a trans protagonist on this website, but that's like saying someone's "the most pious stripper", like there's very few genuine examples of trans characters being used as anything more than props.

Writing wise it's good (again, 'good' in comparison to it's competition), but it's very melodramatic. The choices that you WANT to make are ones that have to happen for the dev to make the story they want, which means that the only choices left to you are ones of a sexual nature, making this story essentially kinetic. The AVN definitely has dipped in quality after say Chapter 4/5, which coincides with the bigger uptick in sexual content, so I'm unsure if juggling the two is too much for the dev or just the longer it goes on the harder it is for them to figure out how to keep the player engaged in the story. Every male character is totally irredeemable, Alex's sister Elliot is cartoonishly evil and yet their mother just does nothing for over a decade, it's really a mess in a lot of areas. There's no doubt that these type of just truly awful people exist in real life, but the most important question here is: does the awful stuff benefit the story?

The answer I would offer is: no. Most, if not all, of the dark and/or sensitive topics, are entirely unnecessary. What does the father sexually abusing his eldest daughter when she was a child add to the story? She can be a "daddy's girl" or hate her sister without this totally unnecessary gross addition. The father is already a cheating uncaring asshole without it. And even on that point: why claim he's supportive of Alex at the very beginning, and then have him not care at all at any other point? It feels like this dev is trying to play this by ear, and just adds more and more drama because they realise without it that the story would probably be very boring. Even the girl that the Dad is CHEATING WITH, a seemingly largely irrelevant character, is given this unnecessary trauma in her backstory. The fact there's helpline warnings is nice, but it leaves a bit of a bitter taste in my mouth when at least half of it is totally unnecessary for the actual story. Why not just make Elliot's bigoted views come from religion? Why not just make the dad a cheater instead of utterly repulsive and completely irredeemable? Why not show the mother at least putting up SOME level of fight? Frankly, the more I played, the more I wanted to just skip through it to get to new sections.

Dev: you can have positive male characters without adding the need to make them romanceable; you can make interesting character dynamics without dumping trauma and pointless melodrama when you can't figure out what to do; you do not have to constantly have characters be at emotional extremes as if the players can't handle someone who's just a bit of a dick or kinda sad or slightly horny.

Visually it's pretty good even when comparing to all AVNs. Lighting, modelling, backgrounds. Good is the word. I still see clipping in places, there's frequent weird hair moments, but I have absolutely seen worse.

TL;DR 6/10. Good visuals, decent but melodramatic writing.

First game I've ever sought out the page for after playing. Whole story thus far is actually very engaging and actually interesting albeit short on X-content which makes total sense in the plot. Game deals with some harsh topics and it really doesn't shy away from it.

It's the kind of game you can't get off your mind after playing. Truly excited for where it goes next, just not sure I have the patience to wait!

Im not sure how I feel about this game. In the start it felt like a serious take on the struggles of a girl transitioning, there wasnt much to it when I first played it.

Cons:

I came back with chapter 7 and something just feels off about the characters, they feel disconnected from each other and not in an organic way. They feel more like roommates than a family. I get zero empathy from most of them for the bullying Alex is enduring right at the breakfast table.

The mother has almost zero redeeming qualities, she's not motherly, she's not strong, she's a doormat who wont even stand up for her child being bullied.

Elliot is a cartoon villain. A "blue clitted" generic Daddy/Daughter incest VN love interest who decides because Mommy stopped Daddy from diddling her, shes gonna go full on transphobic shitshow trope for reasons. No redeeming qualities, even hatches a plan to

The male characters are all the worst kind of tropey. they are too over the top,

Zoey goes from being a strong support system for Alex to some kind of manic lunatic sex pervert so fast I had to replay the lead up to see if I missed anything.

Alex's reaction to Zoey's change is also a problem, maybe I did some wierd combination of choices early on that caused Alex to go apeshit sociopath towards zoey but there was no indication how or why. She just goes from being kinda into Zoey to just dialing the angry overreaction up to 12 and breaking off the knob and pretty sure, given the many warnings about suicide prevention etc, is gonna lead to Zoey trying to hurt herself.

The whole Kevin problem is my biggest issue, the way the cops just believe everything told to them without doing ANY investigation, even if Kevin's father is a high ranking officer. There is just no way in hell a real police department would handle the whole scene the way they did with no investigation, especially in the age of the Rohypnol, maybe in 1970, but not 2023. The whole plotline just screams that it has been added to create extra drama in a story that is already a drama about coming to terms with identity and struggling to deal with people's reactions.

There is more but I dont want to crap all over a dev trying to explore this topic. Consider it constructive criticism.

Pros:

There is an attempt here to tell a serious story about a serious topic. Its not your usual VN "futa/trans protagonist" tag kinda story. I want the author to tell a compelling story about Alex and do it justice, I get the impression that is the intent here. I would prefer if the author focused on that and did away with the scooby doo villain antics.

Most of my complaints are about pacing and character development of side characters. The story takes an uncomfortable turn right around the police station event and goes full speed in the wrong direction.

I really want to like this story, I think there is a deep and meaningful story to tell here, just needs to cut out the mustache twisting villain nonsense. Elliot can be angry without resorting to unredeemable crimes and zero remorse for them. Kevin can be struggling with his sexuality without resorting to threatening to assault women etc. There is a truckload of drama waiting to be told without the extra antics

Like others on here, I really started out thinking very highly of this game. There was a real sense of the struggle of the MC. The drama made sense.

Unfortunately choices early on for dom/sub didn’t mean anything for any significant plot points. You are railroaded through all of them beginning in Ch 4, 5 and 6. And what’s worse, the drama at this point becomes 1 dimensional. As someone else mentioned, the antagonists become comic book villains and the incidents become over the top. I'm not even considering sex/erotic scenes in this review, since this is story focused first and foremost.


Basically the drama is too over the top 1 dimensional melodrama, comics and soap operas aren’t even so flat usually. You can have dark without it being so extreme.

Pros:
Good renders
Likable MC, two younger sisters and aunt.
Early drama is done fairly well.
Begins as a realistic story of a trans person’s struggles.

Cons
Flat comic book villains
Point system seems to have no major effect on choices until Chapter 7 and then those choices seem too extreme, at least in response to Zoey.
Story becomes unrealistic after chapter 3 or 4.

I really hope the story can be revised some or at least turns more realistic going forward.

I never write reviews, but in this case I felt like I had to and it's a shame it has to be negative. How this scores as high as it does blows my mind however.

First of this is pretty much a kinetic novel (which is fine). The things you would want to influence are going to happen no matter the choices you make. There are "Major" choices later on but I'll get back to those.


This whole VN ends up being a sad, tragic, tragedy with yelling, crying, sad flashbacks, no relationship choices, no likeable characters and no fun. Two stars for effort but it completely misses the mark for me.

As of 0.7, I'm torn between a 3 and a 4 star. Dev clearly has a goal and a vision and it's pretty good. But there's too much moping about and crying which is why I'm giving a 3. I get it, things are sad, but it's too much. Also not enough boning either for an VN, and when it's shown, renders are too few. Can be fixed in future versions as the dev hopefully finds the balance this story needs.

This game is a waste of time we have a weak mc most cast are trash and the sex scenes are non existant also the choices are optional there because whatever you chooce the mc makes her own choice

Pros
None

Cons
Trash mc
Trash characters
no choices
no sexual content

This game is actually very sad
As for me I personally wanted to see Alex + male root. She is beautiful, fit, young and I can't get why there are only assholes around
Girls renders are good, as for the men, well, only overmarculin assholes, or dweeb assholes

I was in love with this game at first because I liked the concept, renders, and choices. However, the point system is pissing me off and I just quit in the middle of chapter 2. The fact that I have tried to be both feminine and aggressive/masculine and STILL can not get access to certain choices has left me sour and completely done.

This game is very different than what I usually play, but I was intrigued by the premise, and a lot of the reviews were great. So I took a chance. I mostly regret that, but let's come back to that later.

Pros:
+Setting seems nice, and looks good. The 3d environments do the job perfectly.
+The 3d models, while not the best I have ever seen, are good looking, and well posed/developed.
+The dialogue in most places feels like things real people would say* (Let's put an asterisk to come back to this one later).
+The trans characters struggles seem pretty genuine, and not handled like a porn trope just for the sake of it, but also doesn't obstruct the porn part overly either.

Cons:
I'm not going to make a bulleted list for this, because the entirety of my issues come from the latest 2-3 updates.
Basically, the "villains" of the story have gone from somewhat realistic (though also cliche) to cartoonishly evil in the last couple updates. Especially this most recent one.
Like, I can understand that the older sister is one of the antagonists of the story, but she has just become like mustache-twirling, Saturday morning cartoon villain, evil for sake of evil.

That also brings me to my other gripe with the game. Lack of player agency. I was under the impression, both from the title page and other reviews, that the player's choices would have more impact on the story, but after playing through the story and checking the gallery, it seems like most of it was just the illusion of choice. Unless there are going to be big changes going forward, it feels more like a kinetic novel.
Overall, I enjoyed the early part of the game, but the plot points in recent updates have completely pulled me out of the immersion of the game, and I doubt I'll be coming back.

Some try to tell me, thoughts they cannot defend. Just what you want to be, you will be in the end…
Touching thought-provoking twincest, wrapping the struggles of a young trans woman trying to find her place in life.

I must admit, this one hit me by surprise, mostly for delivering what it says on the tin and then some: conflict, drama, pride, and predators. It's a very engaging slow burn, focusing on the gender affirmation and sexual frustration of its heroine, and in that regard does incest very well. As the supporting cast outside the family is mostly used as a vehicle to showcase different problems faced by trans people, they sadly remain somewhat shallow; which in itself may just be a perfect mirror of society.

The game's story is told novel-style with one general path to follow. That being said, it both allows for shaping the heroines personality and contains impactful decisions. And while the former works quite simple – in that being assertive enables one to be more assertive – I do hope for the latter to influence if not outright shape the ending chapters. Also, the quality of the writing is high, adding much to my enjoying the story.

All in all, it's very well done and absolutely worth one's time!
Review based on 0.5

V0.5 rating: 4.5*

This AVN get so many thing right. Its a really sensitive, kind, penetrating (heh) rumination on gender and identity, with some really hot incesty sisters thrown in the mix. Frankly, the family stuff detracts a bit from the story here imo, but I know most of ya big pervs love that so there ya go. The dev has some real insight into the whole trans-girl experience. Its all really well done. Her journey is halting and difficult (for her and everyone around her). Most, but definitely not all, of her family has her back and supports her, but the world around her doesn't. Much of it is really sad, and her depression really comes through and is warranted. The story is really just getting going and I'm really excited to see where it goes.

On to the relationshippy stuff. This is shaping up to be a real slow burn. The only sex is a HJ for the MC. There is some peeping/spying on a couple going at it, and one short dream sequence, neither of which are particularly meant to be sexy, so really just the HJ scene. That was super hot though. The renders are well done as are the animations which are mostly slide-show types which I actually quite like. The few full-on animations were... fine. All in all, its definitely NOT a fap-fest so if ya need your trans porn look elsewhere. This is not that.

Its rare to see realistic (except for the incesty stuff) kind and sensitive portrayal of the confusion of gender identity in the AVN world. Slutty futas with giant cock, yes theres plenty of that. The occasional transgirl in a smorgasbord of other girl options, there's that out there too. This is different, and different in a very very good way. Almost a 5* title, just a half point deduction because of the sister-sister stuff. Frankly, that could have been done better story-wise with a close friend or something, and would have been far more realistic. Well done AVNSnax!!

Nice character development and great render quality, definitely way above most games around here in both regards.

Also interesting the approach of showing the discrimination that a lot of trans people suffer out there in real life. Don't remember another game doing it with such intensity. Kudos for the dev for a new approach (at least to me).

Game follows a slow burn approach to thell Alex's story and of her sisters and mother, which is worth it because the story is quite interesting.

This game is absolutely nuanced, has an impactful story. The characters make you emote in response to their actions, the story itself is devious. Alex suffers from gender dysphoria and has to navigate her way through landmines seemingly growing in number with each interaction. Interfamilial drama laced with a dark underbelly that is left to the reader to as AVN said "It's vague on purpose--it's up to the player to reckon what they may." This game is definitely worth watching even if you're not interested in trans content the story itself will make you emote and have you connect in some way to one of the characters, having felt it yourself, been in a situation, know of a situation similar, etc. There is something here for everyone and I genuinely feel regardless AVN modesty in regards to the writing, it is an impactful story that leaves you anticipating. I wish nothing but the best for the dev and I will be following wholeheartedly to the final release.

So... This rating is gonna be short, because I normally wouldn't have played a 0.5 incest game. However, I had been watching the thread for a while, since it looked like it was gonna be an actually tasteful exploration of a trans MC, and then this week my notifications were blowing up, so I decided to take a look at what was going on and decided I needed to play early.

In terms of writing, your story is compelling. I genuinely had no issues reading through the entirety of the available game as it moved at a good pace, and provided just enough spice to keep it interesting in this early build up.

In terms of adult content, legitimately, this is one of the few games I've played that genuinely feels erotic. For games with the incest tag, in particular, feeling the actual tension in the relationships of the characters is something rarely done well, and in terms of MC being trans, i genuinely felt like I could empathize with her own erotic feelings.

The renders are nice, but there's a few things that bug me. First is the cartoonish expressions. This is a common issue with daz... people realy should play with those expression sliders more, because the expressions themselves undercut tension and heartfelt moments throughout the game. The second issue I had was with whatever you were doing for sweat. There was one shot that looked like the sweat caused the render's lighting to create a mirage. And there were plenty of shots with sweat involved where it just felt like the moisture wasn't reacting well with the light.

Overrall, great work so far on these core points. I have some criticisms dealing with some specifics, but I'll take those to the thread where they'll be better suited as feedback.