VN - Ren'Py - Confusion - Chapter 9 [v0.9] [AVNSnax]

Excellent Visual Novel, one that isn't afraid to tackle a more realistic view of transgenderism and what it can be like for someone growing up knowing they are trans. It's a little heavier than your standard porn game, but that makes the emotion hit a lot harder, and you care for the 'good' characters all that more.

The game gives a good choice of what you do and don't want to see, though it isn't always clear on what points are needed or which choices add up to unlock paths later on, but you'll end up seeing most of what you want to see by making the choices you think are best. It could probably do with one or two more helpful or supportive characters, but every character included has a reasonably significant role to play in the story, no one is there to just make up the numbers.

The H scenes are well worth the wait, but if that's all your here for it may not be the best game for you. It's well worth a pick up if you're into a good story and believable characters. I can't wait to see what else the dev has in store for the rest of this game and beyond.

Fantastic visual novel.
This story is a roller coaster of emotional content. One minute you'll feel compassion for Alex, empathy for Chris, and hatred for Kevin.
Then the next minute you'll be smiling from the warmth the sisters share.
While it may be a fictionalized story, much of the real life struggle, and a heartwarming show of overcoming hardship, that people who are transgender can go through is found within.
With excellent writing, engaging visuals, interesting characters, and an intriguing storyline that runs the gambit, you'll be glad you took the time to explore Confusion.

This game ... is just ..wrong ... the plot ..is comically designed to make the MC an everlasting victim .. so cliche ... the LIs are unreasonably attracted to the most boner killer MC I witnessed ... just really mediocre with a laughable antagonists

the story is ok, the interactions between characters are pretty believable. the major turn off for me in this game are models actually and in particular - their face expressions - they are too often plain ugly. and the bodies are quite nice at the same time. wierd feeling overall about the whole thing, but can see where it all goes in the end - out of curiousity at least)

Dear lord what a mess. This might honestly be the worst story for a hentai game I've ever played on this site. I'm not entirely sure how to organize my thoughts on it so this will be rambly, just skip to the dash if you want an art/content review.

It starts out seeming like it's going to be a really personal and intimate story about the challenges of growing up trans, which hey, I may think is a bit heavy for a porn game to tackle and will probably find myself strongly disagreeing with the dev on some stances involving children, but I'm willing to hear your tale and experience a new perspective. That lasts for about one chapter until the game just devolves into a skitzo mess.

How much of a skitzo mess? After the entire intro that goes into great lengths about how asexual and repressed you are having only two erections your entire life, the game gives you an option to find a female friend attractive or not. Even if you pick not attracted, the game responds like you are, but ok.. an awkward setup but maybe there's a good romance to come, right? .. Well with no other interactions than that, this friend character progresses to absolutely loose their mind with lust over the next few days and attempts to rape you. You freak out and say you never want to speak to them again. Later on when she breaks down crying and apologizing asking for forgiveness, the MC ponders on how to make her a sex slave... what.

The older sister character hates your guts because.. get this, your father sexually molested her. She loved it however, so she hates you because your trans healthcare took too much of dad's attention from molesting her. She then conspires to have you get abducted and sexually assaulted because of it.

Like... I've never really been one to harp on that you shouldn't include rape or molestation in your story without good reason, but this game really has me questioning that with how awfully I've seen it used here. And this isn't like pervy hentai game 'rape', these characters are having melodramatic emotional outbursts over this. It seems anytime the dev needs a crutch to add drama to a storyline, they throw rape at it, all while having an MC that's willing to trap straight men and to cum inside women who are explicitly not consenting to be inseminated and it's waved off with a hand.

And dear lord how do I even begin with Kevin and the other male characters. Kevin is perhaps the most extreme cartoon caricature of a transphobe jock guy I've ever read in my entire life that I don't even think 2014-era tumblr could have imagined it up, and of course he's secretly attracted to you because cliche. The other male, the cute shy Brad, proceeds to become a complete bait-and-switch as he gets one beer in him and turns into a rapey creep. I'm not sure if the author just actively hates men, has never met one, or just really thinks these are compelling characters, but it is comically bad. And because these characters and your evil sister form an axis of evil to try to make your life hell, you're forced to spend a ton of time with them as a reader experiencing their awful writing. Oh, and more rape.

Also, I hope you enjoy constant flashbacks to show you things you already know from the dialogue. The writer's adage is show don't tell, but I think both telling and showing may be a bit redundant.

Also, also, I mentioned it earlier, but yeah choices do not matter besides some minor dialogue variation. The only real effect they have is what choices you can select later, which also don't matter. Going kinetic is fine, but just don't give me choices, tell me they're super important, then actively ignore them by doing the opposite thing.

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But ok, I think the writing is awful, but how about the art? Can I hold ctrl and get to some steamy scenes at least? Well.. meh.. The renders are quite primitive in that mid-level Daz zone that makes everyone look like a plastic doll. The girls all have slightly tanned skin that makes their bright blonde hair and eyebrows look slightly neon and unnatural, every character's eye textures are incredibly bloodshot making them look like demons if they look to the side, and whenever characters cry or get angry their faces deform in the worst emotion morphs I've ever seen. The MC has a big breakdown halfway through the game and gets a makeover to become their beautiful bombshell self... which turns out to be a lesbian haircut and outfit that are actively uglier and less passing than what she started with. It's just... not the best assets and models all around.

As for the scenes themselves, the game has pretty much 3 proper sex scenes, all with the 2 good sisters because every other potential love interest gets sacrificed to the skitzo plot altar, and they are... serviceable I guess. You can get a fap out of them and they could probally work in a game that had dozens of them as at least quantity over quality, but it doesn't. They're nothing to write home about and definitely not enough to save the game.

In summary, I think there's two audiences this game could have been made for; trans people looking for a validating story that 'gets them', and more casual porn game fans who just want some steamy trap incest romance. I think it fails to offer a good experience to either. I have no idea what the 5 stars are seeing in it unless they didn't read past the first chapter or if this is literally the first fiction they've ever read, but aye, at least it's a story that resonates with someone, even if it's definitely not me.

This one's good. the renders have a lot of personality, the animations are k, and there isn't much sound, BUT the writing is good, realistic, and kinda dark but in a grounded way that really makes you empathize with the characters.

The characters are also highly complex if tropey, flipping back and forth between really complex emotions and beliefs, which feels really real if you've ever had these conversations or interactions with these archetypes of cis non-cis people. Despite that it's still very much a incest fantasy harem scenario, so it has a lot of appeal

good game!

I couldn't even jerk off, I sat in front of my screen and played the game until the sun came out (literally, it fucked up my sleep schedule).
I can't give a more detailed review, If this game peaks your interest even a little, give it a try, I think you won't regret it.

Really like this game, great story, great visuals, really felt for the MC when she was humiliated and photographed naked, reminds me how a lot of trans are not accepted, looking forward to the next installment.

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"

Review for [v0.7]; Update for [0.9]
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.

UPDATE
some parts censored just for sensibilities
Wanted to leave a little update to help give a more accurate description of the newer content, and add if they had fixed any of the problems I mentioned.

I'll first start with the problems I mentioned: they're still there. The dev hasn't learnt anything. Not a THING. I mean I'm just some reviewer on a porn pirating website, I'm effectively a stranger, but come ON. Once again, the inclusion of dark themes is GRATUITOUS. The worst part is that for a dev who puts the "oh if you feel bad, call someone" screen, they clearly don't actually give a fuck about anyone's mental health. I mean they still have shit like in a flashback, the mother at the age of 6 off-handedly mentioning that a priest is sexually abusing her. What does that add? Tell me WHAT part of this story this contributes to??? The newer portions continue this, once again adding rape to the story when the story could've been achieved without that.

There are literally still inclusions at the beginning saying that Glenn, the father, while initially hesitant, was supportive and understanding of Alex. It's ridiculous. It literally retcons itself multiple times, changes the personalities of people, randomly alters people's desires, it's just so strange. There was clearly no plan for this AVN, despite the fact there's ONLY ONE CHAPTER LEFT!? That's right folks, this AVN only has one more chapter left. So what have we had? Half a story of meandering melodrama, then another half of rapid sex scenes to try and put something in the AVN. I mean there's the mother and aunt figure that have had literally zero sexual content, despite the fact it's CLEARLY intended. So once again, we'll be experiencing more rushed relationships like basically everyone in this entire AVN despite maaaybe Chris?

The only real positives here are that, as previously mentioned, there's actual sexual content here to watch. The second, is that there's a clear improvement in visual quality, from the first chapter to now. Hell, even from chapter 6 or 7 to now. It looks great. Hell, at this point, the story is just hindering the visuals. When it switches to Brad or literally any other man, I groan. Once again, another issue I mentioned: none of the male characters are positive. Zero. They're all bad. Yet the dev INSISTS we should actually care about this ridiculously poorly written story including many serious topics that absolutely don't need to be included. At this point, I just don't feel like I can leave it as a 3/5, as there hasn't been enough improvement. 4/10. Just disappointed really, there was so much more potential than what's on offer. Hopefully their next project proves more fruitful, if they continue to create trans protagonists.

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