Ren'Py - Abandoned - Deviant Anomalies [v0.9.5] [MoolahMilk]

Review for Deviant Anomalies v0.9.5

Overall: 2/5 - I'm giving up on this game. While the game itself isn't terrible, trying to play individual updates has been tedious and frustrating.

Story: 2/5 - It's definitely a mess. Not really sure what's going on with monsters and superpowers, and it's not flowing very well. Too much time spent on side stories and a lot of WTFs with no progress on the main story for a long time. The MC acts like a retard sometimes, like when he forgets to wear the gas mask. Then, there are some really dumb inconsistencies like when the MC is running for his life screaming "I don't want to die a virgin!" and the very next day he's fucking a MILF and dominating her like a porn star.

Writing: 5/5 - The writing is the highlight of the game. It's quite good, but without a great story, it's mostly wasted.

Visuals: 3/5 - The girls are somewhat cute and some of the animations are quite good, but the models are just the HS Japanese-inspired stereotypes. The resolution usually looks really low during animations.

Audio: 3/5 - Generally, the occasional voice acting and moans, etc. are well done, but the sound effects for navigation, map, walking, etc. are annoying.

Gameplay: 2/5 - It's a below-average sandbox with garbage user interface. The dev spent a lot of time to make it look flashy but totally forgot to make it easy to use. Classic noob mistake of thinking "look at all of this neat stuff I can do" and wasting development time on it when it's actually the lowest priority in the minds of players.

GUI: The GUI seems like it was made to look cool, but no thought was put into whether it was better. Things like the interior navigation buttons that are greyed-out and only have color when you hover over them. That's the opposite of what a player wants to quickly find the next place to go. One positive note is that there is occasionally some context-sensitive help with some of the "games" the MC needs to play to win the love-interests.

Navigation: I don't know WTF the dev was thinking. The world map is available from only some interior locations. There is a mix of menu-based navigation, icon-based navigation, and hotspot-based navigation. The best examples are when you want to leave a conversation, interaction, room, area, etc. Sometimes there's a menu item like "Back", sometimes there's an icon with a man running through a door (i.e., emergency exit symbol), sometimes there's a different icon with the word "Exit" and a man running through a door, and sometimes there's an arrow in the shape of a circle. The icons are in different locations on the screen for different locations/scenarios. Navigating the Garrison Tower is retarded. From the map, you enter into the lobby and from the lobby, you can go to the bar streets, but you can't go from the bar streets back to the lobby, you can only go to the bar. Also, you can go from the lobby to the bar, but you can't go from the bar back to the lobby, you can only go back to the map. It looks like the sandbox was created by 3 different people that never talked to each other. Consistency is key to making things easy to use. These are all examples of what NOT to do.

Inventory: Guess when you can't check your inventory? If you guessed "Any time you actually want to check your inventory," then you're really close. The answer is: Any time you're in a place where you can use items in your inventory -OR- any time you're in a place where you can buy items for your inventory. Oh, and some stuff like the milk and vitamins don't even show up in your inventory at all.

Quest hint system: Sometimes it's good, sometimes not. Sometimes you're not sure what to do next because there's no help/hint for the quest.

Performance: There's a lot of lag when moving between locations, pulling up the map, etc. This is not a hardware performance problem. It's due to delays built into the game for fade-in/fade-out and such, and it sucks.

Content: 2/5 - The amount of lewd content seems low for well over 2 years of development time. It really feels like too much time was spent making the lewd scenes into their own grindy minigames. I'm not really into the pregnancy fetish, but I'm guessing people who like it will be disappointed by the weird case of the virgin girl whose body is tricked into thinking it's pregnant.

Other: It'll be interesting to see if this game gets taken down due to all of the unauthorized trademark usage. There are dozens of examples and all it will take is one person to report it to a company and that company sending a letter to Patreon.

A gem of a game that features excellent writing, high quality renders and the rare combination of entertaining and interesting innovations to the AVN genre. There is no doubt in my mind that this is a masterpiece in the making, and a must-play for anyone who enjoys the likes of City of Broken Dreamers, Harem Hotel and other classics of this genre.

This has to be one of the worst games I've played on this site. That's including the horrible MTL ones that might as well still be in Japanese. I saw all the high ratings in the reviews and thought someone had actually put together a decent game. Boy was I fucking wrong. So much so that I am actually wondering if all those reviews are paid for.

First of all there's very little actual content. You can complete all content in about 30-45 minutes. I'm not joking. I did it in a little under an hour and that was with me dicking around with the stupid little stat raising which does absolutely nothing for you in the end.

The MC is so fucking stupid that he must have been dropped on his head when he was born and then used for fucking golf practice. It doesn't matter whether you take the Intellectual Genius or the Smooth Talker, the MC has the wits and charm that are even worse than Sloth from the movie Goonies.

The renders are alright. Not horrible not great. Not much to say here. At least the dev put some effort here, but this isn't close enough to make up for the rest of the game.

Decision making. ROFLMAO. I know this is a VN, but this is too fucking sad. Decisions mean absolutely crap. The end result is the same no matter what you choose. The only difference is some stat points that mean absolutely nothing.

Writing. Yeah this needs some serious re-work. I mean ALL of it. The only dialogue that was actually decently written was the very short conversations that you can have with your sister and there are only 4 of those you can have before no more, and even those need to be looked at as they were so awkward.

MC. Already talked about his level of "intelligence" and "charm", but other than that he's just your typical big dicked MC that the only thing he has is the size of his dick. I know there's wish fullfillment, but come one for christs sake.

Characters. My God where do I even begin? I mean WTF? There was only 2 that were even able to get me to think okay they are kind of decent, Mia (the sister) and Moon (her co worker).
Sophie I hated so much that I wish the MC could have just beaten her to death and dumped her body in the woods. I didn't interact with her unless absolutely necessary. I was already pretty irritated with the game by the time I finished the first case and kept playing just to give the game it's full due, but my god I fucking hated that bitch and her mere existance took what little interest I had left away.

Fap Material. Not one decent scene. It was a fucking joke and let's leave it at that.

I'd give it 1.5 stars if I could, the half star for decent renders, but sure as hell not giving this 2.

i play this game on V 0.8.4 (Beta)
Pros :
- Clean UI
- so far i enjoy the gameplay and the puzzle/ solve mystery game but not all of them
- Animation and ingame characters are great. Love the art
Cons :
- Some of the gameplay like Sophia examination study i'm totally hard stuck because i can't answer the question. The problem with this type of question i need to double translate the answer from the internet with my native language to englis h and type or choose the answer ingame. Maybe it's just me with bad english language but i will put in Cons

Since this game still beta, i'm so confuse with the story

The futuristic Noir vibes really got me good, music to set up atmospherem, and even though i came here to shake one, the dialogues really hooked me in. Simply beyond perfection. I hope the rest of it will be just as good.

Review for v0.76, subject to change for future updates.

I have mixed feeling about this game: on one hand, the supernatural setting, the character arcs, the sex scene (even though I'm never a fan of abusive lewd scenes), and the majority of game mechanism (mini-game, including interactive sex scenes, is probably one of the most interesting components in the game) certainly exceeds tons of adult games on this site; on the other, there're many perplexing developing choices that undoubtedly jeopardizes the gaming experiences.

The character attention allocation is probably the most puzzling (and the most suffocating) one to experience. There's no doubt that Mia and Sophia are the two main girls to pursue, but surprisingly their "quests" (I'm not even sure I should call them "quests" because they're incredibly short and dull) is abruptly cut off at about 1/3 of the game in its current version. Instead the developer decides to add more and more "side characters" (I call them side characters because throughout the current version none of the girls (Catherine, Sage, Maeve, Moon, Beatrice...) except Mia and Sophia are listed in the love stats) as well as more unique dialogues and sex scenes that surpass the existing content of Mia and Sophia completely. I fully understand the necessity of adding more girls but the fact that even Beatrice and Tracy/Vixie's scenes are more "lively" than the two main girls really says something about the developer's failure in distributing his contents more equally.

The point system is frustrating and sometimes useless. Besides MG's points of affection, submissiveness and lust we also have side girls' karma points and MC's depravity points, but the latter two is nowhere to be seen in the game and does not affect any of the choices in the game. What's worse is that in some scenes some choices related to depravity/karma systems ultimately lead to the same result:
Overall, even though character models and lewd scenes are certainly commendable, the developer's poor allocation of the story and character development is pretty problematic. As NovusPeregrine said, this is not a game that came out only a few months; instead it has been developed for about two years, which makes the situation even more concerning.

Version 0.7.6

I really wanted to like this game. The premise sounded like it could be really promising and some of the characters were intensely interesting.

Unfortunately the game is all over the place. At first it's a detective game, then a supernatural thriller, then its an escape room, then an action game, then a dating sim... Each of these, on their own, isn't bad. However it keeps jarring the tone as it shifts and that seriously detracts from the experience.

The developer has some wonderful ideas, but fails to deliver. Instead of focusing on properly developing a smaller group of characters they instead throw numerous half developed characters. In at least one case, the moral decision is ignored in subsequent scenes making any sense of having the karma system moot.

This holds doubly true for the main character. While certain traints of immaturity might be a part of the character's story arc, they aren't really explored. So what you are left with is an immature idiot, regardless of whether you are supposed to be a smooth talker or an intellectual powerhouse.

The character art isn't bad, but neither is it truly noteworthy. If anything it comes off more as Phoenix Wright in tone. The sex scenes which do exist seem to be heavily slanted for only wanting to entertain a darker path, which begs the question why even offer the choice if the delivery is going to be so half-hearted?

Maybe you'll enjoy it. It's not such garbage that I suggest avoiding it at all cost. Just don't expect it to deliver on all that the premise promises.

This review was made using the 0.7.6 Build. Given my reasoning for the rating, my issues with it may be irrelevant for far-future builds. With that said, I will also add that the game is promising, with some excellent good points. Those points include genuinely fantastic graphics, decent writing, and an overall high standard of technical execution. However, there are two MAJOR issues with the game as it stands at this time, each of which cost it a star from me.

Issue 1) Character Attention Deficit Disorder. A regrettably all-to-common malady among developers. MoolahMilk has fallen hard into this malady. Instead of fully developing any given character, they have fallen into the trap of creating oodles of side characters. This isn't inherently a bad thing. More characters can flesh out a world nicely. It is a bad thing, however, when obsessively adding additional characters cripples development of any single character. Deviant Anomalies actually has the single worst case of this that I've ever witnessed, as MoolahMilk seems to have all-but-completely-abandoned further work on the core characters (such as Mia and Sophia) in favor of adding more and more secondary characters. Worse, many of the secondary characters have, at this point, greater amounts of content then characters that are core to the story. Characters like Tracy and Vixie are actively more robust and developed than the likes of Mia and Sophia. It's maddening and frustrating, and caused me to remove one star from the rating.

Issue 2) While technically a lesser issue, this one actually bothered me more on a personal level. This game presents itself as giving some level of karmatic choice. To be an asshole or a friend, to be depraved or kind, to be abusive or merely dominant. This choice, however, is about 80% total lie as it stands. Even if you choose nothing but positive actions, you are routinely forced into abusive, violent behavior. Worse, in some cases, the paths have not been equally developed and continuing a story line will, at a random point, simply force you into the abusive, depraved, bully path. Even if you were, up to that point, taking entirely the opposite route with that character. This was very frustrating and disconcerting, and ruined a lot of the entertainment value of the game for me. This cost the game another star.
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Were this an early development game experiencing these issues, I'd honestly probably rate the game at 4 stars, possibly even 5. However, this game has been under development for nearly two full years at this point. As such, these issues reduce the game from 'promising' to 'aggravating.' Hopefully, if I come back in another two years or so, there might be at least a single additional scene for some core characters -_-.

v0.7.6
I played earlier version of this game (back in late 2020 through to 2nd quarter 2021) but I had to start from the beginning because of incompatible save files. I played between 1 to 6 hours per session for up to 3 seesions a day for a week to reach the end of current content. I gave it 3.49 rating 3 stars, minus points are mostly pertaining to player gameplay experience.

On the plus side

Minus points

*I would normally just give 5stars even when the story is not that engaging, but I cannot overlook the fact that there are plenty of rooms for improvement in the gameplay experience department.

I had an absolutely smashing time with this. It's dark, it's weird, it's genuinely creepy at times and it's super sexy.
I love that it's a little all over the place with many things happening at once. The in game journal was plenty for me to stay on track in 0.7.6
Anyways top marks MM I really look forward to more of this!

One of the best porn games ever made. It has rape (all its variations) and beautiful visuals. If you're fucked in the head like I am, play this. The MC has some mental issues and I love that. Sigma MCs lackin fr.

Pros:

- dark content such as rape
- dystopian setting
- immersive story and consequential choices (to some extent, the story is still linear and diverges only based on whether you choose "good" or "bad" choices which shape your character)
- amazing visuals
- girls are variegated and have distinct personalities

Cons:

- not enough rape and dark content IMO, rape and its variations can be darker and longer
- not enough content, I'll support the creator financially if needed
- some "choices" might require a bit of thinking, but that's a plus for me, a con for if you are lazy and just want to skip through the dialogues (which I don't recommend you do, they're really good)

Summary: Wish I picked this game up earlier. Haven't felt so good in a long time. Just play it.

So glad I found this game. It's everything I had wished for. It's never boring and not once did I feel like I wasn't engrossed. Not all the puzzles work out but honestly, it made the game feel refreshing and there's just so much to do with mysteries and detective discoveries. Every single aspect of the game is interesting and there is just so much going on. All the side quest is a page turner.

And it leaves me breathless, there's so much more to find out. It almost feels like I've played a whole game and played nothing at the same time if it makes sense. I've lost track of time almost playing the game. The lewd scenes are great to. I would say the animation quality is the best I've seen on this site.

This game is beyond amazing. I've never seen such beautiful art on a game like this before. Every girl is cute and very different to one another. And hot damn, the milfs are insane. The fetishes are all amazing and the storytelling is on a whole new level. The sheer amount of effort put into the game and it feels like I've spent hours exploring. Definitely a top game on here.
I only have one wish is that this game is already complete. Now i have to wait.

0.7.3
Bonerific
I didn't think I was going to like this game, the first scene actually gave me a headache with the silly throbbing. But I pressed on, and actually enjoyed the premise of the MC being a new detective solving crimes and fucking hot bitches.
Game needs more crimes to solve, don't care at all about the main story (demons or some shit?). Girls are hot, sex scenes are hot. The sex mini games are actually kind of fun.
Loses a point since there's no gallery (or it's hidden in some sub menu), the dev has hidden the normal ren'py menu buttons (skip, auto forward etc) and there is just a bit too much "hide and go seek-click through every location to find the next dialogue" gameplay at times.
I look forward to playing this in the future.

This game seems promising and that it has a lot of potential. The animations are great and pretty fluid and varied. Everything else is just meh at best or at worst poorly designed and confusing like I have never played another game like this that just confused me to no end on what to do and how to advance the story. Holy hell and now I cant advance because of some Beta hardlock. I hate this game

Fairly good visual and sexual content, and the plot spreads out in a satisfying way, but the characterization is just alright, and not only is the plot trying very hard to be edgy and mature (content tags like rape and violence/blood are quite loudly missing), but it goes as far as to make the actual program somewhat hostile, like random "glitch" sound effects even with all the sound bars settings.
Played on 0.6.10

This is ... a really bad game/VN. This is as of v0.6.10

Story/Dialog
The story is all over the place. There's some mysterious supernatural stuff going on, something about being the chosen one, political/corporate corruption stuff, a serial killer, a nun murder mystery... Like there's just too much going on in the story to tell a cohesive story. The dialog is all over the place too. In one moment you have to get your sister a slurpee to make her feel better and the next you're raping a nun. It goes from "hehe thats so silly xd" to "you like this don't you bitch" way too much. This game seriously need to pick a lane. It's like it trying to appeal to everyone.

Gameplay
It's just fetch quests basically. Standard porn VN gameplay. Goes to x location at y time and talk to z person. Pretty boring

UI/Aesthetics
The UI looks pretty good, clean. Not much to say here, looks like a good renpy game.

Art/Porn
This is probably the selling point of the game and the reason it is rated so highly. The scenes are good and the characters/lighting/etc look great. The game doesn't use standard honey select animations so that's nice.

Overall I would not recommend this game. The story is a mess and just doesn't make sense. In true thriller style, the climax will probably reveal some crazy plot that ties everything together. But it is still a bad story, the dialog just doesn't fit either for a triller. The "funny" dialog isn't funny, and it's not the type of comedy you'd see in a mystery/thriller, more of a children's anime vibe. The Hscenes are good, so maybe look through the gallery.

Very well written and beautiful renders with a great attention to detail! Playing as a detective taking on criminal investigations with a full set of features for analyzing the evidence, holding interrogations and finally accusing a perpetrator really makes this into a real game.

Excellent, please try it and you will see it.
The story is very well framed, the adult scenes are made according to the story and the background of the game is spectacular. The only bad thing about the game is the few adult scenes it has, which are understandable with the high quality that is remaining in general.

This is a great sandbox game that has a lot of potential and it seems the story still can be expanded. I am a firm believer that for what its worth the dev is trying real hard and it shows in the quality of the game itself and the superb animations and renders.
Most of the time when you check you can inmediately see a game is done in HS2 but for me this one didn't feel like it. Dev has tried so hard for the game to look original and has mostly succeded. Sure, most of the characters fall in stereotypes but at least for me is bearable experience.
The investigation portions of the game were starting to become annoying and I know in the end its just an over-engineered point system , but the originality is there. Overall, the game is trying really hard to be unique and has succeded in doing that in many aspects. Story might need some omph at some point since I truly didn't feel the tension besides the beginning sequence. The girls still haven't had development but I am willing to wait and for me that really isn't an issue. Also I feel like there is nothing at stake but I get the feeling that as the game progresses so will the story,. Keep up the good work!