The Secret of the House [Ch. 3 Day 25 v1.1]
First of all, I have to say that I’m a big fan of Inusen’s art. I love the way he draws voluptuous MILFs, and the sex scenes in the game are absolutely hot.
Inusen was also the artist for the unfortunately abandoned game Milftoon Drama.
The Secret of the House plays almost identically to Milftoon Drama, unfortunately with the same weaknesses. Without a walkthrough, the game is almost unplayable—unless you have endless amounts of time to try everything possible. The quest design is often illogical, and the in-game help in the form of the journal is only truly useful during the first six days of the game. After that, it becomes increasingly incomplete and full of gaps. Progressing efficiently and purposefully in the game pretty much requires the use of a walkthrough.
The next point of criticism is the cumbersome navigation. While you gradually become familiar with the locations and more buildings are unlocked on the map as the game progresses, it still takes a while to get your bearings. Navigation inside houses is also quite cumbersome. Shortcuts would have been useful here—allowing you to jump with a single click to, for example, the garden, kitchen, bathroom, living room, or bedroom, as is the case in similar games—instead of having to navigate through the houses step by step.
Another drawback is the sometimes poor English translation of the game. Typos and awkward phrasing occur regularly. It’s obvious that the developers are not native English speakers. (The devs seem to be Hungarian, judging by the currency used in the game.) In times where good, free translation programs are available, this really shouldn’t be a problem to fix.
The game would also benefit from better overall dialogue writing and storytelling. Unfortunately, dialogues cannot be skipped.
Furthermore some NPC names are spelled differently — for example, Lisa/Liza, Anika/Anicka, Est(h)er/Eszter, and so on. This should have been cleaned up to ensure consistent (less confusing) spelling throughout.
The NTR scenes in the game—where love interests are involved with characters other than the main character—are also not everyone’s cup of tea (e.g., Anika and Fodo). In my opinion, the NTR tag is missing here, even though one could argue that Anika is not a love interest of the MC and that NTR is not the main focus of the game. On the other hand, unlike Anika, Liza is indeed a love interest of the MC, and right in the first chapter the player is hit with an NTR scene where another character climaxes inside Liza in the nightclub. As long such scenes aren't avoidable an NTR warning is recommended in my book.
The absolute strength of the game clearly lies in Inusen’s art. The sex scenes are animated and creatively varied. I can understand why some players might give the game a below 3-star rating due to its shortcomings. However, I personally value the art style so highly that I’m willing to overlook many of its weaknesses. If the gameplay were improved, I’d gladly raise my rating to 4 stars.