Ren'Py - Doors [v0.3.6 Part 2] [The Neuron Project]

I first played an early build of this VN like, over a year ago, and it had much higher ratings then. So, naturally, I had to try the latest version and see why it became so polarizing.

The Good;

From the jump, the game feels unsettling. Assuming that is intentional by the dev, great job. It feels surreal. Like, seriously, the world feels so weird, but in a good way.

The nightmares and horror imagery are really cool and well done, leading to some genuine, "what the fuck?" moments.

The Meh;

The character renders are wildly inconsistent. Sometimes the characters look hot, other times they look like literal creatures with nightmare faces.

The puzzles and riddles. While I found them more annoying than anything, they are skippable, and someone out there may enjoy them, so I won't classify them as "bad".

The Bad;

Almost everyone sucks

Imo, most of the characters are just not very likeable. Most, if not all, of the guys are creepy assholes, and the love interests either have implied NTR going on, in some cases, or are just...kinda' there. I'm not sure how to describe it, really. The characters just feel unnatural.

The lack of content is noticeable since my last playthrough. I was really hoping for more, honestly. And on the lewd side, there's really not much here, as of now.

Overall;

A mixed bag. Didn't really leave an impact on me, which is a shame, because it started out with a ton of promise.

2(.5)*

Really enjoying this one. Seen a lot of gripes about the plot in the message thread for this one. Have to disagree. It may have been a little long in the beginning, though I enjoyed it. Need more of these with some actual thought to the story put into them. The facial expressions do need a little bit of work but are tolerable. Maybe a little tighter on the story, but overall, Very enjoyable. Looking forward to more.

Over all I find it to quick and fun so far. Really looking forward to seeing where it goes. Maybe a bit more fleshing out of the characters but that is about it. I see some say that the girl under the desk is your girlfriend (a that point don't think she really is yet) but got the impression it was the blond girl from the plane but I could be wrong lol. Anyways doesn't really bother me. So I guess to each his own

SO if you like ambiguous openings with forced/surprise NTR then even more surprise/unwanted/unseen NTR then EVEN MORE unexpected and unfulfilling suggested NTR then this game is definitely for you. The girls themselves look good, even, hence my review not being 1 star. Maybe it gets better but if a book's first chapter makes you want to burn it like it's the Torrah and you're both a Nazi and an ironic fan of Farenheit 451 then it's probably better you put it down. And leave a note like this on the cover

For a game that is Named Door's , there's surprisingly little to none Doorplay.( like what i did there?) The idea/plot of the game is beautifully explained by the dev in the beginning but couldn't really capitalize on it. To explain in short, The MC goes into coma due to an accident, and while dreaming he breaks into another dimension where he lays his hands on a key. A key that unlocks secrets, a key that can open any door. from there onwards, the game takes the first tumble and continues to roll downhill. ( This is just my perception, the game is still young and far to go. )
The game consists of 3 chapters, each chapter having 3 parts. I believe, after waking from coma and finishing therapy the MC reaches his home by mid of Chapter 2. So now the MC's has a huge home..He has a Mom, 2 sisters, A shady brother and A FRIGGING KEY THAT OPENS ANY DOOR..What do I have in mind you say?? Mhhmm ( evil laugh) .......Well let me use my computer, Talk to Dad, talk to grandpa about his fucking refrigerator, take a dip in the pool , buy moms ugly ass workout clothes and finally go see if your neighbor who you dont know anything about other that her name, give you rats ass as apparently she was with you together in therapy and shagged you once because the doctor fed her Viagra pills. Man, what a turnoff. It looks like the this game is wasting every opportunity to be interesting enough. It feels like all those saucy spying / peeping moments were just wasted. The MC might aswell throw away the key instead of keeping it dangling around his neck doing nothing.

So now for some actual ratings related to the game.
--The renders are good
-- I don't remember If there were any animations.Probably not
-- The characters are okay. Only the Mom's face kinda looks a bit weird. the sisters are quite likable.
-- The Story is excellent if you see the greater picture, but as of now the Dev hasn't managed to make the game interesting enough.

This game legitimately has a very huge potential. The Dev has to really capitalize on those small moments. I might be wrong and maybe the Dev has actually planned all that content, but the more time you lose, the more uninteresting this game becomes. I really loved this game and therefore gave it a 4 star just for the potential it has. make it Interesting enough and I might even consider giving it 5.

Edit: Chapter 3 part 3 - The game keeps getting lamer & lamer. Somewhere in between the dev forgot that this was a porn game. It's just plain boring fiction now. I think it's time to throw the key in garbage. -1 star rating.

I have to be careful how I write this review as they are sometimes too honest & this is a PC world we are living in even reviewers have to be censored so as not to "Trigger" anyone. That being said here goes!

Pros
-Good animations

Cons
-Very unoriginal
-Unlikable Characters
-Not much content considering its supposed to be 3 Chapters

Very nice writing, interesting game, hope to see more of it ! For who is interested in the storytelling it's really a good one. Shows how you don't need a complex plot to tell things interestingly.

A slow beginning but a rather interesting one anyway so all good there.

Renders are great, but the story is way too confusing and misleading in my opinion. I don't know if that is because that was the developer's deliberate intention to make it that way or it is just a beginer's error in story/plot building. It is not clear whether his intention was to cast doubt or mystery about certain characters (the MC's Mom and the girl namded Railey) actions while the MC was in a coma and during the time he meet Railey. first we have the scene with the MC hearing noises implying there were people engaging in a sexual act , in his room just before waking up from the long coma to open his eyes just to find his mom and his fat Santa Claus looking doctor standing right in front of him with their faces of surprise and (somewhat startled ) and it leaves the player wondering whether that surprised was for getting caught in their sexual act (although is not clear if it was acutally the mother who was sucking that repulsive Santa Claus looking doctor's cock or someone else) or if it is because the MC just got out of a long coma. Then we have the scenes in which the MC gets introduced by another Doctor (the black dude) and the MC gets to see her naked with his ''magic key'' (which allows him to see through any door and to look at what's behind them) inside of an almost empty room that looks like as if it was not really her room but a room in which she was hiding , implying that it may have been a room in which she was previously having sex with the black dude doctor before he introduced Railey to the MC and that's the reason she was naked in that almost empty room that most likely was not hers in the first place and the black dude doctor probably lied to the MC saying that that was her room when he first suggested the MC that he should visit her, only to later tell him that she has been tranerred to another building later on the next day. then we have the scene were the MC and Railey find the black dude doctor fucking a student in an office room , while they were exploring the building (that Railey clearly didn't know too well, despite the fact that she supposedly have been living there before she met the MC and thus she ought to have known too well ) and Railey clearly getting a sad and dissapointed face and a mumbling whispering to herself ''what is he...'' as if she was dismayed by that scene implying that she had some kind of relationship with the black dude doctor . and finally we have the scene at the fat Santa Claus doctor's office in which the MC is able to see through the door with his 'magic key' the body of a mysterious girl giving the fat Santa Claus doctor a blowjob and then (it's implied) getting fucked by the black dude doctor who got invited to join them. all these mysterious little details add up to many different interpretations and since the developer never gives clear clues to clarify these mysteries or to give definitive conclusive answers as to who these people doing these sex acts were , it leaves the player with the horrible choice to decide if you want to engage in a love relationship with a slut who probably got fucked by doctors and sucked their cocks after kissing you and telling you that you were special to her and the choice of accepting your own mother and/or establishing an incestual love relationship with her while you are uncertain that she may or may not be a slut who sucked your doctor's cock in your own room while you were in a coma. these are the hard choices this developer leaves you with by not clarifying and probably not wanting to clarify these mysteries , therefore the charges of NTR which is at least implied that it occured wheter the MC was in the picture at the time when it occured or not it is still NTR if you are left in doubt and having to make a choice with that doubt in your mind and since the developer does not gives you any options and forces you to interact and visit the blue haired monkey looking Railey despite many of us deliberately doing everything to reject her and not engage in any kind of relationship with her and/or any other characters in the game, we are left with the choice to continue playing the game or story knowing that you might have been a cuck for making that choice knowing that the people you are starting a relationship with might be sluts or to abandon the game alltogether as I did ,refusing to continue as a future cuck. Perhaps the developer's intention was to recreate situations that force you to make choices that you face in real life, but in real life we also have the choice to reject choices we don't want to make and this developer doesn't gives us these alternative choices. all of these is cool if you like to engage in a relationship in which you don't care that the woman you love might be a slut, but I´m sure most guys don't and a lot of guys just don't like games like this either. I'm not saying your game is bad for everybody but at least for me it is.

I know this is a fantasy game so i get the magic parts but honestly for me the mother just happening to be there when you woke up(what are the odds), no phone or internet(you need to catch up on what you have missed and reconnect with people) that makes no sense at all, also given that you were abandoned by your family why would MC want to go home(to a place you have never been) at all.

The writing is very poor, for example: none of the family visited MC but MC is like "i'm gonna show them how much they mean to me", WTF maybe they should show how much they mean to MC as they did nothing at all for him.
The creator had the perfect setup to use guilt on the family(which would have been nice as there attitude made me hate the family) but instead MC is another boring white knight.

The riley character is all over the place, offended to kissing in 2 minutes, happy to walk in on a guy naked but startled when she thought someone might have been looking at her in her room naked.

As for the choices, if you give a "choice" creator the game should follow through or there is no point to it, example: the "choice" to be angry about being sent away but when you get home the "choice" is forgoten and MC is no longer angry(in fact the exact opposite) so why bother with it?

Almost no content outside of the opening setup, which is very long.

On the plus side great artwork for both charaters and locations, the game runs smooth(althrough one or two errors, nothing major).

I have tested this game for the first time with version "Chapter 2 Part 3", not impressed so far :

- bugs with 'dad' and 'littlesis' keywords undefined during the first choices
- stupid math riddles
- game ending very early (because of bad math reply ?)
- long boring dreams
- no default names for characters

No wish to try other endings after this one. The dick was not up even one time.

The following review is based off my personal experience with playing this Game/Visual Novel... I try to be as brutally honest and detailed as I can, and these are my own opinions and thoughts, from one or more play throughs... The version this review is based on is Ch. 2 Part 3...

First I want to mention that I could not keep going through this VN/Game, as it was highly confusing, and began to become far more annoying then entertaining... As a warning, this review may go into some spoiler territory...

The visuals are a mixed bag... The characters are a mix of ones I've not seen before, a few customized ones (like the female centaur), and ones I kind of recognize from other VN/Games... They are of low to moderate quality... The backdrops were a mix match of original ones, and a few I've already seen before...

The script is where I became annoyed the most... It is a mix of long winded attempts at poetic description mixed with some occasional broken English, miss used words, a huge lack of proper punctuation to set the story telling pace, along with some occasional spelling/grammar errors... You can tell the writer/s are attempting to use a lot of stylized descriptions (somewhat poetic in nature perhaps), in how they are telling you the story and so on, but then they would occasionally throw in a few normal sentences, then back to rather long sentences of more attempted prose... There were also some made up words, or perhaps just misinterpreted words from a non-english version perhaps? It was hard to tell...

Initially the writer/s are trying to go through this rather long symbolism of how doors represent choice in life... But it kept droning on far longer then it needed to, because once that part was over, the doors were never referred to again, that I experienced... Then when you think it's about to go into some actual story plot, it's more attempts at long poetic verse to explain the mind set (or at least that is how I was interpreting it) of the male protagonist, who I guess dies based off the visuals? It was really hard to tell...

Following all that you get to a mini-game in the form of a riddle, that if you fail to properly answer (you type out the answer) you are then given a choice to skip it, try over again, or just make another path choice? What path choice? You are never presented with a path choice, so I was even more confused at that point... Anyhow, I decided to skip it, which then lead to what I first thought was heaven perhaps? Followed by a moment, where I think the writer was trying to say subconscious, but instead used subcushion? Again, more confusion... But instead of what most folks picture as heaven, it ended up being more like a very green high-fantasy scene, with a female centaur that wasn't all that great looking... She just begins threatening the protagonist with hate in her eyes... Was it really necessary to do the very lengthy camera panning (that you couldn't skip) as though it was trying to present this sexy half real looking horse, beginning at the hooves, then up to a oddly thin fantasy woman upper torso, aiming a bow and arrow at you? I was just so totally confused and lost...

Then it quickly switches, without any given reason, to a scene with the protagonists dad, after a brief amount of more long winded stylized story background about his family... You then get a scene, with his father when he was a child, and you are asked if you enjoyed riding the bike after crashing it? I went with No, and there was this look of dread from the father... He runs away as though he was in danger... Then you whisk off to what I guess is another flashback, this time with his sister when they were young, where the story telling and dialogue sounded a bit artificial... With the protagonist beginning to sound a bit like a jerk...

All this stuff just keeps getting thrown at you... No clue why, or what it had to do with anything up to that point... So here I was, maybe 30+ minutes into this VN, and I still had no real idea, what was actually going on... I began to feel a need to skip through the text... As it was far more long winded in it's attempts to drive home key points, which you had no idea what their purpose was... On some occasions I had to read it more then once due to all the text issues I mentioned already... I was reading all this stuff, and still had no clue what the plot was going to really be... Or how, what I was seeing and reading, tied in to the door stuff in the very beginning... It was like someone was having an ever changing random dream, and I was just unluckily being yanked along as it changed and altered...

There finally came a point where I just had enough, as there didn't seem to be an end in sight, where I would get past all this long winded attempts at poetic stylized writing, and get to some sense of plot and meaningful story telling, that made sense...

I also ran into some game breaking choices, like with the sister, the very first choice crashes the VN to the Error Screen, even though you can ROLLBACK to get back to the choice screen... That first choice always errors out...

There was an erotic still image in the beginning about the doors, but the event just involved a few different camera angle positions of the same image... I almost think it was just there as an enticement to get donations, more then something meaningful to all the door stuff...

Overall, I do feel like the writer is really attempting to tell this detailed introduction, with lots of poetic style frill... Sometimes attempting to use some big words, even when they were probably the wrong words... But the chosen style, mixed with all the other text issues, made it hard to read much of the time... And it began to wear down on me, becoming a bit too cumbersome... Some of the points could have been made with fewer words, and less attempt at trying to sound so flamboyant and/or flashy... Especially over a very lengthy introduction, that seems to just go on and on...

Perhaps some folks may like it, and normally I don't mind hard to read writing too much (you should try reading Ray Bradbury's Martial Chronicles)... But it felt like it was going nowhere, taking far too long to get to a point that wasn't so confusing/pointless (such as the centaur event)... I was only holding on as long as I did, in hopes of getting to see some actual story telling in the present day of the protagonist... But I eventually just quit reading/playing it... As it appeared up to that point, that even if it got past all the flashback stuff and confusion, the story telling format was still going to be just as hard to read and be just as wordy...

I do wish the developer/s the best of luck on this one, but I think it needs a lot of work if it's really going to shine or keep peoples interest past the first few minutes of reading... I have no plans to revisit this one for the moment...

Boring story, everything gets dragged out endlessly and some no good time wasting riddles for no reason at all, I guess just to make the game longer, with no good content.

Renders are ok, but some times the girls look like old granny's with their face expressions, thats really bad.

But the making of the one sex scene I saw was ok and thats the only good thing to say about this game.

An overlong prologue followed by a generic storyline with some bizarre fantasy elements mixed in. The unavoidable NTR that is promised for later is disappointing and largely nothing happens in the game as it is now.

Pros: Great Renders, with lots of Redheads (my particular crush)

Cons: Takes forever for the game to go anywhere and none of the promised content comes close to happening.

Overall, too few choices that don't seem to matter as there is only one path through the game. Would like to see more impact given to each decision and skippable NTR implemented.

draws (cg): really well done.

story: well writed and easy to follow.

characters: actually they are well done.

scenes (erotic ones) : pretty hot

music and sounds: well done.

gameplay: well done (just a bit hard).

conclussion: the strongest point on this game is the "whats going on? factor"
right next to the quality of the graffics. you can tell that this game got a lot of tough
on it, and that there is a great adventure waiting for you.

this game deserve your time and money.

This game is fucking weird, and I mean that as a compliment. Lots of trippy twists and turns, keeping you guessing as to what just in the unholy fuck is going on. The girls are really pretty, too, if you wanna get all superficial about it.

Going to be watching this one with interest!

It's my first game review on F95Zone and I'm not a native speaker....

First, it's nice to see a new game developer in the Ren'Py-Universe . Welcome "TheNeuronProject" and thanks for share your gameskillz and enthusiasm in Ren'Py on F95!

About the Game "Doors"

• sound & music
  • versatile sounds
    • many variations of sound effects (at some effects I had to check if the sounds comes from the game itself or the outside).
  • versatile, atmospheric music
    • nice music/songs
    • long music tracks, which don't repeat itselfes too much

• handling
  • good handling
    • fast forward options
    • rewind options
    • good main menu
      • patch activation shown
      • patroen-link used
    • use of Chapters and Parts for better navigation (useful, if you would like to spend more time with game)
      • orientation aid
        
• Pictures
  • nice, uniquebackground images
    • many others games use often identical pictures - but not this game!
    • For example: the apparently moving hand (as the MC slams the door in Mr Hedges face, in Chap.I, Part II)
  • use of real picture material (no comic/CGI/...
  • even the little picture banner on F95/patreon is nice an catchy (colorful doors & MC's sister)
• Story
  • intresting story
    • different settings (dreamworld, reality, fantasyworld,…)
    • even use of actual medical terms (highland syndrome)
    • little riddles
      • Opening the tresure trove with the Key
    • and how to make use of it ;-)
  • 
    
  • ---------------------------------------------- FUCK, the text editor is hard to use.... (already two times I had to start my review from a early stage - and my translations were vanished......) Shit Shit Shit
• .... to be continued

I have not seen such an original work for a long time.
I read the comments of other players, and thought about what to write myself.
It seems to me that in no case should the developer try to follow the advice of others, but continue to do exactly what he likes.
Great work, and I look forward to continuing.

This looks on a decent ride. Game choices with no point system, well thought out characters and promise of interesting complex story. Graphically nothing to be writing home about, but good enough.
As long as the author keeps the train going I'm sold.