VN - Others - Completed - Double Homework [Epilogue 2] [Palmer/Love-Joint]

Story:
The story is unique and intruiging. Like the previous game from palmer,DFD , it also focuses more on a 'slice of life' format, but it is not as lengthy (more and different things happen faster -> it feels more dynamic).

Characters:
The characters have all different personalities and are well designed. Especially the sisters (the redheads) get special attention.

The MC feels way more natural and like a normal human being, than the MC's from other games, which all seem to be without mistakes and weaknesses. I dont really know why so many reviews criticize the MC and call him weak and a crybaby. This is utter nonsense! The only episodes in which he is uncertian and doubtful are the first two. In addition, his behavior after what happened to him, is in my opinion quite normal or at least understandable. Nevertheless, after episode 2, he lives his life more and more normally and gains self-confidence.

Graphic/Art:
Not much to say, its excellent. The only thing that some people may miss are animations.

Erotic:
The erotic scenes are quite good, but there are not as many of them as in other games (which is fine because not every girl wants to jump your dick from the get go). I would say from episode ~3,4 onwards, if you play all routes, every update contains 3-4 erotic scenes (e.g. flashing, forplay or sex).

Conclusion:
The game is really good. It is not as fast paced as other games but with time you will 'fall in love' with certain characters. I think the current rating of 3/5 stars is quite laughable. There are so many worse games with dumb/simple characters and bad writing which have a better ratings... .

Don't let screenshots fool you.

It's one of those game where you have to suffer through literally hours of slowly loading poorly written crap that you can't even skip fast because engine needs to reload data every ten lines of dialogue. Then you get a HUG scene.

The renders in this game are absolutely amazing. Its why its more than disappointing that the story lies on the other end of the spectrum. It lacks flow or the creative spark that made the previous title such an amazing game to play. When chapters ended in DMD there was a sense of expectation, but with this chapters seem to end abruptly and with little of what comes next,

Graphics 3.5/5 Good renders but with the lack or animations I wouldnt say the game is anything special, and the chosen game engine is less then optimal.

Story 1/5 The story seems solid at first but quickly turns into a really boring and drawn out experience with annoying inner dialogue and choices that just feels like the typical illusion of choice, quite meaningless ones as they don't change much for the MC.

Characters 1/5 The positive aspect is that characters mostly look good but they lack any compelling characteristics and seems to be there mostly to add more content in the form of dialogues with some exception to the 'main girls'. Overall most are quite annoying and leaves you wishing you had some way to steer interactions with them ragther then being forced to "listen" to them and take their crap like some eunuck who enjoys being walked all over.
Also the whole deal with Dennis blackmailing the MC with the fact that he played video games is pretty ridicilous so is all the interactions with this character.

Edit after finishing all 18 episodes, this game by far has the most helpless and idiotic MC I've ever played, at some point I just wished that everything would go badly because he honestly annoys the living shit outta me.

The story just becomes more absurd with time, the dialogues are more and more a chore the read raghter then anything interesting and the inner monologues are just purely frustrating.
Score from 3 down to 1.

While this game has great rendering, everything else is pretty bad. The game engine combined with the fact that there's so many episodes that load like separate games despite being one story is just massively annoying. The transitions often take an annoying long time and the "last episode recap" and the "previewing next episode" stuff at the beginning and end of each episode just exacerbates the feeling that you just played something for like 5 minutes. While putting out cheats codes for patreons is understandable, having neither them nor any kind of walkthrough is one again annoying frustrating. The Dennis character constantly feels like he's about to unload some NTR content on you (not really ntr content but it does feel like it's skirting a border on that one) and while it doesn't seem like that's going to happen, it does tend to be a source of constant frustration. The story itself is rather annoying too as it seems some of the dialog is a little just too unnatural. Constantly seems like the choices are irrelevant, but then again maybe they have an impact after all? Who knows? Again, a walkthrough would be helpful as I don't want to needlessly play this game playing out every choice along multiple episodes. At least in Renpy the game will stop skipping if you hit new content.

LOVING THIS GAME!
the mc is somewhat relatable, the girls are all unique in their own way, interesting backstory and start, shit face antagonist that you seriously wanna kill off whenever he appears and a BOOTLOAD of fun! Just a shame that theres likely not aharem ending, but i at least hope i can keep both the sisters if not everyone else. do that and it will be a 5 star review lol!

constantly talking to an annoying elephant man looking loser who somehow is competition to you and undermines you at every turn every 5 minutes, nobody ever talking about anything on their mind and always saying "nevermind" or "it's not important" or" i'm too afraid to say it," a fucking spineless pussy of an MC that never ever goes after what he wants or says what he wants to say, girls that never say what's on their mind, never-ending evasion of the elephant in the room by everyone involved, an MC with the IQ of a jellyfish being convinced a kiss between him and his sister last night never happened by that very same sister not to mention all the other times he's been thoroughly fucking brainless, and decade long screen transitions.

what a fucking tragedy that these awesome renders are wasted like this.

if you like all these things, then boy is this the game for you!

Version: Ep. 9

PROS:
- Great rendering of female character models

CONS:
- Few sex scenes
- Slow gameplay
- Boring to play

Review:
This game is very similar to DFD. Has the same engine, the same ambient sounds and the same slowness. Some characters are also a little bit alike, you realize that Dennis has the same resemblance as Detective Moe. After a certain chapter, I decided not to continue reading the story, because all the options for answers will always follow the same path. I'm a little lazy to read but when the story is interesting I usually follow, but in this game it didn't give me a reason to keep reading. I stopped in chapter 7 because I was unable to continue. Well, I'm not saying that the game has a bad story, so don't confuse it.
About the gameplay is annoying, I’ve seen worse games and I also suffered in DFD, here is the same thing, many dialogues and many are meaningless, very few interesting scenes, you always suffer from loading and that happens for each scenario that passes, the option to skip the dialogs is automatic, you will skip a lot of scenes and if there are H scenes, anyway, it's a DFD 2.0 but with another story and other characters.
Another thing that is very annoying is about the way of managing by chapters, you just played a chapter and you have to close the game or the page and go to open chapter 2. Some games that have a chapter mechanism are cool, I think it's better to do that than a sandbox with infinite loop, grind, etc. But Double Homework and DFD didn’t get very nice.

So, why I did gave 1 star?
The renders are great, very good work, but I believe that the developer has no knowledge of other engines to make games more complex. One thing I missed about DFD was character scenes appearing and opening doors, or going into rooms, or even the MC looking at them from the back. The game scenes are all from the front characters, I mean, the MC is not free to explore the environment like other games. Making it very clear that I am not belittling the author's work, only that it is kind of strange to me, it is as if I were playing HTML games from the 2000s.

Quite a good game.
(I add this review having played only the episodes 1 to 8... but i wouldn't be surprised to raise my rating later)

To my opinion the major positive aspect of this game is his scenario. Story and characters's depth are much better than in most of these games we see around.
The graphics and characer models are nice and realistics.
I don't really understand all the complains about the engine... I never tryed to rush the game and i had no problems with it.

The only negative critics i'll have to do is that the game is quite linear. I felt most of time to be clicking, clicking... all along a pre-written story.
I felt most of the time like a spectator of what was happening.
It's particulary boring with Alice's behavior and how the MC is reacting to her. I hate how she makes everything complicate and tense just by not talking and keeping all of her motivation to herself.
Hopefully it become better after episode 7... when we finally begin to know why she's acting like that (it sure took some time !).

Just a last point : I don't think it's a good idea to add the teaser images at the end of each episodes. that spoil most of what is coming :/

It could be even better with animations, voices, and the actual sex scenes are a bit short sometimes... But up to now, it's a good game with very nice characters and i'll be happy to see how the story continue.

Episodes 01-10

Double Homework was actually the first VN game I played. Stumbled upon it randomly and now I'm kinda hooked on this kind of games. But let's ge to the point...

Pros:
- Renders are good. I personally love the characters' facial expressions, they're better than in most games.
- Sounds. Background music sets a nice mood for the scenes. Also, other sounds like doors closing, steps, etc add a nice touch. I really hate mute games
- Theme is original. MC being a traumatized person after an accident where people blamed him for whatever happened.

Cons:
- Engine. This is probably the most obvious one. This engine is BAD, it's so much worse than Ren'Py that I don't even know the reason Palmer chose to continue with this one instead of moving to Ren'Py. It's slow, you need to "download assets" every 2 minutes (and that takes a while even with a fast connection), and the game is divided in episodes with different save files for every episode, which makes it a nightmare to try different paths. Yikes!
- No animations. Doesn't bother me that much but it is one negative thing about it.
- Very few sex scenes. Some chapters have none, other have just one. And they are all very short scenes so if you're looking for a ton of sex scenes, this is not the game for you.
- Story development.
- Incest. It's pretty clear that Tamara and Johanna are supposed to be your sisters and I'm fine with that. But some dialogues are not consistent with that or consistent with them being only your friends.
- Choices. Well, are there really any choices if every option leads to the same result? There are so many times where you have to choose something but the result is exactly the same except for a few different dialogues.

Current grade: 5/10

Oof, hoping for some improvements in the story

This game has some good going for it, but often is overshadowed by the bad.

To start off, the graphics and renders are done very cleanly and crisply. It is seriously impressive how good the girls look. Second, all the girls have a distinct personality as well as a look. There is a girl for everyone I would think.

Now there are some more good things but I think the bad really needs to be talked about. First of all, it is an absolute travesty for this game to not be on Ren'Py. The fact that it takes 10 seconds or more to transition a scene is shameful. There game lacks the UI and user friendliness of Ren'Py as well. Honestly, I would give this game another star if it wasn't for such a counter-intuitive engine.

Next, the story seems to just be tossed together to add unnecessary conflict. Conflict doesn't develop naturally in this game, it is forced blatantly and really detracts from what little the story has going for it. For example, the girls who are well aware of how Dennis hates MC, not only invite him to a party dedicated to MC, they allow him to plan it. The MC has to get to the party by stealing a jetski and MC isn't pissed at anyone. Once again, unnecessary and nonsensical conflict added just for the sake of it and it frustrates me beyond belief.

The MC has the courage of a floppy noodle. The MC has obviously gone through something traumatic and after day one of the story he is quickly over it. That obviously isn't done naturally but regardless the main issue stems from how the MC acts or rather, doesn't act. He gets shit from so many people and there is literally not a thing stopping him from punching back as hard as he is being hit. Firstly, there is poindexter threatening MC by saying he will make his gaming records public (WHO CARES?), then Tamarra acting like a Queen when she is taking the incident far worse than the MC. She just is so unbelievably fake it would be fantastic for MC to even attempt to tell her off. And some of the girls in his class act like they care about MC but they are in reality just as fake as Tamarra. Rachel hated MC so much she refused to be in the same place at the start of the story but for some reason she tells him later than he could have always reached out to her. There are just so many like facepalm moments that really make me question how this could have made it into the game. I honestly am terrified for the game if the dev ever decides to share the story of the incident. If the parts mentioned above hardly make sense at times there is just not way it would be possible for them to explain MC killing 12 people with no repercussions besides depression.

(Ch11 spoilers: the explanation has come. Somehow, a person inside of a crashed cable car knew that opening the jammed door would cause and avalanche and MC and Tamara were supposed to just freeze to death in that cable car. As expected, it is a terrible cop-out of a even remotely possible event. So the main reason why MC has his PTSD is built on an extremely ridiculous situation. Basically this along with the other problems are just why this game frustrates me to death. Then the renders in Ch11 were sooo good. The never ending cycle of me somewhat love, absolutely despise relation of this game.)

One thing also worth mentioning is that the game has a lot of non-choices and even a ton of choices that just don't really change anything besides the dialogue on the intros of each episode. I would like to think this will change in the future but it is annoying the saying no to someone simply means you get less content with no other benefits. Once again, it feels pretty unnatural and is kind of just shooting yourself in the foot for no positives.

I really really want to like this game, but between being bombarded by Dennis, waiting for the client to work, and the mind-boggling gaps in the story it makes it so difficult to do some.

In spite of all this, I actually recommend the game. It could be so much better in my opinion but it still has a decent amount of potential I hope to see some of the mysteries unraveled namely why certain characters act so strangely and what the incident actually was... I think I will drop the game a 2.5. It needs a lot of retrospection with regards to the story or it will have so much trouble closing the story in a semi-believable manner.

Game features superlong dramatic fadeouts, so long I even manage to tab out and come back forgetting whzt was going on, what a cheap way to increase play time. Sexy stuff is spread so thin it's not even funny and did i mentioned SUPER long dramatic fadeouts? cause those and a whole lot of meaningless text all i can remember from playing an episode for 15 mins at which point it cuts to another long dramatic fadeout and i'm done with this

The first game I played by Palmer really put my expectations high for this installment. That being said and having played up until Episode 6, I have to say that those expectations have not been met.
My frustration mainly comes from the linearity of the games which I had my gripes before, but also of the fact that the UI seems off and it is slow as well.
In general, the art is not bad at all and this is why it is such a shame that game is just not doing it for me.

I'm actually a big fan of Palmers work, and that's why I haven't given it a lesser rating...
The plot just like the renders are amazing and enthralling, I enjoy every bit of this game.
I will only say that Palmers games advance only slowly and if that puts you off you might want to skip it though it is worth playing.

Now my complaint: And I hate feeling like I have to bash on a game I like but damn, Palmers engine is horrible! It basically has the same exact or less functionality as RenPy or a javascript game but makes my laptop throttle up like crazy! And that wouldn't bother me if it wasn't so sllllooooowwwww! Playing a VN where choices take effect several episodes later, where going back and having to spend time playing them again one after the others is such a chore simply makes it appallingly annoying! I know DRM and all, but damn!

OK, I gave this another shot and I'm now starting to like it.

Just wish that Palmer would have skipped the first sex scene 2 minutes into the game. Doing that just feels lame. We have an idea what the game is about and don't need a not so subtle reminder about that.

Let's hope the writing stays as good now.

The story is well written, and though the "event" is vague, the responses are believable. The MC and Tamara show very real signs of PTSD and it is handled well. One of my new favourite titles on here.

I honestly don't really know where to start. I truly can't with this game. There's a lot to love here. Likewise, about just as much to hate and I even have some things I'm pretty on the fence about.

This game is extremely slow and this wouldn't be a bad thing by any means if things of actual interest were happening within this slow development. To be honest, it wouldn't even feel slow if things of actual interest were happening. Except it's filled to the brim with a whole bunch of taking mental punishment and beating around the bush by our stagnant, simp ass MC.

This MC consistently allows bullshit to happen to him while he just takes it in stride, living in a constant state of denial and cluelessness to the events that occur around him. And not the interesting type of bullshit most times.

When conflict involves the characters, Johanna and Tamara, the main female characters, the game excels. When it involves a character named Dennis, the game stagnates horrifically, because the MC has no reason to take any of the shit that this particular character hits him with. None whatsoever. He even gets hit with blackmail, but I promise you when you view the content of said blackmail, you're gonna say ".....really? That's it? That's what you're afraid of people knowing?" And when you look at a certain character by the name of Amy you're gonna ask "So why is that a problem exactly???"

Dennis is there purely to stretch out the story and fill it to the brim with idiotic conflict that the MC has no reason getting involved in. But he sticks around anyway cause he's afraid of people knowing what he did with his time after the incident. So stupid if you ask me. It becomes even stupider when you find out that one of the best characters would find it sexy if she knew what he did with his time.....to which he responds to himself that he can never open up to her now....to that I literally screamed "What?!" to my computer screen. This is in part because I picked her as one of the girls to pursue as part of Dennis' stupid deal, which has yet to hold any effect, which goes back to my point that it's all just filler content that holds no weight with Dennis.

Other than that, most other character interactions are handled very well and there are even characters to love. In my opinion, this game has enough sexual content for its story so far, but said content may be lacking to those who prefer animated scenes, as these are not, but the game is immensely pretty to look at and has a very nice soundtrack that often appropriately sets the tone of a particular scene.

But the highlight of the story is the girls you live with, Johanna and Tamara who don't really have any groundbreaking traits about them that sets them apart from the tropes they belong to, but they are handled very very well and they have a tendency to steal the scene any time they are present, particularly Tamara, who I'm sure is pretty unliked if not hated by the majority of the player base due to her constant negative behavior. But she is without a doubt my favorite, because there is not a scene with her that feels uninteresting to me. And she is utilized just the right amount. Johanna is all around the kinder one, so we spend so much more time with her than we do Tamara which is definitely the smartest move.

To finalize, this game is a great looking, great running (for me), great sounding game with a great story concept that often shoots itself in the foot because of annoying character decisions and character appearances for the sake of filling in a story that would probably be fairly short without these various uninteresting/annoying story arcs weighing it down.

So 3/5 feels accurate to me. I recommend it because there is plenty of good here, but it's often overshadowed by bullshit. The loud obnoxious kind. So if you feel you have a pretty high tolerance, this might be your game. If you have low tolerance, I'd say skip it. I'm definitely the latter, but I am curious to see where Palmer takes certain characters next. Looking forward to Ep 8.

Fantastic renders, but bad engine choice. The engine lacks many of the really user friendly features most players are used to in RenPy games. These are lacking as the devs have chosen an on-line only engine to try to force more players to pay up front rather than rely on a donation based model. This is the prerogative of the devs, of course. If you don't mind those trade-offs, enjoy, as the devs makes great games with fantastic renders and good stories.

This game could be so much better than that...

First of all, it should be develop with Ren'py. I really don't like the engine they used, it's very slow, specially on scene transition and with ren'py they could make 1 game instead of 1 new game per chapter, it's really annoying to switch when you've finished one, it breaks the linear story.

The story is good but a little slow, renders are really good looking (beside Dennis, fuck this guy!),

On Ren'py, this game could easily have 5 stars.

But on this engine [...Downloading assets...87%]...it deserves 3 stars.

Still looking forward for next update!

I just played through the first 5 chapters of this game and I like it, but I do have mixed feelings about some of it.

The renders are done very well, and all the women are very attractive, but at the same time, maybe a bit too child-like for my taste. As it is an erotic game, I understand that young women are the norm and a popular fantasy, but there's a fine line between youthful and creepy. This game sometimes errs on the too child-like appearance. Especially with the main characters Tamara and Johanna. As I've stated in some other reviews, when playing an erotic game, I want to be aroused but not feel like a pedophile.

As for the story, it's not bad. I know lots of players are just interested in getting to the sexy parts, but I enjoy those parts much more if I'm invested in the storyline. So for me, a well written story is key. Now the plot of this game is good, and I understand what the writer is trying to do by withholding information, but there is kind of an overkill of that in this story. First, the MC's plot hinges on some kind of tragedy that's constantly alluded to but never explained. Not a problem , but it extends to every other character in the plot. Characters are constantly starting to explain something or alluding to events, but then saying things like, "I don't want to talk about it now", "I'll tell you later", or things to that effect. I can understand from the writers perspective why it makes sense to lay out the story that way, because they already know (hopefully) the important plot points. But as a reader/player, it's frustrating to keep doing things or interacting with characters without really knowing what the motivation is for the action or why characters behave the way they do. Not really sure how long this story is planning on going for, but it feels like a lot of characters need to be fleshed out and to keep stringing players along might make them lose interest. Again, we're only five chapters in, but I wouldn't want it to drag out too much longer.

As for gameplay, it's fine except for the mouse responsiveness in the game. For whatever reason, the cursor movement noticeably lags in this game and can be a little irritating when trying to select choices. I've played this authors other game (DFD) and didn't experience that lag at all in that game. Eventually I just turned off the cursor screen following because it seemed clunky, slowed the game down, and not particularly useful in any of these initial chapters. Also, some of the loading times between images/renders seem a bit excessive, but overall it's not too bad.

Overall it's a good game, aside from a few minor issues. Definitely good enough to want to see where the story goes and continue playing and I would recommend it.