Ren'Py - DropOut Saga [v0.11.1b] [LazyBloodlines]

DropOut Saga [v0.8.0b] Rating: 3.5*

First off, I really appreciate the effort the Dev has put in, and I heard that this is his first game he created, which is very impressive.
I do like the visuals, the girls look cute, and I do like the fact, that this game has animations that look decent.

The premise of the Story is really interesting and one of the reasons I downloaded it. But here are the issues I have with this game.
Although it is really well written, the story tries to be too much of everything and is all over the place, making it feel too overwhelming to process and the pacing suffers greatly because of it.
We jump through so many plots that it feels like you don´t progress with any of them.
I think it would probably be better to spotlight the girls and your relationship more, just like progressing more with the love and corruption paths and add more sex scenes. The Story paths could be distributed much better and I would handle it more like a TV series where every path gets their shine.
So, I think this is a decent game, but there´s a lot of work that must be done, and certain things need to be more optimized. That´s why I can only give it 3*.
I wish the Dev all the best in his development of the game. I will keep following the development and will update the rating if needed.

Pretty sound game so far. Very heavy on dialogue, not so much on sex, but honestly that's not a bad thing. The thing is, this game has something most other games don't: the MC is a total badass. Plus the music is awesome.

Girls are cute, eyes especially are expressive, and the naughty bits are pretty okay. The only downside is that some convos drag on a bit too long, the creator seems to REALLY like freeze-frame expression shifts, like a 40 second long 4-frame scene just so someone can give you the side-eye, and some of the English is a bit grammatically off. However none of this takes too much away from the story.

since this is a place for critical review, I assume everyone here has played it or doesn't care about spoilers since this is a place for the dev to improve your ideas, that said, this is my personal review,
that said, MY personal opinion, I think the dev put a lot of short-tempered, stressed, angry characters that take it out on those who are not to blame for anything, sophie is one of them, I don't think the people around us are to blame for what how bad our lives are, or what the fuck has our choices made in the past and that they deserve to feel that person's wrath, through no fault of their own, let alone poor Ava, watching Sophie take it out on Ava after the MC takes 2 shots, it was discouraging, and the state in which sophie finds herself, all finished and invasive thinking she is "queen" as she calls herself, disgusts me, there are 2 things that I hate in stories, cowardly characters that he doesn't know how to take advantage of his luck (which is not the case with this mc), and when the DEV chooses something for us, such as a love interest, and there is no way to refuse that person, it's very bad these stories that the mc it's already predestined to have a romance with such a character in a harem game without even being able to refuse, not to mention that clearly sophie is the dev's favorite, the focus that the story has on her, much more than on others... even if the player likes someone else, you WILL HAVE TO SUPPORT sophie because the dev wanted it that way, sophie almost shot the hot school nurse and the secretary, who just went there to help the MC, she practically decides who the MC is with can relate and control his life, and when mc doesn't tell her about his personal life, she fights with ava and mc since ava was just offering them breakfast, I won't go into details, because there's a "mini sophie" at school, also one with a twin sister, who lives taking it out on everyone too. And this thing about the MC always having sex scenes in dreams, I think it's a lack of creativity, I see it as Dev couldn't implement it in the story without being in a dream due to the excessive amount of drama and tragedy in the story that didn't even have room for a scene " real", there's the MC almost dead everyone fighting and out of nowhere a sex scene, do you really think that after a drama, blood everywhere a person out of nowhere will pick up the dick and start hitting one with the scene of sex in the middle of that drama? and I don't see the point in giving a nickname to ingrid in the dream to call the mc, since it's just a dream, why do dreams need nicknames? woke up it's over anyway.
I played in corruption mode, because I don't care what the DEV said about sensitive content for certain people, what bothers me is the personality and the invasion and the false sense of choices that the dev gives to the player, no matter what you choose, nothing changes.
Of course there is more to say, but the main thing for me is this.

[Review as of Version 0.8b]

The story and the narrative in this game is so damn good! Holy shit! It keeps getting better and better!

To the point that it almost makes me mad that the updates, and the story as a whole, is as good as it is. I really wished this last update was 3x longer.

Seriously, very few times have I read an AVN as engaging as this one. Hell, it's about as good as some actual novels I've read in the last couple of years (at least up to the point where the story is now).

I really, truly hope that this AVN blows up, to the point where LazyBloodlines is able to hire a team so he can keep pumping out updates at a faster pace (while keeping or even upping the quality).

This story, although still early in what could become a long-running saga, has so far been done so extremely well that I'd recommend this game in a heartbeat to anyone looking for an interesting story.

It's not just the story itself that is good though, but also the way it's being told and the way the narrative is used. All of the characters are different (though, granted, some more than others) and all have a lot of room for development.

One of the reasons I'm not giving 5 stars* to this game is because of the render quality. The lighting and the overall image quality could be better. They are not awful or anything, perfectly serviceable but could be better. Then again, I'm sure that dedicating time to do that would make the updates take a lot longer to be released. So far, the main focus seem to be the story, and I think that's a great decision. I hope that in the future, the overall visual quality improves though.

That isn't to say that the animations are bad though, make no mistake. They're pretty hot. I'll say though... I kinda hope the MC's dick was more "normal" instead of it being a mix of dinosaur + exomorph. Minor gripe though.

It must also be said, that the audio in this game is dope as fuck. Really damn good selection of music and sounds in general. And the placement of those elements are just *chef's kiss*. Although, your mileage may very depending on your music taste.

Please give the game a go, and consider supporting the dev if you can. I think this one deserves the support, and hopefully with it he'll be able to be even more efficient with the production of the game.

||Edit*: Came back to review my review after waiting for an update for a while and decided to change my 4-star rating to 5-star. The previous 4-star rating was due to overall render quality, and my previous points about them stand.

However, I chose to give it a 5-star score now on account of just how memorable this story is among the ocean of AVNs present on this site. Even after quite a while, I keep looking forward for an update and actively search for updates, all the while lusting after the continuation of the story like almost no AVN can make me. So far, for my taste story-wise it's an easy top 3 AVN on the entire site.||

This is good. Really fucking good. Good soundtrack - very different from most other indie VNs and it sets a very different tone for the story, but it works very well. The characters are all different shades of interesting even if some are clearly stereotyped to shit. The narration is really good, and the quality of the writing isn't perfect, but there are very few complaints to be made - good quality english.

The reason this is narrowly avoiding a 5 is because the Prologue was definitely a WIP, and it shows. The prologue (as well as small parts of "Chapter 1") having that sandbox style pick and choose is really annoying, done more annoying by the fact that the choices are meaningless. I understand the appeal of wanting people to interact with your game, but I don't need a menu to choose between which girl to call to my office when I CANNOT call them to my office, or if I MUST call them to my office to proceed. In other words, the sandbox instead just makes it more annoying for me to progress a story that is already entirely on rails and CAN NOT be made modular or "pick-your-own-pace" since it's not how it's built.

Even with the interface changing, the problem still remains. Not only that, but the game itself works weirdly with it - the choice is mostly just meaningless fluff interaction before yet another long narration section outside your office, until you're back in, and you really just need to call that one person or two into your office before going back into the bigger narration sections. It's like the dev himself is conflicted whether he should use the sandbox elements or not, because the narration sections are way too long that it feels like we're avoiding them anyway.

I'm a firm believer that games like these - particularly when the writing and setting are as appealing as this one - would do better with ditching the entirety of the sandbox elements, because they add nothing to the game - worse, by keeping me from progressing through the game by having to click around to call the people I need to progress the premeditated story to begin with, it is actually detracting from my immersion by giving me a fake idea of interaction.

Other than that, the love/corruption points are still there and you can see slight dialogue differences thus far but not much. Given, I'm not going to rate that too harshly given this is still a Chp. 1 and these things need time to properly alter the personality of a character, so judging it right now would be unfair.

Two more minor complaints: first, that particularly in chapter 1 and towards the later parts of the prologue there was very little focus on the school, which... was a bit annoying. It was nice to see them intersect at points (such as Ava with Lori) but more focus on the school itself would be more interesting, I believe; we've barely interacted with the 5 main girls equally (Julie has ONE scene, and Asuna 2), and the 2 main guys who looked like small-time villains we'd need to purge were left by the wayside. The story is good, but it is leaning too heavily into the past/mafia aspect in detriment of building upon the college aspect. It is somewhat fine because it's clear that this is to set the tone of how the protagonist will behave from chapter 1 onwards, I just wish that it flowed a bit more nicely into one another; or perhaps that the story structure was a bit more defined, as it feels a bit too spread out for my tastes.

Secondly, sometimes the references can feel a bit much. The "it's raining" scene is fun, but like... it worked best when I first saw it somewhere else, you know? Your writing is good enough, you don't need the references. It does still look badass though.

All in all I'm pretty happy I found this game and I'm looking forward to the future updates, but I don't think I could ever give this a 5 without a more polished and revised prologue in the distant future.

I started this one a while back, when it began. At first it wasnt really that impressive, as it went through several major changes and the prologue was a messy sandbox. However, I can honestly say that all the changes that the dev has implemented have been exponentially better, and that is the key to knowing you have a winner. A lot of devs never get better at what they do, but this one was able to identify areas that he could improve on and fixed them, and fixed them properly. In particular, the story is outstanding. I don't EVER find adult games that actually make me FEEL something. For that, the only acceptable answer is 5 stars.

Ava and Sophia forever, and RIP Ingrid. Save the College, build your army, and rule the world!

Great game, author really put effort into developing a story with interesting characters and backgrounds. This is definitely a hidden gem for those who actually enjoy funny moments/dialogue and good stories.

Wanted to like this but the story just pulls me out of it

the setup is quite good, Mafia man wants to get out of the game so he gets placed in a cushy job as the Principal of a School where influential sons and daughters attend and are there to be corrupted for the benefit of the family.

As of 7.1 the principal part just feels like background flavor. Instead most of your time is spent reading longwinded moralisations between MC and his inner demon and satisfying his two "housewives"

The game isn't bad, just expected more considering the high marks from the community.

I love this game could be more hardcore sex but thats just my personal preference hehe. the eye movements and emotions are really well done . the dev has outdone himself in the artwork and thought put into this, I'm happy to five star and put my first review i believe on this great game.

I really enjoyed it. The story is interesting and the characters are quite well developed for now. I mostly played as good guy, so no idea of how dark can it get if you lean into corruption.

There are a lot of cliffhangers and open threads that have me wanting to go on.

The interface may need some twitching, but nothing major. There's no grind for now, and the renders are pretty good (except some of the tattoos, that are really pixelated and look weird). The narration is also quite well done.

All in all a game worth playing!

one of the best games I have ever played. the stories and the artwork all were fantastic. really enjoyed it. I can't believe that it is just a prologue. looking forward to the full game. great job developer.

I gotta admit, at first I really thought low of the game: "just a new game without any experience, the writing is ok for beginners, there's barely any gameplay, and oh my god, the renders! The lighting is so bad that I can barely see ! The only things that keep me are the ideas, the general story, and the characters. But after week one, everything improved drastically. The renders are now fine, but damn, your writing, the conversation, the cinematic aspect (especially with the prologue end), the music,..... it feels like a whole different game ! The quality suddenly went top notch. The LI suddenly got so much more depth to them. The examples are Ava, Sophia, Jasmin, and Asuna. Especially with the Jasmin arc and the conversation near the end with Asuna. The whole Jasmin arc gives us a clear view of who she is and a very very promising story line to her. and Asuna, with only that conversation at the cafeteria, go from a common loli character bland enough to be found in any game as a canon fodder to such an interesting character! It peak my curiosity with her and I can't wait for her storyline ! I already talked about the prologue's end but still... DAMN ! just DAMN !





With the potential you demonstrate in only 1.5 hours of gameplay, it is enough for me to give you 5 stars. it was that great.


(Still, pls rework the early part of the game sometime in the future; pls. tThe renders there are unbearable.)

Edit: fuck, forgot about the MC. He interesting asf. love him.

Amazing game with great story and good scenes. Absolutely loved it. Can't believe this gem is so hidden among the other popular games. Each of the character is amazing although Sophie and Ava >>>. Looking forward to more content and updates.

One of the best and, ngl forced me to write a review. MC, a mafia lad, quite a character, really authoritative when necessary, protective and quite a lovey as well. Story and the way they directed feels like some real effort goes into it with the every update.
I liked the way his character is shaping into and at the beginning when he chose to be the principal i thought this was one of those simulator games but boy i was wrong alright.
It's little different point and click at the start but once you get hold of it, gets pretty easy.
*Special mention has to be about Ava {{only thing disappointing here is that no option as Sophia force kisses her without respecting her or our personal space and future looks gloomy as well wrt her. I get it that she needs to be liberated towards that intimacy but fuck she just had hole through her skull and Sophia is like "don't care bitch I'm more important", hopefully the issue gets highlighted}} Looking forward.

Has a very cool, interesting premise. And not only that, but pulls off the premise very well throughout the first 7 releases. Good, compelling, psychological story with a dilemma about whether to be a good guy or bad guy. While many games have had this dilemma, this game does it perhaps the best (eg. the internal dialogue between the good guy and the bad guy of a split personality). Complemented by nice, cool, simple sometimes instrumental sometimes with singing music. I really like their look and interaction with MC in the classroom, school-related atmosphere. So many games have tried this but this game does it quite well.

The girls are super cute, interesting, unique in terms of personalities.

v0.6.9
It's an interesting game, starting with the characters, they're all different, both personality-wise as well as physically, most importantly they're not simple one dimensional mannequins with dialogues. This is especially noticeable as of the later releases, where the game and it's development has slowly found it's own identity and balance, the dev has been slowly settling down with hard changes, like the removal of the early hourly sandbox and stuff, and I believe it's reaching a pretty good spot now. The only thing left, aside from new content, is modifying the earlier releases to match the newly released ones, though it's likely to happen only when the dev believes the game has found it's final shape.
Continuing on the slow changes, the story, that has had only a few instances of progress, looks interesting, so I'm looking forward for more progress.
Regarding dialogues, they're well written and mature, not 12-year-old cringy exchanges, so, props on that. There're some grammar issues, but not that many, so again, good stuff.
The renders are quite good as well, not really many noticeable issues here, I like that the city is a city, with people and all, not a ghost town made out of mediocre quality resources that barely resemble houses and streets.
The weak point of the game are the scenes, the animations to be specific. I believe the build-ups are rather well done and fulfil their role very well, but the animations, especially earlier ones, are lacking, the male model doesn't budge at all to follow the female's movements, the dick is rock solid in the wrong way, and in all cases just clips into the female model, instead of having "physical contact", though I believe this is rather hard to properly achieve.
To finish off, there's a rather small amount of content, especially sex, at least for what I was expecting on an almost 0.7 release, but seeing as this is just the prologue, I'm eager to see what's next.

All in all, a good solid game, so props to the dev! Though, I'd recommend waiting for a few more releases so you have a good amount of content to go through at once.


P.S.: "... The silence is your answer."
Wasn't expecting this quote here lol, love me some Mass Effect references.

Love the girls and story. The choice of music is also great. More animations would be nice, but since this is the authors first work it can be overlooked. I have seen people complaining about a lack of scenes, but in my opinion the setting and story make up for it.

Review for v0.6.9a (updated)

I wasn't really feeling the game the first time I played it, but I decided to push further and see if I changed my mind. Unfortunately, I didn't. I did however come to a more clear conclusion about why I dislike this game.

Put simply, a lot of the writing surrounding the MC makes me mega cringe. Maybe it's my personals preferences, but I just cannot connect with him. This sort of hardboiled older mafia man cool guy thing does not work for me. He's portrayed as a seasoned professional/badass with a long history, finally looking to leave the "business." In reality, we got what feels like the personification of an edgy middle schooler in the form of a middle aged man.

You ever see those memes saying something like "I got a demon inside me... and you better not mess with me OR ELSE"? That is unironically the MC in this. He's got a split personality. While the "good" side could probably be considered normal, we've got this edge lord part of us in our brain always popping in to say something crude or unhinged. He can take over our body of course, but as the game puts it "sometimes... a monster is necessary." A real quote. Dialogue like that doesn't come across as cool to me.

My other real problem has to do with the plot. The game is trying to mesh two separate things: College sim and mafia. Our last job before we can quit is becoming the headmaster of a college to get blackmail material on the daughters of politicians and such. Queue very unrefined school sandbox gameplay. The beginning segments of the game are a mess really. Maybe it's a result of the game trying to figure itself out, but it's disjointed. At random moments we just jump away from that into an entirely separate mafia incident where the game turns back into a standard visual novel before again switching back later to roaming a school. It feels like it doesn't know what it wants to be.

The renders are rather average, but the animations were good. I had to actually turn the music off though because I couldn't stand some of the songs.

The only thing that made me want to maybe play more, and honestly probably got me to come back to this in the first place, was the love interests. A lot of them really grew on me and I could feel myself wanting more of them. But given that I almost can't stand the MC and the plot has yet to do anything interesting, I think I'm out.

I don't usually rate or review games, but this one just made me want to. Game is fantastic renders are good, story is a good interesting and a sort of thriller genre wise. Good stories are hard to find in these kind of games after all. The music selection for this title is a very good, the selection just fits could just be me though. all around a gem of a game so far.

Playing 6.9a

This is a game that has clearly improved with time. But throughout the entire thing, it's remained a masterpiece in storytelling. With a character who's his own worst enemy, and whose ghosts are haunting him constantly.

The girls and partners are not simply people to collect, they have their own motives, influences, and goals which affect the MC in various ways.

And a big congratulation has to be given for the music in this game, with specific tracks highlighting particular scenes or emotional tones in the story.

An overall excellent, if short at the moment, game which tells a compelling story and should be played with the music up.