Ren'Py - Abandoned - Duality [v0.1.8] [Per<3rsioN]

As of 0.1.7, I can only give this game 3 stars, with all the stars for the renders alone.

Development is slow and the juice is not worth the squeeze. There is no plot to follow, it's just the MC doing random events to raise stats to unlock new events. There are no sex scenes yet which is fine for a porn game(is it?) but how long will it take us to get there, late 2023 if the game has not been abandoned?

Being a sandbox game is not the problem either but the problem is there's no sand in the box. You can't interact with the NPCs from the game's banner (Goth girl, nerdy girl) or background items. There's a gym with 5 sublocations inside but there's only one interaction available. There's a school with 4 sublocations and zero interactions. There's not even background NPCs to fill the space. It's just eye candy. What's the point then? But then, if the game were to be more sandbox-like then we would have to wait even longer for scenes with the women we want.

And despite that, this game still nails the most important aspect of these games - rendering. It is top 5 on this site. Really, it is.

I'll revise this review after some time. What will bump it up is sand in the box, an improved UI because the phone system is messy AF, and some actual sexual interactions between the MC and the women.

The sandbox aspect of the game kinda ruined it for me. Would have been better played as a VN. The females of the game made me try this out as they are very hot. The story was average at best and the releases were slow.

Played version 0.1.7b
I like this game, the style of playing it is so addictive! I hope there will be sex scenes soon, because all the girls in this game are very hot. I really like the possibility of deciding if I want them submissive or in love with me.

Here is yet another story that despite its beautiful renders and it premise is ruined by a terribly implemented sandbox setup. Reading the developers notes, I really tried to give this game the benefit of the doubt due to it being a first time project but the glaring inconsistencies, the grind and the repetitive nature of it just kills my interest.

The renders in this game are great. The attention to detail is really good and things do not look too out of place. The flow however is what kills this game. One moment you are having a steamy hot sexual moment with the MC's Aunt and the next she is talking like she hasn't even see you with your shirt off. It is terribly frustrating to say the least.

You are given an in game walk through that is one of the worst I have ever seen. you find yourself constantly referring back to it instead of doing other things. Add to that, the fact that the activities are limited and what you have is a repetitive grind that you get bored with quickly. After 5 days in, I was done. I was still another 5 days away from being able to communicate with the MC's "caretaker" and had already done all of the activities for the Aunt, which meant 5 more days of pointless grinding and repeating the same thing over and over or speeding though using the clock.

That is not how a game is supposed to be played at all. I gave this game a chance based on the renders and the storyline but in the end all it did was confirm the reasons why I avoid "sandbox" games.

The game looks good enough, girls look good enough and renders are clean wiht decent candy lighting, but the game is pretty much deserted, Barren, empty.
It has some stats in place that should ofer different approaches to the same scenes, or different scenes, but so far it seems to be pretty much a placeholder since a good number of the scenes that would use those stats are just the same without that specific stat.

So far all that coding effort is pointless since there are not even enough scenes as it is. The 99.999% of the best stuff you get is from peeking, or rewards, or events that dont affect the plot at all.

As for the plot, the only thing different is that you change from one house to another. If you have 20 default Relationship with Tiff, she will treat you exactly the same in every single dialogue as if you have 200 relationship points. Its obivous that its a event based game looking at that fact. So far there is not character development nor much lewd progression with most of the characters, once again it doesnt matter if you have 20 perversion or 200.

Thats why 2 starts, its just way too underdevelopped, and I far it wil be abandoned since its not offering much after 1 year.

Great renders, characters are pretty, with good variety in body types as well.

Such a shame the gameplay is an utter mess. It's a bad sandbox. It's a total drag to get anywhere (and you're not really getting anywhere yet). Just look at the complexity of the walkthroughs on the phone and you can see what horrible hole the dev has dug himself into.

Would have been awesome if it had been a VN (with some story changes, the whole realtor story line is nonesense).

3 stars for the renders and chars.

Loving the character models and story. Game looks crisp. Every update is pretty polished and I've had zero issues with something loading. There is plenty of differing choices and I feel like once the scenes really get hot and heavy there will be plenty more players. Definitely excited to see where this goes

Another shitty game with nice models. The open world is fake-literally you have to repeat the same scenes over and over to get anywhere. The game also has the usual tropes-sleep sex, dom/sub, etc. Dumb characters that do the silliest things to justify the shitty story. Mom signed a contract to basically do porn if she can't afford the giant house....yea it's that stupid. So in the end incest will be done to help her get off the ground until some lesbian shows up to do the usual go to scenes with lesbians. Yawn.

Fake open World, shitty sleep sex, laughable dom/sub scenes take some nice characters and as usual with these kinds of devs turn it into some clone of the thousands of games made for people who would be better off not exploring their shit gardens. It's actually worse because the open world is nothing but just that-empty, pointless and repetitive and the reward is just more of the crappy story being revealed a bit at a time.

Turn this into a VN and drop the stupid shit and you might get somewhere.

Played version 0.1.5b:
-the female characters are great: beautiful, adorable, pretty, etc.
-there is only little story so far, most of it involves Ruca, MC's aunt
-the gameplay is not that of a visual novel but of a sandbox
-I had to chase various scenes using the walk-through
-some of the scenes mentioned in the walk-through, like the ones in the boutique happen randomly so one has to play until they get them
As a result, the game is quite grindy even with the cheats that allow the player to change the relationship points.
After a while I lost interest in chasing scenes following the walk-through.
This is rare for me, since for most of the other games I played (VNs), I find it hard to stop playing them.
Suggestion to the developer: reorganize the game as a visual novel, not a sandbox. This will make it easier to develop the story and structure it like a novel where things happen in a certain sequence.
Some examples of VNs with excellent mom-son stories are "No More Money" and "No More Secrets".
This game has the potential to be great if it's remade as a visual novel with a much bigger story.

Version: v0.1.5b to v0.1.7

Review:
This game was supposed to be good but it doesn't seem to have started yet. My last review was many months or a year ago and I decided to redownload it, but it was a total waste of time. The dev doesn't seem to know what to do first, doesn't even know how to start a plot or create a story. The way he manages his game sucks!

History:
The story is bad, there's no way to defend it. The plot looked good but it looks like the dev messed it up by creating a totally disorganized sandbox game. The relationship between the MC and Ruca could have been more engaging but it seems that the script was written by someone I wouldn't even call an amateur. About the dialogues, I didn't even waste my time because if it was more organized it would be better. I don't want to say that the dialogues are bad, some things in the game are good, example is seeing Ruca's jealousy over his sister (MC's mother) but it's a pointless game, you hardly feel things happening.

Gameplay:
Sandbox games are not bad when you want to organize or know how to program, if you don't know how, make a VN. There is no inventory of items, you buy a "hoodie" that will be useless. The game also has 1% point-n-click, there are some objects you click to interact once, anyway, this game was not planned well. The progression is for you to gain stat points for new scenes to be unlocked but Ruca's path for example is bad. The dev should start with Ruca's path first, develop a little relationship and discard things that he knows will spend more of his time, such as some game scenarios like college, bookstore, alley and gym. Above all, the game sucks.

Graphics & Sexual Content:
The only good thing about this game are the renders, which for me looks great. ALL girls have different bodies, face, tits, hips, ass, pussy... it really was an excellent job. But if we're going to talk about the sexual content, my god, it's disappointing. First we have weak and pathetic rape content (sleepsex) which is a BJ or HJ under Ruca. Then we have another ridiculous scene in June (MC's mother) which is harassment of him jerking off on her while she sleeps. Afterwards, you don't see any better scene, just voyeurism content until you get to the point where you won't see anything else. The other scenes with Ruca for example are pathetic, which is the MC cumming on Ruca's skin or in June, SO PATHETIC! Nothing satisfying.

Why I did gave 1 star?
I changed to a star. Unfortunately this game doesn't deserve two, it deserved it for the renders that are great but the fun of playing this is bad. Honestly, it's best to start creating your game to make it more compact because if you continue this way you will create a game with an unfixed story, because everything that happens in Ruca's house could be better used. At least make your audience feel that the story is being developed between the characters and have that relationship as you want to make it. I believe it can be improved, just start focusing and try to recreate the game again. But what does that mean? build a better relationship with Ruca, simple, what does Ruca's maid do? if you have nothing to do then better discard it. I hope things get better, because it was a game that had potential.

This is really a good game.
Awesome renders! Maybe a bit slow burn or grindy for other user but i do not really mind.
People are complaining about small updates but i do not think it is a problem. I tend to prefer smaller and frequent updates than normal sized updates every year and maybe forgotten by devs.

I think the game is carried by one of the best character ever, June really stands out.
Overall should be 4* but June is 100* so -> 5* star end rating.

I love the game models and story is ok.

Thats why I gave 5 stars rating.

However, down side of that is confusing gameplay.

Yes I know (PHONE) cheats and Walkthrough does it help like easier play but to me , it should be without those particular days and time.

Every porn game that u need to grind is like killing blue balls momentum.

Once again I love 3D models especially mom.

Beautiful. It deserves 4 stars but I love mom model so much so I gave 5.

1.4b

Summary:
You are a young man that is sent to live in another city with your aunt because you were expelled from your old school for being a creep. Now that you be living with your aunt you

Extraordinary aspects of the game:
Full-length in-game walkthrough

What is good:
Everything there really little bad in this game, the models look pretty. The grind is minimal as you can choose your grind levels with pretty much nobody doing that. The incest story is good too.

What is bad:
Right now in my opinion is just the lack of content, but that is something that will be fixed in the future one way or another.

What can be made better:
Tip bar needed to be added at least for the beginning, I was a little bit “scared” and confused when I started the game having so many empty areas you can travel to isn’t helping either.

When creating a game there is such thing that called limitation makes a game interesting/perfect, so those areas should be closed at the beginning and opened up later so as not to overwhelm the player.

Yes I know that this will mostly change in the future and right now the dev wants to showcase his art but it still bugged me.

My opinion:
Well like I said before there are little bad things in this game right now, maybe because of the limited amount of content but I doubt it as I can see that the dev has really devoted himself to the game.

I can say that I was a little bit annoyed playing with a “creep” player as it’s the easiest way to make incest character but it’s just nitpicking in the end.

I loved the few stats that you can get here with is Love/Lust/Fear right now there are few paths to the fear factor but it still makes it interesting nonetheless.

So looking at all of that the game is good, usually I place these kinds of games into the good category and that’s it but this one is good at all the fronts so I giving it a High Quality- Low tier score.

If you want more reviews/recommendation check out my list [Link]

The renders with June in a bikini are amazing, hoping to see some sort of femdom/corruption there also for every girl. Great work, it's a little sad that some people just hate sandboxes without giving it a real try

In Duality you get to choose what kind of MC you are. The options range from a doormat nice guy to a libertine playboy to an utter creep.

These qualities are tracked ingame by Feelings, Perversion and Respect scores. 'Respect' is kind of a misleading name, since it really measures of how much you intimidate your LI's. High scores in any category unlock trait-specific scenes and dialogue.

Per<3rsioN is a new developer, and this is his first game. Right now this game feels very incomplete. It does, however, show great promise.

First the bad. This is a sandbox game that tries to tell a story. As one might expect, the narrative bits and sandbox events are often wildly out of sync. The dialogue references events that haven't happened yet or blatantly ignores events that have just occurred.

Secondly, there are clickable characters who have no content yet. They are jarring. This is alleviated somewhat by making a minigame out of clicking every instance of where and when they appear (you get a non-canon spicy pic of them), but still, having clickable characters with no events or dialogue is just...jarring.

That is perhaps the biggest negative about this game so far: it's fairly content-light. Also, the animations are very basic (hopefully they will improve) and there is no sound. At all. These are things (one hopes) that will be addressed in future updates.

The good stuff is in the visuals. The renders are gorgeous, well-lit and chock-full of attractive women ranging in ages from teen to milf, and in builds from slim to super-stacked. A particular plus is all the closeups of expressive, beautiful faces. This is something that a lot of developers overlook. In Duality, the faces are important and you can clearly see every nuance of doubt, bliss, fear, etc, in each one. This, as much as anything else, tells me that Per<3rsioN has real potential as a visual storyteller. Whether or not he can make a fun, engrossing game has yet to be determined. So far, Duality isn't.

Staying on the plus side, however, the writing, much of it, is surprisingly good. The text exchanges with Tiffany are especially clever and have a true-to-life ring.

The developer has also thoughtfully included an ingame walkthrough and cheat options to offset any frustration.

On a side note: the 'being a complete asshole' option is not something that I would explore myself. It's cool that the option is available, but there is a line between horny naughtiness and dark ugliness, and I see no entertainment value in crossing it.

As this game develops, one hopes there will be things like sound, and more importantly, consequences. Right now, there are none. The MC can basically sexually assault one of the female leads in her sleep, get caught doing it, and...nothing. No Game Over screen, no punishments, no big talks the next day. Just the same schedule of daily events that usually ignore the events of the previous day.

I want to see this game develop and I want to see it improve. Hence the score of three stars with an extra one thrown in for encouragement.

Honestly I do not understand how this "game" has the reviews that it has. But other peoples opinions are not the same as mine nor are their tastes apparently.

That said. This game looks fantastic. There is absolutely nothing at all wrong with the character renders in this game. No complaints there. However I do wish that there had been as much effort made in actually constructing a real game and a fully functional story as well. I am sure that there is probably some semblance of a story there and I am sure that there may even be some point to the game hidden in this game somewhere as well. I just never managed to find the right series of pointless clicks to make to find any of that stuff during the 16 in game days I played through. I did see the same sets of scenes repeatedly with absolutely no changes made in dialogs. That gets boring very quickly let me tell you. So yeah, where is the story and the point to this mess? Saw some nipples and some panties. Got a night BJ and did some groping. Ok and this goes where exactly? And most importantly when?

Sister blackmails for money. Money only seems to have just one source. Aunt gives it to you. Why no job? Got to wander the city so why not one? Pathetic story writing thats why. There is a school that only seems to have one purpose. To see 2 characters ay different locations at dufferent times there. No dialogs with them at all. Just "see" them there. WTF? Why bother at all then. Oh just so you can unlock a cheesy single photo that isn't in the game at all.

Sorry mister Dev. Your sandbox point and click hell box may look great but it is far from satisfying as a game. You need to do some serious work on making it have a purpose to the clicks at least. And for goodness sake at least add in some variety to the click results. People get bored very quickly with seeing the same scene repeatedly over and over again. Especially when in 16 days of in game play the best result is either giving or recieving oral.

Great start to a game.

Good sandbox mechanics
Nice stories
Great art
Good selection of characters

Would like to see more corruption mechanics, maybe with outfits, exhibitionism, etc.

Nice walkthrough and cheat options.

tldr: hot girls but not worth playing right now. wait 6month at least, has atm barely any content. hope he will remove the "domination" route or he wont waste too much time into that path not a fan of it.

review:
finished the game and unlocked all scenes. game is barely fappable atm, only aunt has bigger h-scenes but nothing really hardcore yet (sleep bj, some oral through panties lots of teasing and masturbation but nothing more really)

the girls carry this game hard, they are all extremely hot. i like their personalities and no character really triggers me.
the mc is a super horny idiot but kinda funny. you never see his face (which i like). i don't like the mc "domination/scare the girls" path / personality at all. it is optional but it is about 30% of the game and it's a huge turn off to know that mc can be a total asshole to a cute and sweet girl like angie and that there are more or less rape scenes for all the LI.

the story is nothing special but at least it doesn't hurt the game, just standard incest story we've seen 100 times. i rather have these types of stories than stories with drama, hope the dev wont add big drama to the game.

i recommend people to play the game on "easy mode", the grind isn't too bad but there is no reason to bother with it, the gameplay isn't fun. you can use cheats and walkthrough but atm it isn't really needed.

game has no music or sound and only very basic 2 fps style animations

pros
girls are god tier sexy. super hot
no drama story
no other guys(no other male npc)

cons
"bad/Blackmail/domination/rape"-path is a huge turn off and could kill this game if the dev focuses on it. id rather have him remove that whole path or stop working on it and add more scenes for the love/horny path
no sound
basic-bad animations
grindy
and biggest problem like i said: "NOT ENOUGH CONTENT"
so take this and all the other reviews with a grain of salt since there isn't much to review yet.

Preliminary review, subject to change in the future:

TL;DR: Great renders, terrible story, terrible sandboxing and tons of redundancy.

I played this without much hope because it's only 0.1. I don't think any reasonable person expects much out of a 0.1 or what is essentially a first release these days.

With that said, I found the amount of content actually quite substantial, even if it's made up entirely of teasing without any meat behind it. The Aunt gets a decent amount of scenes and plenty of variation depending on the choices you make. There's also a few renders and scenes with the MC's immediate family.

However, that only serves to amplify once again the biggest issue with this game and, really, all others like it. It's dragging everything out. Given that the current point of the Aunt's progression (assuming you've maxed all the 'stats') allows you to dry hump her against the kitchen stove, along with her femdomming you into carpet munching her on a sofa... yeah. It's not satisfying.

The sandbox is terrible. There's no real way to review this without saying that it's awful. You have to hunt through messages on your phone at different times of day to progress certain characters, but there's no prompts at all.

Renders are pretty damn good. They're not the sharpest or most detailed, but they're well-posed and lighting is great. The highest point of this game for sure.

Story is there. Kind of.

Overall I found myself pretty disappointed.

I hope this changes going forward. If the content delivers then this may be a game I'd be happy to Patron.