VN - Ren'Py - Element-174 [v0.24] [Knotty Games]

Far better than some of the reviews here might suggest. I really enjoyed the meta description of game choices as part of the narrative. Clever use of sci fi tropes, with just enough weirdness outside of the main storyline to keep things interesting.

Branching storylines and choices make for a game with replayability, which is always a positive. Even with how limited the game currently is in content, it still feels like I could play it a few more times just to explore the other possibilities.

Character renders are solid, though so far only a couple of the models have a unique look to them. Many could have been pulled from just about any other AVN using daz in the past year. Still, it's clear the dev has put time and effort into creating unique situations with those models.

My one complaint is that one of the game's "mysteries" is too easily solved, and the story telegraphs where it might be headed. But I do like that they lay out a path to figuring things out before the MC does, instead of just blindsiding you with it later.

Overall, I do recommend it. Really strong start, looking forward to more.

I gonna quick review it with about 2 hours of gameplay, Day 8 finished.

PROS:

I think that characters are ok so far and theres potential for interesting character arcs.
That bit of mistery is interesting and the main plot is also interesting.

CONS:
Having different characters is a double edged blade, it gives the game potential, but the writer may just collapse and be smashed by his ambition or dont have time at all to write enough before the game gets cancelled.

So far Day 8 hasnt clarified anything major about anyone, you barely know Zoey and she is a main character. This is a problem that only time can fix.

Another bad aspect of the game is the thinking:actual conversation ratio. I think is like 7:1 which makes sense. Most of the information you are receiving is thoughts, so you still read a lot of text but you get to know shit about everyone else.
And then you get a piece of information and the MC (the game, i mean the writer) doesnt give it immportance and/or forgets about it.

Another con is that I saw 3 sex related scenes. Theres a whole set which is the camgirl stuff and doesnt have enough renders so most of the time doesnt show what text is describing.

The other 2 had the MC BIG COCK as main protagonist, and in full display and veneration. Those 2 scenes suffered from the same issue described before, and the issue of thoughts:conversation ratio also.

All this issues at the game core make the payoff, if theres any, fade in comparison.

At the start its another boring choose your own way school story which dosent work(several choices are forgoten later on like meeting the assistant dean), as for the "choices" to change who you are the story is clearly that of a good guy so even when you choose the bad options they are just temporary you cant really change who MC is or even his attitude.

Once you realise the "choices" wont really matter if the story dosent want it to the game really becomes just about the main story which is very weak(spoilers ahead)


Art is ok at best as are the sex scenes.

Thoroughly enjoyed playing this game.

The game is has pretty believable characters and an interesting plot. There are a lot of choices that actually impact how the game is played. That is so freaking cool!

Also this game's renders are good. The developer has put some work into making his scenes.

The game is very short at the time of my review. But it is expected as a good product takes time to make. So I guess I'll be waiting for a few more months before I could play the whole thing. I'm eager to see how the dev manages to grow this game.

10/10 - Extremely fun.

A lot to love here.
Some ambition and effort put on the story, not the classic "fuck everything that move".
Different and likeable characters with good narrative arc.
Different paths and a lot of replayability already.
Give it a try.

This in a refreshingly interesting story, with an actual plot and mysteries. Not a lot of action yet, but the tension from all the possibilities is good enough.

There are a lot of choices that seem to be crucial and it's explained in the quote of Tolstoy. I like that there's fundamental idea behind these choices. On top of that some easter eggs from the creator are fun.
The renders are nice, girls are all different so there's someone for everyone.
Looking forvard to new chapters.

i discovered this game just 2 months ago when quarantine started and i played at least 16 times to get the 16 routes. yeah it's a well-crafted story so i didn't feel monotonous. i even discovered some surprise interactions when i played without the walkthrough. it's a great branching VN and GGGB is the only one (for me) that tops this level of enjoyable replayability. i wish more people would play this instead of the dime a dozen 3D daz model 2-branch harem stories (lol).

The story begins cliche, I'm not saying it's bad at all, what's wrong? the faces of most hahaha are super rare, I think the best are zoey, rachel and the girl with glasses, the breasts are very well done, it hurts that the H scenes is only one frame, at least two would not do wrong to simulate movement
then the story is a huge smoke hahaha, I do not know, at the beginning he gave me good trails but then I was left with a "meh"

I've only just finished playing episode 1 but felt the need to come rate it. It's... different.

Renders are fine. Standard but varied. The writing around the interactions is good and the cast is copious. But...there's an argument to be made that the plot itself is juuuust on the wrong side of weird. The story is thin on the ground. Well... that's wrong. There's definitely a story there but it feels like it is drip fed to the player. Like the writer knows what's going on (naturally) but is being intentionally slow in feeding it to the player. Which can be a good thing as it draws the player in but as I said earlier, with it being on the wrong side of weird then it tends to leave the player more confused than engaged.

It's a slow burner so no real sex scenes in the playthrough I done for episode 1. Which isn't an issue but I wonder if throwing in some scenes would have perhaps made the player feel like they're accomplishing something. Episode 1 is like 7 days of content and I spoke to quite a few women but in retrospect I wonder if I'd rather have spoken to less women but more often. Especially when you're like 5 days in and you get randomly introduced to yet another character.

To give an idea of the complexity, have a look at the walkthrough, it's filled with comments about which decisions give which girl relationship points. But your decisions doesn't just give the character you're speaking to points, it seems to also give points to other women seemingly unrelated to your discussions. It really is the first game like this where I've seen a flow diagram in the walkthrough. And one you'd actually need to work out what decisions go where.

A+ for the level of thinking being put into the detail, but wow.

The story is really good, i love scifi and this is a great scifi story so far, the two issus are lack of animation and not much sex and the other issue is so many characters and no harem, it is a good thing that you get many characters to pick from but no harem and sometimes if you like two characters you have to pick one over the other.

Story. 10/10
Sex. 7/10 not much yet, no animation and no anal.
Characters. 9.5/10
Renders. 9/10

An entertaining game if a bit short because of the number of characters and events that depend on your choice throughout your playthrough but the replayability of which is very high. The downside is you have to replay and know beforehand the choices that will lead you to the specific events and characters you want. The writing and the dialogue are good but the main story is not as interesting as the interactions with the characters and the visuals are pleasing with some minor flaws but a wide number of distinct and interesting characters.

Overall a fun and interesting game with minor flaws that is designed for replayability.

This is based on version .16

So, it does seem like a low score and it kind of is. The story is pretty decent so far, it is interesting enough but with SO many characters it gets kind of convoluted at some points. There are a lot of different routes and girls to pick from, but so far it feels like if you are not on the main girls path you kind of are forced back onto it anyways.

The story is almost to the halfway point (Day 10 is released, Day 14 is halfway) and so far each girl has 2 scenes total, and ZERO actual sex scenes yet. A few HJ a few BJ and thats about it. For me, this game is not worth trying again until a lot more content is released, and from the schedule (5 weeks for 1 day) we are over a year out from being finished. Maybe when all is said and done it will be worth a playthrough, but for right now I would say give it a pass until more content is in it.

*Disclaimer* So right off the bat it loses 1 star for the lack of any animations. Which barring the extremely rare gem that manages to blow every other aspect so far out of the park to make up for it (this isn't one of those games), I tend to view as mandatory in any legit "5 star game".

Beyond that I found my fill v15 playthrough to have the makings of a solid yet short of spectacular work in progress game (not really much fap worthy sexy time in it yet). For starters the english was good, so that is always a plus. I like that it has a wide variety of girls to chose from, and the branching path aspect that split them up to better present a scenario where your choices matter in relationship to the pick-who-you-like "chase". Granted there was really only 3 total girls that caught my eye, but that of course is always extremely subjective.

As for cons, relationship building seems kinda rushed. In a few instances you basically go from a scene one "Hi my name is XXX" to a latter branced into scene two where you are telling them how deeply you care about them. I'm also on the fence about the whole sci-fi story aspect when in all reality....you probably could of just continued on with the school theme cookie cutter base mold at the point it's thrown into the mix and still come out the other side with a better one of those games in the end. We'll see how that ends up progressing though I guess.

Overall, it is worth a play now if fully expecting to get at least one good fap out of it isn't mandatory. For those where it is, I'd wait an update or 2.

Easy 5 stars for me. Underappreciated gem already with loads of potential.

-Complex branching paths. So many different ways things can play out.
-All the love interests are appealing in either looks, personality, or both. I have my favorites, but they all have reasons to want to follow their path.
-As of the latest updates we really seem to be getting to the meat of the sci-fi plot and I'm genuinely interested to see where it all goes.
-I really like the way the developer interacts with the community so far. There has been some toxicity about a certain scene (before and after the developer decided to change it) and the developer has been very reasonable in responding to it.

The most complex game you can find here. Every choice matters and every choice leads us to another part of the fantastic story - that I won't spoil to new players.

I was sceptical after the end of Episode 1 - cause I thought our choices were meaningless, but after playing the beginning of Episode 2, I have no such worries.

Although I guessed some parts of the main plot, there are many things I'm still waiting to see how they'll unravel.

And girls - there are plenty of them. Replaying value is immense. my only concern is: there are some girls I found not exactly attractive (like that stoner girl or dean's assistant) but if I can have a happy ending with Zoey, I don't care about anything else.

Truly magnificent game.

- Graphic wise its good, not great but good.
- Plot is there, its interesting for first two playtroughts.. after that it begins to be a chore and without a good walktrough its a pain in the ass to repeat same conversations to see those little differences which might occure in the future and not immidietly.
- choices matter.. really matter which is why we need a system which would show paths we already cleared or one which would let as reload after several chocies that we would choose from sort of questionairy or something like that.
Flag system or something which would identify which choice goes on which route. Etc would be nice at least. If there are going to be many more characters.. then I can only see this game as an Enigma riddle. Which in simple terms is simply hard to crack

It is great for those that love to have choices matter. A nice slow buildup for a better payoff, and plenty of paths for replay ability. Constant updates also to keep it going, this is going to be a hit for many. If you prefer to have less choices this one might frustrate you though.

Seems very good this far.

Lots of choices, an actual story that you don't actually want to just skip through.. It's nice.
I really like the branching paths and the dialog options that let us customise the personality of our character in a way.

Hope it continues this way, best of luck!

I personally am a massive fan of this game, and I can't wait to see where it goes.

PROS:
I like all of the character models, and their prospective attitudes towards both the MC and other characters
The visuals look like, and the story is somewhat original
There is actually story being formed here, and not just the same story where the MC has sex with all of the characters immediately
The English is spot on
I really enjoy the long update, it makes it worthwhile to download each version and to not wait a while for the next to be released
CONS:
There are wayyyyy too many branching paths for characters in my opinion... it really makes it hard to keep track of which character path you are on (it would be nice to add the option of titling your saves)
No romance as of yet, but as stated before this necessarily a bad thing, it'd just be nice to see the Ren'Py engine at work
CONCLUSION
I am really looking forward to more updates for this game! If the developer sticks to what he said about developing new updates every month, I think we might have a true gem on our hands.

let's start with the
Pros
good story so far
good renders
well written
good looking character
Cons
too many choices -16 path- to choose from
the update is scheduled every two weeks which can get worried about the quality and the length that they could have
Verdict
well as I said the game is good so far ...with a lot of potential in it .. the game has a lot of tags in it....(check his patreon page...)Tentacles....curious to see how this gonna turns out...
Overall the game is enjoyable and I highly recommended to check it out
but since it's only its beginning i'll give it 4/5 hope it stays this way or it got even better in the future