VN - Ren'Py - Friends in Need [Ch.10 v0.70A] [NeonGhosts]

One of the best games here

Your choices really matter!

You may play like a complete asshole or like a bright knight
Or even something in between.

It's not a harem

Don't forget to install patch or directry update patch file with `true` - it unblocks additional choices

Friends in Need has an unusual gimmick: it allows one to choose whether to play the MC as a good guy or a bad one (or somewhere in between) individually with each LI. While this seems appealing, in practice there are a couple of problems. One is inherent in the concept: it requires multiple separate paths for each LI and each scene. As there are already several love interests—with more seemingly in the offing—the combinatorial explosion of scenes required is dragging the story to a standstill. If you like to play through every possible route with every character, this may not bother you: there will still be lots of content. If, on the other hand, you prefer to just play through the story once, this problem will become very apparent. In the last update, my path didn’t even feature a sex scene.

The second problem I have with it is that the dev’s portrayal of the range between good and evil is...strange. On the good side we have a MC that is the white-knight sort, riding to the rescue of damsel’s in distress, vainly hoping that somehow this will make their panties drop...well, that actually works in-game, anyway.

The evil MC is a crazed psychotic rapist, who would quickly land in prison (or a mental ward) in the real world. Mad dogs aren’t evil, in my book: they are just broken. While I would be quite interested in playing a dark character who was in control of themselves—a Machiavellian sort—I can’t get into playing a lunatic.

The intermediate paths between white-knight and lunatic seem poorly differentiated, and are difficult to navigate without referring to a walk-through constantly. I think this could have been done a lot better if the dev had put more thought into developing a realistic light-to-dark scale, and telegraphed the choices so the players could tell which ones would keep them on their desired level of gray.

I suspect that the first problem—the combinatorial explosion—will keep Friends in Need from ever reaching a satisfactory conclusion, but it is an interesting experiment, and probably worth a look.

Solid writing for an underpinning linear plot with significant variation depending on your interactions with each character, with a good range of characters - these look and feel like different people.

The characters and their reactions are consistently believable in the context of the story (and on multiple play throughs), and your choices have consequences (and the writing hints at significant future escalation of some of those consequences), which I like.

This is an excellent game - easily one of the best I've played here, and in a couple of decades of playing VNs and AIF - and I'm excited to see where it goes next.

>>>No animations at all<<<
Nothing REALLY impressive about the story
Mostly daily basic boring shit
Most of the good reviews are based on the patch where you can do some extreme suff (see the tags), and because of the paths you can choose (good, asshole, and the patch unlock the "rape route")

But, what is the point of having moral choices, if all of 'em are boring?
You can see the first character at the start of the game as an example:
You can be kind
You can humiliate her
You can assault her (patch)

You feel no impact in any of your choices, because things happens too fast, you have zero connection with her, and you have no options to tell her to fuck off.

meh

It's rare to find a game where the writing is the standout feature.

It stands out in the details: characters have distinct voices, subtle changes in the narration or dialogue greatly alter the meaning and feel of different scenes, there's a lot of text, but none of it feels like a waste of time.

It's also exceptional in its broader storytelling: characters respond to situations in surprisingly believable ways, making different choices not only unlocks different lewd scenes, but significantly alters the main character's arc and the emotional tenor of the entire game.

And that arc is continuously responsive to player choice because the writing is strong enough to change the story through its words rather than through all new scenes. Between the two extremes of virtuous nice guy and violent psychopath are many gradations that allow the player to effectively construct a coherent psychology for the mc.

I do distinguish between storytelling and plotting. There is not a lot of plot in this game. it is in all respects character driven, and your choices affect characters, not the overarching story. But again, and most importantly, the writing is so good that the possibility space feels huge (with the taboo patch). You can create a sweet comedy, a tragic romance, a horrific thriller, and more--and it all has real emotional heft.

Finally, for those who are interested in non-consent, humiliation and violence, this game does it better than any other that I've played. And that is because it takes it seriously. There are certainly games with more over-the-top scenarios, but none of them are able to imagine the psychological effects on both perpetrator and victim in any of those scenarios. Here, the believable psychology of the characters serves to elevate the intensity of the kink and rape scenes, making them both more erotic and less exploitative.

I can only think of one other writer here who is writing at this level. This is a real gem and I can't believe it took me this long to find it. I hope to contribute to the author's Patreon for many years to come.

Premise of the game is the MC is an older dude lucks into big bucks because of crypto, starts up a charity and alot of decisions can be made in the game around being a helpful nice rich guy or bit of an asshole creep to women down on their financial luck. Other than that, nothing much to the story.

The main feature of the game is you can patch it and make extra sadistic, rape choices in the game. It also unlocks incest options as the MC seems strangely obsessed with his sister.

The MC is mostly a blank slate, whose thoughts are influenced by the decisions made in the game. So players get to decide what's driving the motives of the MC.

What's also good is the choices do have an effect on the relationships and scenes that unlock in the game. There's effort put into variations in the conversations, even unlocking topics or outcomes based on player decisions.

For example, the nice vanilla routes have characters exposing their real thoughts and secrets, where the asshole route would have it uncovered through the MC using his money to find out secrets to blackmail characters.

I experimented and you can be rapey with some love interests but then have a change in personality and the writing actually covers those situations, which I thought was interesting that it covered that permutation of choices.

Ultimately, the vanilla choice is the better route and I don't think the story really puts enough characterisation into the MC as to why they'd do the patch rape choices.

There's no animation and the game also lacks music or sfx. The renders and the design of the love interests are ok. No gallery or anything either.

3.5 stars

Pros

Writing:
This games writing is excellent.

Every character has unique personalities, with unique quirks and their own way of speaking. How one writer can write so many distinct personalities is beyond me.

This game has managed to make me care for every single character regardless of whether I find them attractive. The writing is simply equal to any other great and greater than almost all of it's peers.

Writing part 2, the MC:
Even the MC has great writing. He gets upset with LI's when it's natural to do so. How to react further is up to the player, but he reacts in a normal way. He doesn't suck up at all times afraid to lose goodie points. He's charming, nerdy, dorky. His dialogue tells you so, not someone calling him those things.

Choices:
The choices are really well implemented, the fact you can treat one character one way, and another character a different way without being railroaded into your character acting the same way in every situation is a breath of fresh air.

Cons
The writing being so good kind of carries the game though. That's good as being an excellent writer is a great starting point. However, there are some elements that definetly could be improved.

Lack of audio:
For one the game has absolutely no music or sfx.

Good music and sfx usage in games are very underrated. It can not be understated how big of a difference it can make for a game. It doesn't have to be a big chunk of the development time, but decent sfx and music can elevate a good game to a great game. Some well chosen music could elevate some of these moments to new heights.

Also moaning sfx during sex-scenes to me elevates them a million times over. But that's subjective I guess.

Naming savefiles:
Another small fix that would be incredibly helpful is the ability to name the save files. This game branches a lot, which is amazing. But that makes me desire this feature.

Visuals/Graphics:
Finally, the last con is as mentioned by a few the visual quality. This to me is less of a con than audio, as it takes longer to master great renders and animations. Which means I feel more inclined to lower my expectations.

The graphics are serviceable. Thanks to the great writing they can be both spicy and appealing. However, it's still a decent step away from the best out there. The animations are very short, and there aren't that many of them. However, the visuals seem to be getting better with time. I root for the developer to improve.

Other positives on the visuals, I really like a lot of the character designs, the variety and some renders are worth admiring.

Final Thoughts

Best wishes for the game:
My hope for the game is that audio gets implemented and save file naming and animations and renders keep improving over time. And of course that the game gets finished. With audio in a future update I will bump rating to 5 stars.

Best wishes for the developer:
My hope for the developer is that their next game uses the skills they have aquired, making this one to make an even better game than this one. They have the potential to be one of the best devs out there.

TLDR
Amazing character writing, with improving graphics weighs up for lack of audio and makes the game a reading experience (with plenty of meaningful choices) truly worth experiencing.

Marvelous VN! I'm enjoying it a bunch!

The writing is simple but witty. You're not just being good or evil, the writing displays the reasons to be one way or another, shows you the possibilities of taking either path.

The writting carries you well. If you wanna make a good decision, it makes you doubt.. same when having to make bad ones. Good, evil, neutral path all are worth trying.

So it's easy to connect with the MC. You're building your character and thinking about your actions, having second thoughts and pondering yourself, be for good or bad. Not just searching for different scenes.

And of course, the girls react different according to your past behaviors.

The way you meet new characters is perfect too. Feels natural and harmonious. Since you have free time and lots of money to explore new projects to get into.

Honestly, I was never bored reading this. It has a good pacing and the dots are well joined when progressing the story.

Yeah, sometimes the setup is very convenient.. and it looks like you're the only male that can be a good guy in a city full of trashy guys. The visuals aren't good at the beggining and some music/ BGM could be nice too.

But the game exudes passion.. and I'm interesed in all the girls. I love the little details they may have, be in their looks or way of talking. And I'm truly worried about their problems and eager to fall more for these ladies.

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ Uncomplainingly ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

I didn't really liked it at the beginning, partly 'cause i can't really relate to MC being "dad age" man. I'm 26 myself so i'm not quite there yet, and i was really close to deleting and moving on but decided to give it more time. Glad that i did, 'cause this is an adult novel in all senses. From porn to writing, it's not much different than watching a good TV show.

You shape MC's personality, you can be a creepy fuck, a rapist, a good guy or neither. I like to be neither, not really into rapist creepy fuck attitude, but i can be an asshole sometimes if i think someone deserves it. I'm glad to help out when i think i can without sacrificing my own well-being, and you can do that in this novel. MC's a rich dude, which opens up a lot of possibilities, either to help or abuse someone. I took a look at some of the darker sides of this novel, and oh boy it's really fucked up, if you're into that kind of shit you'll like it. As for the romance stuff i'm pretty sure you can do that too, there is an option to date a girl, so far i've only seen that you can date one but maybe there's more.

Renders aren't the strong side of this novel, but the story delivers. There are also only static renders, no animations. I've only searched for AVNs with "animated" tag, don't know how this one got into my bookmarks, and i have to say that this one changed my mind. I'll be searching for AVNs with no "animated" tag from now on. Definitely recommend it.

What a suprise game this is, for the first time i cant really think of anything bad about the game.

It has a proper relatable MC who is actually smart(praise the lord) that you the player really controls, everything from his actions to his thoughts you can change depending on the choices you make and not only that but because of the players actions it changes the way the women react to you(as much as you could possibly expect from a VN).

The story is simple but provides plenty to keep you interested on top of simply making the girls available to you.

There is a great selection of women who all feel like unique characters with there own personalities and they react differently to the MC depending on your choices, the body types are again all unique and have somthing for just about anyone.

Choices are the best part, there is such a huge split in choice to how the MC treats the women, many games have good and bad choices but the tone of the game always leans heavily one way or the other i.e. the creator wants you to play it as a good person but added bad choices as an after thought, happily there was no sense of that here and even better you can treat one woman really good and another really bad(if you want to) without being forced to pick a side.

The sex scens are well done, not too long that they got boring but still a good length, they could use a few better camera positions but thats just my taste, there are the start of several fetishes(treating a woman like a cow i.e. petplay, mild BDSM, etc) that are all optional and personally i hope will be expanded on in the future.

Story 4/5 Just right for the game
Art 4/5 Very good
Sex 5/5 Often and well done
Fetishes 4/5 Lots for the size of game
Choices 5/5 Practically perfect
Characters 5/5 Lots of realistic characters

Excellent gameplay, interesting characters, and good variety of backstories and characterization of the love interests. Eagerly waiting for the stories of the characters to be further flashed out in future updates. Been really promising so far.

one of the few with true nc content that is a proper VN as well. very glad i found this and hope to see more of it in the near future. story is fine, scenes are great... looks like dev is pretty active in working on it as well which is a huge boon compared to many other devs/games

This game ticks a lot of boxes for fantasies you may have.

I enjoyed the story as it was pretty intricate. I found myself replaying some of the parts to see if there was a different outcome, in many cases there was.
I think though that the developer might have a hard time moving the releases forward because of the sheer number of branching pathways this might make through the story, but I'll tell ya, I'm here for it.

The animations for the scenes could perhaps use a little polish but they aren't bad, ore a minor annoyance or critique, but the inclusion of kinks, the ability to be good or bad, the story for the girls is all pretty good story development I feel. I am curious to see where a lot of the relationships go and even though I have played through the game (as of version 0.4) there is enough here I could easily replay the whole thing perhaps a couple of times and still have new content for each girl! Replay-ability is a 10/10 on this one, and I really appreciate that.
The actions the characters take in response to your choices feels pretty real which is a big plus, too often characters get developed in a story and it's really poor writing so you get detracted, but not here!

If you are pretty kinky and not some vanilla looking for a romance I feel like this game will be great for you. If you aren't kinky and are looking for a romance... well I am fairly sure it has that too, I just didn't play that way, so have at it, maybe tell me about it in your own review.

Try the game though, it's good. I look forward to the updates, I wish I saw them more frequent, but to the dev, if you are reading this, you can do it, I know it can be a slosh to get through sometimes, but you are doing wonderful, keep it up! You got this.

This is excellent! I've played both the "nice" and "cruel" (patched) paths for each character (although there's a few in-between ones I've not tried yet) and I'm really impressed by how well thought out they all are. For so many characters and so many paths for each the game is very good at adapting scenes to reflect your current relationship both with that character and other characters.

Both the highs of being nice and the lows of being cruel (basically evil at times) are brought out well and all the renders and models look good.

The only downside in its current state is the number of characters meaning most only get 1/2 proper scenes at this stage (with varying levels of content depending on the relationship path you go down). It seems like there's at least four still to be introduced as proper characters too so that's now going to ease up anytime soon. But again, what's there for each character right now is great even if limited and I'm excited to see the stories develop.

One of the best games I've ever played, without a doubt. The female characters are quite attractive, but what especially appeals to me is that Mc can treat the girls like master-slaves. Forcing them to have sex to the point where they cannot resist. This is crazy. 5 stars for this game, hopefully there will be more interesting content for us to look forward to.

One of the more interesting games to follow, it does stand out, but it's not quite there yet.

The story is fresh and its pretty immersive, I think the MC does a great job of being a fleshed out character in his own right and not just a self-insert.

Graphics leave some to be desired, but they have been improving so nothing really to complain.

The love interests are MOSTLY great. Mostly. Lots of people hate on one of them, but I personally only found two interesting and I don't like the path the game took with one of them. While I'd normally chalk it down to subjectivity, I don't think her path does her character justice and I just don't think its that interesting. As of writing this review, I just think a lot of the main interests leave a lot to be desired with the direction they're being taken in.

But the game keeps getting better, so I have a feeling it'll get rounded up and become one of the best ones here.

review for v0.4.
This is best game I have ever played and probably ever will. And this is the only review I will ever write for a VN on this site or any other, because I think I am spoiled by this game, this is too good.

I started playing VN adult games only from July 2023 and have played around 20 games by now, and I have always craved for darker stuff, inclining towards full blown brother-sister incest or forced sex path, and I tried a few games like blackheart etc. but they are too dark for me with their constant murder and torture spree and poor tormented mentally unstable main characters. This game, on other hand, has perfect blend of great characters with eye-pleasing visuals and stunning girls.
Here the main character is your average guy who got rich by fluke, and it is done in a believable way, instead of undeservedly earning infinite inheritance money. there is no waking up after 10 years of coma or losing father/uncle like it is done in every other adult game.
MC uses his money in appropriate manner, the amount is also somewhat believable and in the realms of reality, which is rare. There is no time travel or memory loss shit which is annoying for me. MC interacts with his surrounding girls and develops relations on basis of their background and his own actions.

I have played the darkest path as well as nicest guy path and I like how you can treat each character differently regardless of the chosen path and there are some consequences too for dark choices (poor viola). People often complain about no music or no animations but I think the beauty of this game is in its story, character and plethora of choices available, each with different results and possible future implications, here choices do matter which is a rarity.
Even a few times the dark path is too much like in case of Viola or Ashe (I enjoyed those scenes too) but it still isn't a grim torture porn or something much worse and gruesome. I like this game a lot, I cannot wait for Cassie (sister) to appear, I will go full dark on her. And certain characters are just annoying like gabby and mason, who are a lot popular on this forum, personally I dislike her/him and want nothing with these two creatures, nontheless. I'd like to bang madison, bonnie (ashe's mom) and carolina asap and risa too in next updates and probably go dark on risa and carolina and maybe alex the bodybuilder and romance path with brittany.
If I had $100 or as much money as MC had in this game I'd donate a few thousand bucks for the creator to finish the story quickly. I'd like to have 3 probable endings for this game - MC dies on darkest path or rots in jail alone, MC gets romantic harem with at least 3 girls of his choice and Harems in dungeon with sex slaves. Neonghosts is an amazing story teller and game designer who has as dark of a mind as I'd like to have in adult games, not too much and not too less - just the right amount.
The dark path is too good and the nice guy path is too wholesome and both are rewarding in their respective manners, there are middle paths too which is what makes this game special as it is re-playable any number of times.

Absolutely love this game.
Story - 5/5
Characters - 5/5
Choices - 10/5
Girls (looks/body) - 5/5
animations/music - not required

Decent writing, not that much cringe, and givin the recent rise and fall of crypto seems come somewhat grounded in reality. CGs start off a bit crude but have improved with every update. I am keeping an eye on this one. Looking forward to more.

"So, yeah. You're gay. *guitar riff sounds*"

This game certainly has something. At first I kinda cringed out, but it seems that developer's skills improved drastically over time. And this version is worth checking out with what content it has. And I think it's great.

Why 5/5 then? Well, because... this VN is kinda clever. Your choices matter in context of MC personality and his relationships. You may look at screenshots and set some expectations, and they will be met.

Good one. Hope to see future updates.

Played the Nice route, and found it a lot more wholesome than expected.

Some minor inconsistencies in art and some overly plasticky/empty locations, but overall a great, soothing experience.

I'll come back for the later chapters!