VN - Ren'Py - Friends in Need [S1 v0.95b] [NeonGhosts]

(Version Reviewed: v0.39)

Friends in Need is a wonderful AVN. I enjoy the premise of the game as it's fairly grounded in reality. Our MC is a wealthy man with means to prey on the less fortunate. We can decided how he approaches the task. He can be charming and seduce the women, lewd and bribe the women or rough and force himself upon the women. It's nice that several options are provided and the dialogues and renders even change based on our approach. I feel the renders look good. The LIs are reasonably well fleshed out and several of them are very likable. The game can certainly improve with respect to animations and music, but apart from that I do not have any complaints.

Overall - 9/10. The game keeps improving each update.

One of the GOAT games on this site for me. Nothing else out there really nails the feeling of blackmail/rape/coercion quite like this one. So often games will either lean too hard into the "hardcore" stuff and lose all sense of realism, or be too timid to go there in the first place. This one straddles that line perfectly, and the result is absolutely amazing.

Wow really wow, I really enjoyed this, rarely MC's character is so likable, most of time MCs depicted selfish , immature and childish ,this is remarkable point for story , interactions with characters are designed very well , there is plenty of determining options given to player to shape MC,
this is absolutely brilliant .
Story that doesn't follow familiar routines always refreshing, new characters that are tangible , being sincere helps we engage with story rapidly and care about what happening to characters , this rarely happens but when it does happen is glorious to see.
I love Friends in Need , splendid job really.

This is legit the first well written game that made me feel like a evil bastard and I loved it. Some of the best writing and characterization I have ever seen. THE king of power fantasies on this site.

Really loving where the story is going and the different branching paths. I love playing as the bad guy and the good guy, and when a dev actually has the courage to write a decent bad guy storyline. Keep up the good work.

Review of Version 0.375

Really good game. The story is unique and well written. Not a lot of extraneous exposition, just what is needed to advance the story. Not a lot of typos or grammatical errors.

Art is good, some is excellent and the author is supposedly upgrading the first chapters.

Updates have been slow but anything worthwhile is worth waiting for. The author is active and gives regular comments on Patreon so it is being worked on.

The real strength of the game are the two different routes the player can take. You can be a complete jerk, brutalizing, blackmailing and assaulting your way through the game -or- you can be altruistic and helpful. You can also choose a combination of the two. I have played the altruistic route completely and the content is well done. I have dabbled with the 'evil' route and what I have played is just as good.

There are games with better stories or better writing but altogether, this game is well worth playing.

Holy crap this game is amazing......I rarely find a game that can do rape and humiliation content well, but this game does that amazingly AND still manages to do the love dovey content insanely well. All the girls are cute, many good fetishes and situations. A++ give this a try bros! (For you Rape and humiliation haters out there just don't DL the patch and the game is still amazing!)

The patch is must have if you want rape stuff. And it's done well.
The story is good, girls are great, tons of fetishes. Didn't try good guy route , but humiliation, male domination and rape part is done exceptionally well.
Amazing game overall.

TL;DR : A really well written story with quite a few paths and some really great girls.

A seemingly simple story about a guy who is sort of a blank slate. You can choose his personality type through your actions, ranging from a white knight do-gooder to an absolute scumbag who manipulates and abuses those around him, and it carries believably throughout the current content.

It's really rare that a game with such dark subject matter doesn't fall into edgelord nonsense and though this one toes the line at times, it never crosses it.

The girls each have a unique personality, and have their own wants and desires. They feel different from one another, and the different routes provide a great experience each time. They are all good in their own way and I have a hard time choosing a favorite.

I think this will be one of the few games that I eagerly look forward to updates for.

Terrific start so far with the wide array of options presented to us. especially the choices presented to the player on how to handle different situationn in terms of charm, coercion, corruption and straight up violence.

Art is A+ too and its good that it isnt bogged down with music, animations and such. The author seem to have a good direction to his story and engagement with the community.

As Of Version 0.375

The story is decent. The grammar is pretty good only 10-20 typos/misspellings so far more being present the further into the story you get. There is also A few scenes with dialogue without a character title and sometimes a lack of capitalization of a letter in the middle of a dialog box after a period. The scenes are average and rely on the themes and story. Game also has no sound.

There is a walkthrough available for those that need or want it.

Overall I rate the game a 4/5. The themes are definitely the main reason to play the game and with the taboo patch there are 3 paths for each girl you can embark on, making the game have decent amount of replay value to see how everything plays out. I also hope that in the future there is a gallery for the game so I know I have gotten all the scenes.

This is a review after playing 0.375

Friends in Need is one of the best VN for those interested in male domination and blackmail in my humble opinion. No offense to other creators but male domination games usually suffer from one or more of the following: awful writing (to the point of comical or hard to make sense), too much writing without any purpose and ridiculous story. None of that is true for FiN. The story is simple and doesn’t have the usually silly fantasy or SciFi nonsense, the writing helps the reader connect to the characters, the situations women are placed in is well thought out and the writing is solid.

I usually pick the most “evil” route available in games. Here it is the first game that I didn’t feel the need to do that because the world is believable, the characters are too and most importantly not all characters are the same. For example there is a young girl named Gaby that I couldn’t care less for so there is no need for me to develop any (sexual) relation with her (though her mother is interesting but currently unavailable ) while I greatly enjoy the friend turned full submissive called Nikki (great character btw).

In the first chapters I was worried that the game would be swimming in too many characters but the author seemed to reduce the rate new ones appear and doesn’t feel the need to have all characters develop at the same pace or have the same interactions. That might displease some but I think that is the right call: some characters are main, others secondary and other just appear once or twice. That might change in the future as the game develops but I personally hope it doesn’t.

The game has a “good” or romantic route from what I can take. I didn’t try it so I cannot comment it but from the Gaby interactions (which I wanted nothing to do with because the character doesn’t appeal to me in any way both aesthetically or story wise) I can say that I was not forced in any interaction that the character was forcing himself on her or anything like that. I don’t know if that’s the same with all characters but I don’t remember any “evil” interactions that could not be skipped with her.

TLDR:
pros: solid writing, great domination/blackmail content, well written characters, dark themes written well, believable world and scenes, good amount of content already, (female) characters are not all perfectly looking and don’t all look the same (thought there are no older women for example) which for me is a plus, not all characters develop at same pace, two or even three routes to have sex with characters or even avoid all together, no sound (I always found it useless), very friendly developer.

Cons: Too many characters in the game already (but less than a dozen which for most games of the genre is low), some characters are teen looking aka a bit too young for my taste (but for many will be a major plus I assume).

I have very good feelings about this one, but at the same time a couple huge reservations. The good of it is that there's already around three hours of content despite launching less than a year ago. There aren't any obvious grammatical or spelling errors, and all the writing is quality stuff. All of the women so far are very attractive as well.

Bad part #1: Nicki cannot be avoided, and I loathe that. I personally hate this character archetype (and this sort of person IRL actually) and I want to tell her to fuck off every time. No, I don't want to rape her, I want her to leave forever. But you can't. She's forced into the game at every opportunity. There's a scene where you can choose to get a blowie from her or sex, I chose the first because I don't like her. The rest of the game assumes you fucked her and the dialogue indicates that. Why include a choice at all then?

Bad part #2: Speaking of rape, the choices lack any nuance. It's pretty much just "let her go" or "rape her." I don't want to rape anyone, that's not my kink even in a video game; I also don't want to do nothing and just be a bitch either. This was particularly egregious in the first two chapters and it does seem to be getting better with the latter two, but I really would enjoy a middle option.....you know, instead of raping people. I want to be an asshole, or at least very assertive, but yeah, raping is a bit extreme for me.

Also there's not much sex so far if you don't like Nicki or you aren't into rape. (There might be a ton of rape content for all I know, I didn't pick those options.) Actually only like, one scene. I have super high hopes for more non-rape content at least, since I did enjoy the majority of my three hours.

Friends in Need [v0.375] review

Reviewing the game with the Taboo content patch active.

This game features the most impressive choice system I've ever seen in a lewd game. Play as a white knight or as an unredeemable rapist piece of shit, or anything in-between and watch how people's responses subtly change depending on your past actions. Every conceivable path (and there's a fuckton of them) is competently written and fully fleshed out. The end result is a game with a very high replay value.

Positives:
+ Taboo content done right.
+ Juicy models.
+ Believable, well-written dialogues.
+ Extreme freedom of choice.
+ Very complex game in terms of paths/variables for all the girls and even the MC himself.

Negatives:
- "Animations" are simple pictures in a loop.
- Lacking sound design.
- I didn't like the Main Girl, Nicki, but there's no opt-out. I'm trying to make her fuck off, but no matter how horrible I am to her, she still sticks around like a bad smell! Poor girl must really be desperate...
- The "story" is just a slice-of-life tale about a guy with "Fuck you money". I would have loved to see some real drama that wasn't caused by the MC acting like a piece of shit.

All in all, if you're into the "questionable" tags this game offers, then this is one of the very best games you'll ever play. But even if that's not your thing, you can expect a competently written game with hot scenes regardless.

Strong recommend.

I love this game, this just has the right balance of what im looking for. Sure it does not have much choices in how much being an asshole you can go but it really tried to offer its best. I also loved how you can also get to play the nice guy and to read quality writing . But most importantly I love how Chapter Four: Part One ended, now that just takes the cake because the creator really tried to do character depth which in terms of how theres a lot of AVNs existing this just sets itself apart, tiring endeavor but nevertheless appreciated.

Great game - first one I've decided to support on this site after years of lurking.

The renders in the first chapter aren't so great, and the storyline feels a bit cliche at first, but it gets much better and has some of the hottest scenes on this site. It's all about this realistic fine line of consent and coercion, and if you want to be nice and loving you can do that too. The best part IMO is that the different paths show different personalities of the LIs. So when you go down one path, then try out the other, you realize that part of the reason why the LI behaves the way she does in the second path is actually explained by some dialog in the first path. It's great writing.

Also the jokes are legitimately funny.

5 Stars.

First time I felt that lack of sound wasn't disturbing for a game. Also that the sex scenes were good even without animations.
This goes to show that while animations are nice to have, it's the writing that makes the characters come to life. Too many devs think it's the other way around which ends up wasting development time and still ends up not being able to mask their inability to write convincing scenes/characters.
Then again ... they probably do that or just resort to pandering to certain groups because they don't have the writing chops this dev has. (You can always tell someone is a hack or has run out of ideas when they start pandering)

This is really good stuff right here. Like dayum this some good shit

Usually visual novels get wordy and filled with exposition and stupid pointless crap but here? Nope. Its tight, no skipping needed. The story while not anything crazy is passable. You get rich and start giving money to people. Usually ladies in trouble. Then you can romance them, OR you can sex them without romance if you know what i mean. BRILLIANT. Patched, this game is one of the best if not the best EVIL playthough visual novels around, progression from reluctance to acceptance in a great way.

And the dialogue is good as well, the characters are great. Especially Nicki, whom you can treat terribly if you so wish (ofc you do). But if you do treat her terribly the relationship still works in a messed up abusive way but still. It just works.

But yes, incredible stuff here a visual novel with actually passable dialogue and consistent characters that are not just "the asian chick" the "bimbo" but no they actually act like characters not just archetypes. A must play game for sure, especially if you like games with EVIL paths.

TW: First things first, there's some creepy shit in this game. Aside from allowing players to beat and/or rape women, you have the ability to change the age of women who look very young. I'm aware there's an argument here that it's entirely on the player whether a woman is raped or given an age below the age of consent, but I feel it's important to state this as this may be a trigger (or at least discomforting) to some.

Graphics: The art is a bit crude and freakishly posed at times.--Sometimes people have enormous mouths like Aerosmith or pose their limbs like they're in QWOP. The backgrounds are also barren at times. It's mostly in the earlier chapters, but the grocery store scenes were like watching a group of giants standing atop someone's dollhouse, with the director trying to use camera tricks to make it look like they were people inside of a grocery store.

Plot: My real beef with Friend in Need is that so much of the story content feels skeletal. Every player choice is some variation of: "I spent a day with this woman; did I woo her, rape her, or just talk to her?" Once you finish the playing out the effects of your choice, you're immediately time-jumped to your meeting with the next harem member, where you make the choice again. I wish the transitions between scenes felt more natural to establish a better flow in story.

The main character is also a walking wish fulfillment cliche all too common on this site, "Crypto made me into a playboy, so now I just take pictures of hot chicks to pass the time." It's hard to feel connected to either the plot or the character. I'd like to see one or more goals the story's pointing me towards. A conflict to overcome would be the most obvious example, but giving the main character ANY genuine passion when we're getting to know him would strengthen my connection to this story.

Eroticism: I think the undeniable strength of Friends in Need is its sexual storytelling. The author excels at building anticipation for some soft domination when you go for a consensual sex route, or just some good old fashioned love making. I'm curious to see where those routes go.

Overall, it's got issues that would stop me from recommending it to anyone looking for a good porn story in its current state, but there are some great strengths here.

I usually dont write reviews but felt like this one deserved 5 stars and a recommendation. If you like story and character driven games do yourself a favor and give this one a try.
The writing makes up for what is lacking in renders and animations.