Ren'Py - Golden Mean [v0.6] [DrMolly]

The game looks pretty and the story is engaging.... but it suffers from that issue most sandbox games suffer from where it becomes a generic clicking simulator to get where you want to go.

This isn't simply a hurr durr sandbox bad rant, they can be good when the sandbox itself is actually used to enrich the experience but part of me feels that it's holding this game back.

At the point of the game I'm at I have 3 characters I can interact with, 2 of which require me to buy something to continue their path. I need to spend 200 to go to a sauna and 250 to buy a swimsuit.... I have like 90 dollars and I can increase that by 15 a day by working. Now, I'm told there's an option to get more money by working somewhere else which means I can get double that a day but that's still 10 odd days of getting up, doing a random job, going to bed. I mean no offence to the developer but I kinda do that in real life, I don't need to do it here. And what's worse is all the girls have their affection maxed out so there's literally nothing else to do during the day until I get that money, there's no stats to increase or the like. So just like real life, everything costs money and you have very little of it.

So really it's a sandbox game which suffers from sandbox issues. The dev has obviously tried to get round this issue by actually posting a schedule of where the characters will be at each time but at the same time it's still a case of a game with a day of 18 hours and you need someone to be at a specific hour in order to progress. It's.... tiring. The story is interesting, it's well written but it's hamstrung by chronic pacing issues caused by the nature of the game. I also see that there's a game mechanic where you can buy characters clothes but given I'm trying to save up money to actually progress the plot, I don't have time to waste money on cosmetics, until it becomes plot critical.

One of the best master piece i ever played.
Demons, supernatural, mommy milf, gingers, even a sister with anal fetish, its a dream? cant wait to play the full version.
It will be one of my top 3 best games

The latest update took this game to a whole new level, its just crazy how good this game is, From the get go the visuals are a chef's kiss and the narration and story builds slowly and steadily without being boring, and as i mentioned already the renders are just amazing, def jackerman kinda quality, and release schedule aslo like em, lol!

If you like Dreams of Desire, Midnight Paradise, ICSTOR and games like that, this one hits the spot just right.

It is almost too familiar but slightly different.

Its a renpy sandbox type game, it invoves grinding but just the right amount.

The creator got all the mainstream fetishes right, the story, the characters, the renders and animations are of the highest quality out there. Game had no bugs.


Highly recommended and really hope it gets the attention it deserves!

The sexy Milf employee at the bakery is the star of the show, haha. The repetitive tasks at first are a bit long and require some patience, but once you enable all the fetish options, the story unfolds incredibly interestingly, and the content is both creative and logical.

I'm really impressed and had a blast playing. Raising a cow and being a devout mother are right up my alley. I'm looking forward to new updates and costumes!!! My utmost respect!

BTW, there are built-in cheats for stamina and money. You can restore stamina and increase money by simply clicking on the icons. I didn't realize this until the middle or end of the game

Review of [v0.6]

A typical sandbox game with a map where you live with your two sisters, your mother, and your father, and you can face your darkest perversions. There's a very religious part, with Demons and Succubs, and also a Dotty or whatever her name is with big tits. If you're not a fan of that stuff, this isn't the game for you.
Oh, and there's also NTR/GUCKING.

I found the game interesting at first, but it gets boring after a while. It's very difficult to discover all the paths, and if you choose one and reach the end, you have to start over to see another scene.

The system is quite annoying, even with the cheats. The game is a couple of years old, and for me, there's very little content and development. For example, the clothing issue is ridiculous; there are barely any items to wear or buy... just like the pills and condoms, and so on.

THERE IS NO SEX WITH YOUR SISTERS OR MOTHER.

THE ONLY ONE YOU HAVE IS THAT FAT DOTTY, who, in my opinion, is totally unnecessary in the game, but I guess it's a fetish of the well-paying PATREONS...

Otherwise, the game has very good renderings, excellent animations, decent music, and a decent story.

PROS

• Excellent Renders
• Decent Animations with good movement and sound
• OK STORY
• NTR/NTS GUCK
• OK MUSIC

CONS

• Sandbox Game sometimes annoyng
• I don't like or care about the dairy Dotty part.
• The sandbox system is sometimes annoying and drives you crazy trying to find scenes...
• There could be a decent Gallery on the menu and not have to go to the devil...

RATING :

Content: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Sound: ⭐⭐⭐
Renders: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Characters: ⭐⭐⭐
Animations: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Final conclusion: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Second star is for the nice animations and graphics.

this game reminds me why I hate sandbox games. In this case you have to do the same thing 5-10 times on different days to get to the next development step. So you can click for hours with little progress. I gave up after about 1/2 Year game-days.

story-wise I think dev has not thought through the demon stuff. 99% of the story is independent of being a demon.

Reviewed Version 0.6

This game has one mayor flaw, and that’s the soul crushing game-play. Otherwise it’s a very good, mostly M/S and B/S themed game with extremely well done scenes and animations, most of which you’ll never get to see.

And that’s because the game-play relies on too many factors to advance the story. You will have to grind money, stamina, suspicion and mana as well as every character’s affection, corruption and submissiveness. Increasing submission usually reduces affection, but both need to be high to unlock certain scenes. This kind of game-play is akin to a Tantalus torture.

Furthermore many scenes require you to repeat them a certain amount of times, irrespective of the other variables. Since you don’t know how many repetitions further progress, you’ll simply keep repeating them, but if just one stat requirement isn’t met, you’d be doing so till the end of time.

And if that’d didn’t break you, then the game requires you to complete certain tasks at certain weekdays and certain day times. If you miss them, then have fun grinding till next week.


Other minor gripes are:

Later in the game you’ll get to see a female “Orgasmometer”. It’s very confusing and likely broken, so props to the dev for keeping this one realistic.

Another thing is the sometimes cumbersome UI, like having to click a door in the middle of the screen, only to get a notice that it’s locked. Then you can’t just click anywhere to proceed, but have to click “Back” at the left hand side, and then back again to the navigational bar at the lower middle of the screen.

The soundtrack is fine and mostly not context sensitive. Most if it is fun elevator music, but there is one ominous, darker track that just plays randomly. It made me think a demon might jump me at the next corner, but no… it’s just random.


Beyond than that the game is actually very, VERY good:

-) The renderings are fabulous (I think they are legendary Redoxa’s work.).
-) The models are very hot, if you like them busty.
-) The facial expressions are well done.
-) The animations are excellent: fluent and everything wobbles just as it should.
-) The writing is good enough. The story is almost logical at times, and the dialogues feels rather authentic and believable.
-) Although the characters seem somewhat inconsistent in their attitudes, e.g. the highly religious mother turned into an incestuous slut in a blink of an eye... but at that point you’ll be grateful for any story progression at all.
-) The UI is very pleasant and has a polished look to it. Only the “Closed Door”-problem tried my patience after it’s 1000th iteration.

But due to the horrible game-play I stopped playing the game after 12h, even though there were still plenty of unseen, very hot scenes left.

Long story short:
Currently you’ll have to be a very patient (or horny) person who relishes tedious and repetitive tasks to enjoy this game. Otherwise you could just use UnRen to get to all the content, albeit without the story and dialogue.

If the dev made this into a VN with just one or two variables, and no mandatory repetitions, then this would be one of the hottest games out there IMHO.

In its current state, alas, it’s more like an unobtainable treasure guarded by the fierce Cerberus of poor game-play.

Good renders. Paths are well done and offer you to be good or bad, swing or keep everything for yourself. Several sex senes and fetishes, all depending on your choices and on your testes (everything isdoable or avoidable selecting or deselecting everything on fetish settings). This would be a great game if... if it wasn't damn GRINDY. Every single sex act must be done 5, 10, 20 times to progress. Things are getting boring if you want to play different paths. It takes hours just to see all the time the same things. This is unacceptable. This game is too high rated imho.

I want to love this game. The central plot begins with a guy inheriting supernatural aid to take on a controlling theocracy, which I think is a fucking cool start to a game. The graphics are overall solid. There are strong themes of incest, corruption, D/S, impregnation, and other kinks I enjoy, and the author has shown they know how to write a spicy scene. However, the pacing in this game is a mess.

As others have said, Golden Mean has UX antipatterns in that it A) requires users to repeat specific scenes to unlock new content, but it also B) does this without telling you which scene(s) needs to be repeated or giving you in-world cues in these scenes, such as having incremental changes to the scene each time you read it (it does some of this in early scenes, but quickly gets lazy about it). This results in a lot of randomly wandering around, searching through walkthroughs, and, if you’re like me, eventually just cheating to progress because you can’t trigger the next scene.

Doubling down on this, some of these later scenes are now getting an orgasm meter that has to be filled by time spent in the scene, rather than any minigame or narrative progression. This is another antipattern that has resulted in me alt-tabbing to do something else while I wait for the meter to fill, because it’s shockingly not that sexy to watch the same looped animation(s) of pixels bumping against each other without any narrative escalation.

Overall, while I commend the author for trying things, I think their game design is at war with their storytelling. I’m here because I love the story. Let me see the story. Stop putting it behind so many obscure mechanics and time sinks that punish readers for wanting to read more.

This project takes teasing and grinding to new heights. First off, let me start off by saying that the models are greatly designed. But boy, you try to play this game the straight and narrow way and you end up suffering. If you try to use cheats or mods then you're also screwed because you lose the build up and sometimes the game breaks or the scenes the trigger correctly.

Nonetheless, this is another letdown for me. Hot scenes but you either can't get to them and if you do the effects from the constant grinding takes the fun out. I will say this, if this project had been a regular VN then the amount of content would last about 30-40 minutes and that's me being generous.

The log/quest is useless. This character could have multiple scene coming up but the quest would read "That's all for this story" or something else poorly translated. It's repetitive, and feels like a chore just to unlock simple scenes. I l clocked in 2 hours yesterday and barely seen anything other than the auction and I felt as though the quest was against me the whole time.

This is my issue with these types of games, if I'm going to grind this much, I need a payoff or be paid off as compensation for the time wasted.

This game is such a drag... give 10 massages to progress just a bit of story.... random timed events and whatnot. Although the premise and story are decent, the gameplay is a total shitshow. It is almost impossible to enjoy this game with all these horrible mechanics.
I thought this type of VN was long extinct, but I guess some are still clinging here and there

Another game with ungodly amount of grinding. Even with cheats it's hard to progress because the tracker hints doesn't say much to go on. Yeah the scenes might be hot but that doesn't matter if I can't get to them. Some of them even require RNG to happen which is diabolical.

This game delivers a truly enjoyable experience on multiple fronts. The story is engaging and well-written, keeping you hooked from beginning to end. Its originality sets it apart from others in the genre, offering a fresh take that doesn’t feel repetitive. The renders are high-quality and visually appealing, with attention to detail that enhances immersion. Sound design and music are both excellent, fitting the mood of each scene and helping build the atmosphere.
In terms of playability, the game feels intuitive and smooth, with no confusing mechanics or unnecessary complexity. Performance is solid—load times are minimal, and everything runs efficiently even on mid-range hardware. I encountered very few bugs, and none that disrupted the overall experience.

The animations are fluid and SO GOOD, particularly during key story moments, which really helps bring the characters to life. The voice acting is another highlight, adding depth and emotion to the dialogue. On top of that, the grammar and writing are polished and professional, which makes the narrative more believable and immersive.
Finally, the amount of content is impressive, offering hours of engaging gameplay. Overall, this is a well-crafted title that clearly reflects care and effort in every aspect.

V0.6
Pros:

• Good variety of different kinks and character personalities.
• Hint system to prevent you from getting lost in sandbox hell.

Cons:

• Very grindy, even with cheats, there are forced waiting time for slow building meters.
• Map could have been reduced, a lot of redundant areas that serve the same purposes but are placed in different locations requiring more navigation clicks to reach.
• The sandbox elements adds very little to the gameplay except more padding, there is almost never more than one thing to do at a given time in the entire map so instead of just quickly doing all the events you instead have to navigate through the map to reach the events during the appropriate time slots.
• The corruption progression feels all over the place from scene to scene, its jarring seeing the characters that have been fully corrupted suddenly behave pure and prudish while the ones you just barely started behave completely depraved independent of the progression.
• Gallery requires a grinded item to use.
• Cpu usage spikes unreasonably high during some animations.

I loved the game, finally a good incest game with good fetishes, the good thing is that the NTR is optional, the truth is the models, the story and how you gradually discover each character, is what I thought was very successful, I will wait for future updates as the game has a lot of potential.

The sexy Milf employee at the bakery is the star of the show, haha. The repetitive tasks at first are a bit long and require some patience, but once you enable all the fetish options, the story unfolds incredibly interestingly, and the content is both creative and logical.

I'm really impressed and had a blast playing. Raising a cow and being a devout mother are right up my alley. I'm looking forward to new updates and costumes!!! My utmost respect!

BTW, there are built-in cheats for stamina and money. You can restore stamina and increase money by simply clicking on the icons. I didn't realize this until the middle or end of the game.

The story is preety good and the model are so sexy, add moaning voiced plz,I just played this game today, and the modeling and animation are top-notch,Dottie with wet hair is so sexy and beautiful,I love her baeutiful face and big juicy tits，The fetish option that can be turned on and off in the game is also very good. This game is very playable, and I like every character in the game

A good game, i may be missing content coz i just did one run but to this point i enjoy it, the story is interesting but didnt really unfold from the starting point(at leat in my run), there are choices but as far as i can tell the only choices that make any kind of change in the game is about Felix.



And Felix choices is what makes me give 4 and not 5. I dont understand why i have to make him a cuck or share everyone choice, one thing shouldnt affect the other, cuck is about Diana and share should be a individual choice, for ex, i could cuck him with Diana, share Amelia and dont share Elisa, or i could share Diana not cucking him but at the same time not share Amelia or Elisa. In my run i had submission path with Diana and Amelia but not with Elisa and im not open to share Elisa with anyone in a close future, so when the choice was presented all i had available was to make him a cuck, when in fact i am ok with sharing Diana and Amelia with him.

Some of the best renders you can find. The Bodys give away the feeling of softness and Bodyfluids looking kinda realistic which is hard to archieve in 3D, so honor to the 3d designer. The sex scenes are good and have a great amount of kinkyness and tension in the buildup.

I dont like supernatural stuff that much. But here it is actually quite well done. There has gone some thoughts into Worldbuilding and its
inherent rules. Considered this is a porn game.

For me the NTR could be stronger and more mercyless. At the moment it is more Netorase than Netorare. But it is fine as it is. Looking forward for more.