VN - Ren'Py - Hardenville [v0.2.1] [JoyFI Games]

5 stars for the production. The GUI is just really well done and the images are all top notch. DOF, rule of thirds, scene blocking, pacing... a seriously top notch job. Clearly one of the more talented devs out there from an artistic perspective. Unfortunately, that's about where it ends.

To begin with, there is a section where you can set all the relationships, which right away turned me off. I just hate this as no matter what you put in these fields, it never seems to work right. Or worse, you play for a while and realize a character should be a different relation. There were so many characters and not knowing the story at all, I had no idea what I was supposed to name them.

Spoiler ahead....

After spending way too long on this, I finally jumped into the story and in no time, the MC was naked with a girl in the ocean he had just met. Who was also working at the wedding, yet she was drunk. Then she sees a jellyfish and the two of them continue to stay in the water. Erm... hello... get the hell out before you get stung! No. They start making out surrounded by jellyfish until our female mensa member gets stung and then has the audacity to act surprised. So, they rush to the shore where she asks to get peed on, the MC doesn't and she is like oh well, I'll just have to ignore it. Oh hey! Let's go to the port-a-potty and have some fun. While there, the female mensa member, bumps the MCs smallish cock with her ass cheek and he blows his load all over his Mom/StepMom/Landlady/Non-binary female who is sitting in an unlocked port-a-potty (we won't even mention the earlier port-a-potty scene). This is the high quality story telling you have to look forward to in this AVN.

The other problem, of course, is there are way too many LIs and too many of them look the same. They are all beautiful and there are some unique ones, but sometimes it is hard to differenciate between them. Also, your MC is thrown into the middle of a wedding and you have no idea who everyone is and there is nothing to explain who they are along the way,

The writing is at such odds with the production. So much time and effort was put into making it look good, someone forgot to let the dev know you have to have a decent story underneath it. Regardless, it is worth the download to see the production and you might actually be fine with the story. I plan to stick with it and hope it gets better as I am really rooting for this dev.

Good luck!

Excellent models and renders, good english quality. The WORST minigames I've ever encountered. All minigames are trash but unwinnable ones with no skill like the stupid unavoidable handball are absolute game ruiners.

Story is very very short right now but seems easy enough to follow.

Also dont agree with the other reviewer who called mc a microdick becasue he doesnt know what the term means. Its far better to have normal human proportions than insecure overcompensation that makes mc look like a horse - other criticisms are valid though. The mc is very cowardly and effeminate

+ good music
+ renders
+ mc is not a total wimp/loser

- mc pathetic cumshot scene in prologue, wtf is this?
- story doesn't exist right now, no idea what's going on and what is this all about
- no character introduction. I was really confused who these girls are.
- game is generally boring, nothing interesting happens

Not a lot of content, but i see potential here, we will see. 3 stars for now

This game showed qualities in the prologue that could be AAA grade AVN, but this update episode 1 just gave me the feeling of playing prologue 2 and seems to have failed to maintain volume and sexual tension overall

To put it another way, I think this game will get a lot better if it's already impeccable in terms of quality and if you can increase the amount and sexual tension in moderation

Quite boring to be honest. The renders are excellent, but the MC is shorter than the girls and has a dwerby haircut and a micro dick that is just cringe to look at during the scenes...

The game has massive cuck and femdom vibes.... No scenes but endless blue ballng with an average beta MC. Shame, because the models are excellent but everything else is piss poor.

Review as of Ch 1.

This game has potential. I'm normally not one into incest characters at all but 2 out 3 of them I really liked their characters so far, they were fun to be around. No lewd animations but there was non lewd animations and those were great. The comedy is a bit funny in a cringe kind of way. The minigames fell off to me.

The handball one it feels random and you just got to keep reloading till RNG decides to be in your favor as I dont see a pattern to it at all. The never have I ever feels odd to me, as it just goes through the questions but there is no dialogue in between the questions.

The only other negative I have is more on a technical side it seems there is no quick save and quick load which makes this game a bit annoying for me. But this is also a rare game that supports controllers at least on steam it does.

Not to sure about the story yet it's still early on in the game and it's short but I do like what is there but can't give it more than 3 stars until we get more updates.

[Reviewed v.0.1.2]

Just a prologue for now, but shows some promise if it can start to differentiate itself from other titles with a cast of pretty, similar-looking young love interests.

The Good ()

• Beautiful, well-rendered models (with enough subtle flaws to make the renders feel more realistic)
• Erotic H-scenes with good animations
• Some slick UI elements that are not run-of-the-mill Ren'Py

The Not-So-Good ()

• There's not a lot of content yet
• Initial scene at the wedding provides an interesting set-up but had multiple female characters pursue the MC in totally unrealistic ways (glory hole in the port-a-potty?)
• Story is a little jumpy and it is hard to follow the cast of characters

A good but imperfect start. I'll be following to see how this progresses.

Short summary:


This one is a nice game on the renders alone. Worth checking out and following on the progress. The story is disappointing though due to the unbelievability of the character’s actions, which is a shame, as the other aspects of the game are not bad.



Good Things

• Models are mostly good and realistic
• Good work with lighting, post-production
• Some beautiful scenes
• The overall level of quality and polish for the early release

Bad points

• On-the-nose dialogue
• Character actions make no sense (e.g. right at the start you stumble upon a girl jerking off in the public toilet, who sucks you off through a gloryhole for no reason, and your cousin walks in and joins. All with no setup, choices, or explanation. Ridiculous)
• Forced peeing on the girl

Solid start. The second prologue I've played today and this JoyFI does everything the other one failed to do to grab my attention and anticipation for the next update. Light-hearted and funny, likeable MC and secondary characters.
Liked the pianist slip at the start just would've liked if she didn't notice for a while, thought this might be the only tease but boy was I wrong.
Nice attention to detail with the text message history, including a "accidental" pic.
Never thought I'd see an accidental gloryhole but it really paid off well.
Personally I would've gone after the pianist later on but I guess the MC had a existing relationship to pursue at the beach. Hope to see more of that pianist though...
Great start, look forward to episode one, anyone who would rate this less than 5 stars is a, well, you know the word.
This is how you get backers for your game, to the other prologue I've already forgotten.

The game has an interesting story, apart from the fact that the protagonist has a lazy attitude for what it's worth, great renderings, the music is very good, the girls' models are very good, I thought there would be sex before chapter 1 but that will be for the next time the way the protagonist is precocious in that last scene, plus Emma giving the poor guy her ass like that, it's difficult , let's see how the story will unfold from now on.

Congratulations to the developer and good luck with your project
Please don't abandon

Hardenville Review

Its hardly a playable game at this stage. You could clear it in less than 5 mins. Depending on how future updates go, this game is either a trending main stay or it would be semi abandoned.

Renders are good like "The Grey Dream". However both games suffer from the same thing and that is the younger girls in the game all look the same with different hair assets. You have no idea which blonde you're speaking to half the time.

Overall its hard to even rate something this miniscule at the moment. It has potential but as I've stated before many times Devs need to put everything into first releases. It is your chance to Strike out.

This would be a 1/5 if it weren't for its amazing UI design, menu and audio. Once this game actually makes progress a proper review will be added.

Story: Still too early it is not really fair to rate
Render: 5/5
Gameplay:4/5 (Simple AVN game, with a GOOD PHONE RENDER HOLY)
Girls: 4/5 (The Dev love freckles )
Potential: 10/5

with a render this good this will take too much time for each episode unless the dev got backup, and yes its still early in terms of development but I really like it so far it has so much potential to be really good AVN.

Congrats on the game and good luck for the dev.
I cant wait for the version 1.0.0

Absolutely gorgeous models so far, very little content in the game for now but hopefully dev delivers updates consistently. Love the menu design, UI is looking amazing. Very promising, definitely watching this one closely.

v0.1.2.

This is one of those games that tries so hard to be high quality that it ends up with little more than good renders.

It has a decent setting and some good sex situations that are slightly humorous.

The game feels slow as it has transitions an such that cause delay or slow changes a lot of these higher quality games tend to have.
And no, it isn't my pc. And if it, then this is worse than a top game these days.

I liked that incest was a setting choice.
I dislike that it wasn't *A* setting choice. It was a pain in the ass to find, and a pain to change everything. That was a massive mood killer and a nuisance.
Just make it an option. Or at least explain how to find it better, something.
The amount fo content was actually low due to the amount of story movement it made. Individual frames it was decent in number but not in story.

Overall 3/5 enjoyment.
I might look at it in the future. Maybe when it is done.

Game has really good UI, music ain't bad either and some spicy content even though it is just in a prologue phase, can't wait for future releases. I hope it doesn't gets abandoned after prologue as the content and story seems promising so far.

Hardenville [v0.1.0] Review by Tauro Thurius

Here's my take on version 0.1.0:

Very promising game with good visuals, decent plot for initial release, good music and audio, well made HUD not just regular Ren'Py one, and overally well made. Hope this game doesnt get abandoned , it can have great potential

The visuals are amazing, this game is extremely promising. The models are amazing and I hope there will be no NTR. Please try to include the Harem route if possible. Heck, forget all this,
Request to Dev
please.....please,......please
Complete this game don't abandon it.