Ren'Py - Abandoned - High-Rise Climb [v0.95.1.2] [Smokeydots]

I was looking for a change from the kinetic visual novel craze and decided to give this game a try. It has RPG and open world elements to it which I was craving for.

The character models and graphics are above average (some better than others). The animations are poorly done.

The story and writing are pretty good.

The main problem is the large amount of grind between events and opportunities (what the game calls events). The second problem is even though the game has RPG and open world elements, it still feels a lot like a kinetic visual novel.

Each character is pre-scripted with what you can do with them and accomplish. Some examples:

Izumi is the only female in the office that the player can 'Hug' and 'Massage'.
Grace only has a 'Grope' physical interaction option.
Ida is the only female in the office that the player can take out on regular dates.
If all of the female characters had all options it would be a true RPG and open world game. Currently, the MC can only do very specific things to each female in the game. Your path is already planned out for you with all the characters.
The game feels very limited because of this.

Some other flaws:

You spend time in the game collecting people's phone numbers yet you can't call them with your phone. This feature was either overlooked or never implemented.

Even though I have a relationship and love value of 100 with Izumi, the most I can do with her is a blowjob.

The game says that each time I raise my work level, I get a promotion. This is only true for the first three levels. I never got a promotion from the fourth work level.

The game won't let me choose Finance III with my talent points. There are no prerequisites for it in the chart.

The MC has the same conversations with the same people over and over again. Sometimes there are options to skip it but not always. Either variations need to be added to the mix or simply not allow the same conversation to occur if you've read through it three times.

Angela's drinking problem gets really old after a while with no options to fix it.

The MC has to get high on drugs in order to have sex with your girlfriend Angela. There are no options to have sex with her otherwise which is insane.

The player should have the option of changing girlfriends in the game, Izumi and Ida being obvious choices. I wish I had the option of kicking Angela out and having a new girlfriend move in.

I didn't finish the game. It got too boring. The game needs a lot more events and opportunities between the long periods of grind. I simply lost all desire to continue. This is not a good sign!

If you love lots of grind with little progression then this is the game for you, otherwise I would look elsewhere. I can't recommend this game to everyone. I do appreciate the author's hard work and efforts!

Severely underrated game (I don't mean underrated on here, I mean I think he deserves more Patreon support). Good renders, story feels original, lots of opportunity, I look forward to seeing where it goes. I kinda wish I could kick out the girlfriend because she hasn't contributed anything in my playthrough and she gets upset way too easily so it's not worth trying to grind out favor to get on her good side. Plenty of other attractive models.

[Version 0.8.1a]
Probably my favourite game simply because of the dark path.
It is one of those rare games that does Blackmail/coercion right. No mind control, no nymphomaniacs falling in-love after you've been an asshole and best of all you can corrupt almost everyone (main cast).
I use the word corrupt in the sense that your control over the girls increases as the more they fear you.
I haven't played the other paths yet but I do hope the Dev keeps on doing what his doing.

The interface is often complex, or inconsistent, or even buggy. For example,

• after some actions like talking to a person the interface elements disappear.
• Font color sometimmes becomes black (invisible on the black say box).
• The general interface changes into different variations instead of just using simple choice menus or something.
• When you choose the wrong topic to talk, your relationship decrease, but you can't rollback.
• Some condensed fonts have poor readability.
• The distributive size is ridiculous. The dev should at least convert jpg to webp.

And I like VNs, but this doesn't feel like one; rather an RPG or sim of sorts.

So it might be an interesting game but IMHO it's not really playable, at least for me.

( v0.8.1b Bugfix )

Played through Ver 0.8.1A
Interesting concept incorporating recent events and a bunch of fit hot looking women!

• Plenty of content to go through and lots of potential areas for this world to expand into for character interaction and writing potential given enough time/money and availability of talent.
• Character depth is a little lacking but I doubt most will care about that.

I do see the usual incorrect usage of words and spelling errors, although it's not nearly as frequent (or as bad) as some other titles and could be overlooked by the persons playing it without ruining the game for them.
I did dock it point for the aforementioned issues because these were something that even a halfway decent free document writer program could have parsed and corrected.

Overall, a good harem-ish title.

Excellent pictures and animation. Beautiful and realistic characters. Unique story that will keep you involved and make you really think about some of the decisions. Overall, one of the best games out there...

Overall this story/game is bland and boring. After 3 years barely anything has been done that makes it interesting. The relationship with the girlfriend is certainly one of the worst story lines i have seen. Taking a pill to get stoned every time you have sex in the bedroom, ridiculous. As well the animations are very poorly done.
Everything about this whole game/story feels cheaply done. Very little imagination to the story at all.
It is infuriating that so much time passes after a story/game debut's and so little content is added.
I have played this a few times, it is a long grind to stats which don't seem to make any actual difference to the story example grace and izumi at the bar, no matter which choice you pick the same ending happens, or the discussion with your GF angela about drinking, after you talk to her she still drinks and falls asleep on the couch.
I don't think this story/game was planned out very well, there is so much that needs huge improvements, especially the animations. In All this story/game is a hot mess, the fact that there are so many story glitches and content that has been labelled to be completed For THREE YEARS, says it all.

Renders, Animation & Story are awesome. All the girls are very beautiful. A bit grindy, but definitely worth it. Definitely one of the best gamesin here.

To the creator, many thanks for this awesome game. It's already a masterpiece even without sound. 10/10

This game reminds me of Man of the House, which is a game that has a good sandbox element to it. This game however has you progress through your career and actually goes through a story that has an element of realism to it.

The animations are very good and the girls have a great look with slightly flawed features which is good because it captures real life appearances. The developer also does a good job with infusing economics, science, technology and life in general. I've been enjoying it and there hasn't been anything that felt abnormal such as the MC having a gorilla sized penis. Thankfully the developer has made the models parts normalized and plausible.

It is rare to find such a well-made and amusing game such as this. The girls are especially well-rounded and all-around likeable. I especially like the flags which had been set up. Highly recommend for anyone looking for a meaty game to sink their teeth into!

My only two complains are that the animation is janky at time, and the purchasing menu could be more intuitive.

The only reason why this game is worth is because its visuals are quite above average. I was kind of dissapointed that a game that weights 6gb had so little content.
ITs way too grindy but since it has choices that affect outcome of things , at least gives some sense of purpose.

ITs quite readable despite some engrish. Thats it. when it gets more content probably gonna give 5 stars.

Damn I wanted to love this game so much. Story is good. Setting is enjoyable. I love corporate stuff. Wolf of the wall street vibes and everything. Game has excellent renders and attractive collection of girls.. Even sandbox is manageable..

But oh god the grind. Every girl has 4 separate stats and MC has like a dozen other stats to grind for weeks... I'm not a fan of grinding but if it within realistic limits I tolerate it.. But this one is on a whole other level, to the Lucky Mark levels of grinding.

Sad thing is I used the cheat mod to see what happens after the grind and plot moves nicely with good renders. I regretted giving up playing after what I saw. But its takes too long to level up everything and increase RP for each girls 4 different RP..

I know I'm not made of for grinding but some people like it, but within current state of it, grinding is too hardcore and time wasting.. My interest for the game slowly died out after the constant repeat of in-game weeks of grindfest.

It is a shame because again I loved the models. Blondes especially are top tier. I guess I check out later again with cheat mod, even if it kills the experience..

TLDR;
If you have a fetish for grinding or doesn't mind long ass repeated scenes of constant RP farming, you can call this game a 5 star, or if it was a VN. Oh how much I wish this game was a non-grind focused VN..

Review of 0.8b.

I spent quite a bit of time with this version...and I really enjoyed the game. I was debating a 4 or 5 star, but I'll go with 5 as the game is excellent. Interesting story, topical, interesting characters, some intelligent dialogue, very good graphics and excellent animations. There may be some stakes in this game, but I'm not quite sure what they are at this point.

Your girlfriend appears to be an alcoholic...and thus far I've seen no way to help her with that problem. You do have many other options with other women and they all have different personalities and looks. The gameplay is somewhat grindy but there's enough interactions with other characters to not make it seem like so much of a grind. Because it's not complete, some of the branches are not complete either so I can't really knock the game down for that.

Very solid game...I can only hope Smokeydots continues with a great endgame where the MC can decide who he'd like to end up with (I know who I'd choose).

Graphics - 9/10
Animations - 10/10
Story - 9/10
Characters - 9/10
Fun - 8/10

I love this game,
there is still a lot of potential in this game
i think we should have more content with Angela
and the story could go on
but congratulations on a very nice job, I support the development

Nice setting, some nice content and characters here. The writing is overall good, close to the highest tier on this site for the characters that have effort put into them.

This is also less of a VN and more of a "dating sim" where you put points into girls to get them to sleep with you. Unlike proper VNs the story isn't cohesive and feels unsubstantive.

Great looking renders.

Cons:

Absolutely terrible gameplay system with mobile-game like grind. Mobile games use these systems to get you to pay, this game doesn't even have micro transactions but just throws that shit in there to waste your time. Cheats mandatory.

No scene gallery or usable quest markers to navigate through multiple plays.

Mystery triggers where you need to be at certain places at certain times to trigger stuff. Impossible without a walkthrough.

I used a cheat mod so I'm giving it a 4, without a cheat mod this would be a 1.

Despite development for 2 years the game feels oddly hollow. You grind in order to interact with certain girls, you can only interact with a few of them to a satisfying degree but the advancement doesn't feel satisfying.

You're in a relationship with a character right off the bat and you can get in relationships with any other character without fear of suspicion or danger which makes it unsatisfying as there isn't a risk in hooking up with any other woman, there's no rush.

It feels like a boring grind, like the developer actually just wants you to work an office job and on occasion, feel like you've developed a relationship with any character.

I would say hold out until the game is complete, but even then I'm not sure how much of a game there will be.

This is the perfect example of a good concept with horrible execution

Corporate environment, with a chance to have sexual encounters with your coworkers with different paths (relationship, love, fear or lust) = Nice concept

BUT the execution for this concept is absolutely ridiculous! It's one of the most infuriating games to play here tbh

First of all, it's unclear if any of those 3 stats make anything different regarding interactions and character behavior. For example, I tried doing different things with Grace by changing which stat I maxed out and it literally didn't change anything. Her responses to you when relationship or fear are 100 are almost exactly the same, which is stupid.

The grind is AWFUL! You have SO MANY stats to increase, that you literally have to spend hours just to max out one of them. Relationship, love, fear and lust FOR EACH CHARACTER (and big portion of characters you can't even have a real interaction even if you max out you relationship with them, money, work, research points, plus research/coding for some items. It's ridiculous! I think the dev wanted to fool everyone and make us think that this game has weeks of gameplay, which is technically true because you'll have to spend weeks to grind this shit

The story is weak because you basically don't have any development since the beginning, with ANY character.

The one positive thing I can say about this is that the renders and few animations are pretty nice...

Overall 2/10

Not gonna play this til the end.. Can't waste any more of my time with this garbage

interesting story & concept, though tend to be linear one. each character has their own ups and downs, both for story and sex scenes. art is good, not that good to be amazing but more than enough. the story concept itself covers it all why this game should be supported.

There is so much wasted potential in this game that I have to say something.
Nice characters and there is a good amount of gameplay, I really liked some parts of the game but it's all behind an infinite grind with very little payoff and characters that don't react to what it's happening.
Such a shame.

This game has been an engaging power fantasy thanks to the decent characterization of the love interests. There isn't much to say about the plot as the title itself is self-explanatory, but there is enough game-play freedom to make the overall experience enjoyable. Characters react to your decisions as Byron naturally and pretty consistent to their characterizations, while whatever judgment there are for your choices mostly come from Byron himself rather than the narration.