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

[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.

Rewriting this a 3rd time, as I ignored all the grind frustration trying to get to the good part as so many reviews point to, which was a mixed feeling bag.

As a message to the dev, do not take this personally, your game has some really nice parts, some really awful parts some mediocre parts, it is not a bad experience e but not a wow experience either, just take my review and other reviews with a pinch of salt and improve.


For the game itself, I will just grade things, based on my experience with it:

Renders : 4.5 /5
they are nice, they are in my top 10.

Animations: 2.5 /5
not that many, and the ones that were animated looked kinda awkward, maybe 1 or 2 were quite nice but the rest were laggy and the fact that you needed to click a button to "animate" ... why can't people make a damn loop that stops on click or by continue button really that hard ?

Girl Characters: 5/5
The moment I really feel being annoyed by the girlfriend and actually wanted to kick her out it means the character felt real, so thumbs up for that, same thing with Grace and Izumi, they felt real, dialog wise they were pretty flat but they felt real.

Guy Characters: 2 /5
What is the purpose of that guy in risk management I think ) pretty useless dude, wasted wing-man material, and the boss just felt flat, like someone watched Woolf of Wall Street and Margin Call, felt generic as hell.

Story / Conversation: 3 /5
Some conversation were nice, some started to get boring and repetitive and at times especially with Izumi just felt like a boner killer, also at times the story felt disjointed, as quite a few times, i was reading about something that already happened as it never happened, or at some point I had 2 different events at home can't quite remember Alice was there girlfriend got pissed when that cut-scene ended girlfriend arrived with her sister from the airport, that thing triggered quite random and disjointed.

On-boarding / new player experience: 1 /5
In sandbox games , when you have a convoluted UI, with a lot of grind, skill trees, help / info / hints / quest tracking is imperative. Really easy to miss the damn text when you mention that you need to leave for work by 8:30 which gives you enough time for a shower and forced breakfast.
A quest tracker would be a breath of fresh air, have a look at "Cure my addiction" a really smart way of doing a quest list, heck you can even lock it for easy mode if some players want to be hard core, most players are casuals.

And I want to say, what the hell is with that "Opportunities" tab, was that supposed to help in any way, I found myself searching on the forums to see why some thing was not updating just to see that it was just a placeholder until you trigger some new event and than it updates... really ? really ? could you not just say completed and just move on to the next step, anything would be nice... wasted opportunity, take a hint from the cheat mod they even put a FAQ which was quite helpful.


Either way keep the work on this, but if you want it to be a success, find a way to make new players feel more welcomed in the game, you can do better.

This game is really good!

0.7c is the first version of this game that I've played and this is one of my favorite games.

The characters and models are really diverse and sexy and I found myself getting more and more attached to some that I thought were ugly ducklings at first such as the main characters' girlfriends sister Bailey only to end up liking them more than the girlfriend.

Grace is one of the best characters I've come across in a game.. she is well written and has a fantastic model with plenty of content. For example besides lots of vanilla scenes there is also an invisible suit that you can purchase that opens up at least two non-con scenes with Grace which were some of my favorite scenes in the game and hopefully more content will be added

While quite a few sex / romance scenes are still not in the game or not yet completed the ones that are in there and finished look really good!

The game-play can be very grind heavy especially when trying to work for something like purchasing the Bugatti where I spent weeks (in game) doing the same actions over and over again just to make more money.

What I like about the game-play is the fact that the game lets you chose your own pace as far as unlocking specific scenes and it was refreshing to play a game that made you feel like you weren't missing content by not hitting certain timed events even though certain actions are only possible on specific times/days. It's refreshing and rewarding being able to play a game without a guide and discover things on my own!

Even in this unfinished state I found the game to be a top tier game in the same league as WVM, BaDIK, DAST, Milfy City, etc..

I'm looking forward to more from this fabulous game and enjoyed the great work this developer has done so far!