Ren'Py - Holiday Island [v0.4.5.1] [darkhound1]

Very bad, boring grindfest.

The story is okay in the beginning but all the girls are so shallow and just feal like copies of each other with a different body.

The gameplay is awful and repetitive.

The moans are very awful.

The sex scenes have pretty boring animations.

I don´t think it´s worth playing this it´s just grind and nothing more didn´t really like it, but I liked most models and clothes atleast.

Perhaps one of my top 5 when it comes to games with diverse and stunningly beautiful girls. Also, the sandbox management is nicely done as well. A little bit more of polishing and this migh reach my top 3 in no time. I am looking forward to how this game ages.

One of the best games I played so far with free roaming and progressing through the girls. Sometimes it felt a bit too grindy but didnt hinder the enjoyment. Great girls and possibilities.

The quest journal could have been done better, easier to access, more present and easier to read.

Story:

Not real deep, just a lottery Winner and the proze is an island with a bunch of pretty boobed girls and you have the only dick.
But the ladies are bitchy, just like in real life^^


Renders: No WOW-Effect but pretty well done.


Playability: Hello Grind! And even more importand: It´s not a sex-game, even if there some scenes.

Animations: Yeah, and not bad at all.

Amount of content: Massive. Just like the boobs most of the girls have.

All in All a very good sandbox game, good UI and if you like grinding thats for you!

Updates are rare.

One of if not the best games on this site imo. Not only is there a large variety of girls, all of which are unique in terms of body and personality, but each girl has an impressive amount of events. Definitely a must try for those into sandboxes or harems.

This game has a special place in my heart. I first played this game back in 2018 and was instantly hooked. A perfect mix of comedy, drama and sex. The models are very well made and the scenes are very erotic. The dev crafted the bodies of the women perfectly ( except the muscular one). The hair on the models is not well made, i know im nitpicking on a porn game but what can i say i like perfection. Some faces could be done better aswell like for joy shes got the face of a crack whore. My favourite is the blonde bombshell jessica.

The game play is pretty simple, if youre like me and like to skip all the dialog and story, you still wont have any trouble progressing the story. Alot of cheat options available aswell.

This game is OG and you have to try it, its a fun experience 8/10. It has alot of content now too.

Hi Really like this game. Many Beautiful Girls and many events to find out. The dev team take a lot of time and effort to craft this beautiful game keep up the great work guys you are awesome. I will help them to make this game complete.

This has to be one of the best games on the site. I can't help but compare other games to this one, and most often they are found wanting. A hallmark of lewd sandbox development, and what's even better is that the dev is active in the community. One suggestion that I hope gets implemented: I'd love if we could somehow change around which conversation topics the various girls like/dislike - as much as randomization makes each game unique, I think making it possible for some adjustments from the player would make this game even better.

My rating is based around the idea that you have something better to do, if you have nothing better to do, access to no other games and a lot of free time, bump it up to 2 stars.

I can sort of see how this could get high scores, some guy spend literally days getting access to a specific girl and if he acknowledged how much time he wasted for so little it may break him.

This games old and there's a reason no one, or at least no one successful makes them like this anymore, it's a time wasting "skinner box", you feel like you're working towards something but only if you don't stop and think about it, the good looking, varied models can't hide how little there is beneath the surface, the girls are as deep as a dating profile bio.

"Um, wow um I've never talked to a girl before um wow, you are so beautiful *blushes* *smiles* *cums in pants*"

There you go, I just summed up the dialogue in this game.

Fucking kill me.

I have no idea about the rest of the game except the MC is a stuttering fucking loser *blushes and shits myself*.

Convoluted mess.

There are way too many selections/options in this sandbox that make it a real chore to play through. Way too many female characters.

Renders, character models and animations are underwhelming compared to other games that utilize Daz3D models.

This game is really not terrible for a sandbox /simulation.

My personal dislike is from the models - the breast size starts at large and goes to anime balloon size. I tried, but my little friend down there does not want to play along.

I love the game, I love the setting, I love the graphics, I love the girls.

Everything is done to perfection, I love the sandbox idea.

Excellent work, my respects! You truly are a master of your craft.

Briefly run through the game, the game version upon writing is 3.7.1.
Starting off with the heroines/girls. They are mostly attractive but that's subjective. The content for each varies so it highly depends so mileage may vary.

The biggest problem of this moment is the lack of any relationship progression. The 'love' stat feels highly artificial and simply used to calculate if certain checks are passed.

I would like to see a more intimate progression (i.e Love and Base 2 game is a good example of this) where the relationship and how a girl treats the player changes. (i.e Sex friend>Girl friend>Fiance/wife[?]) and the interactions between them evolves.

Events are sometimes highly specific and quite frankly annoying to get to even with hints.

All in all, it's certainly not a bad game, but with the raving reviews I question if it deserves that.

Get this out of the way:
Renders: 5/5
excellent variety, beautiful design
To sum up why the 'game' is a 2/5,
MC is a fit, huge-cocked guy on a harem island with a dozen women who can be 100/100 affectionate/loving/lustful for him, and because of the 'game' design he still has significantly less sex than the average, single person in their early 20s and maybe 1/20th the sex of the average person in their early 20s in a relationship.
Falling back from that, the typical "grinding =/= gameplay" critique is on this game like white on rice. Lots of games have grind, some even manage to make it fun. Calling this game's grind "tedious" is an insult to grinding boulders in Elden Ring. The difference is after an hour of boulders you'll be noticeably stronger but after an hour of grinding Holiday Island you get a boob and another hour of grinding.
Looping back to my initial critique of the lack of sex. This game, and it's weird to say this about a tropical harem game, has ridiculously un-immersive levels of frigidity.
e.g.
Jenny quite literally could not feel more affection for you.
Jenny quite literally could not love you more.
Jenny quite literally could not lust after you more.
Now meet Jenny at these coordinates at this time so you can take a selfie with her.
Oh, did you not spend 5% of your time playing this game jumping through the grind? Well, Jenny doesn't love you enough to take a selfie with you anymore.
Sex??? You want SEX in your porn game?! What kind of anim- you know what, here's 10-20 minutes Texas Hold'em with maybe a 2-frame-animation vanilla titfuck at the end. And I mean "maybe" because if you slacked off your grind you get a goodnight kiss and hospital-tier blueballs.

Holiday Island is an excellent porn game if you prefer your porn games without all the porn or games.

Models are top, gameplay is just awful. This is one of those games where the dev did a terrible job implementing a frustrating gameplay that is not fun. Don't know how is possible that anyone give a possitive feedback about the game or even love it.

My advise: Do not waste your time with this game. Not worth it.

Porn games should be simple, the grind you need here to unlock a single sex scene is obscene.

I rated this average but there's very little average here.

I'd strongly recommend this to other devs, not so much players. here's why.

Some of the features here are executed better than anywhere else. The open world system and lineup customisation options are brilliant and the dev deserves significant credit.

The downside, as others have mentioned, is the payoff. It's not that there is no content, it's just ridiculously hard to access.

here is a real example

Once you've levelled up 3 stats - Seriously
Meet X at bar - fine
On a Wednesday - ok
If she's wearing a green dress - what?
Ask her to come sit down for a drink - one of several options
Scene-trigger

So there's a fair bit of stabbing in the dark to get the whole venue, day, activity lined up but even if you get it, you're supposed to meet your date and then tell her to go get changed while you chat to other women for half an hour because she's rocked up in a black dress. It's counter-intuitive and wrecks what is already a long-shot.

Whats also strange is in the grind to level up an LI's stats, MC stands up and gropes them in a room full of people which makes the difficulty accessing scenes seem doubly weird. Casual molesting over breakfast is fine but any kind of intimacy on a date is a no-no.

I think there's a relatively quick fix here that could improve this title massively and turn it into one of the best sandbox games on the site but until then it's a bit painful. If you got the stats and you got the venue, trigger the scene.

For several hours of playing, I did not see a single sex scene. I don't even seem to understand how to get one. Probably need to grind a week of real life. The animation is terrible. Models are not bad, but the implementation leaves much to be desired. I don't like grinding, especially when it's meaningless.

Edit: I changed it to 1 star. It just got too frustrating to keep going.
You just have to read all of that boring dialogue. Holy shit. Why put all that effort into writing something so damn boring and awkward? As well as all the "OMG"s. Seriously? Who speaks like that?
It's literally just a bunch of teasing with very little reward. You can tell how barren the game is of content and poorly planned out this game is when there's almost nothing to see besides teasing for a vast majority of the characters and maybe 1 sex scene for half of them. The only one that has more is the hugest grind. It's so bad, it's not even worth it when you finally see it.
The MC goes as the only man, to a private island full of models and escorts who are supposedly there to have sex with him only it seems like their real goal is to either get him to fap alone in his hotel room like a sad fuck or get teased 24/7 walking around with blueballs. That's what 95% of the game's content is. If this were some kind of specific kink game then it'd make sense with all the teasing, denial, muscular women fetish, etc. but it's not. Which just makes it weird and dumb. Shit. Maybe this really is that and I just didn't read the premise properly.
And the stupid zoom-ins. Dude, I'm holding ctrl right now just trying to get through all this awkward-ass dialogue I've seen 1,000 times before. Just let me get through this.
I like sandbox games, I really do but this is just bad. Even some of the worst sandbox games I've played still had repeatable content. This makes you jump through hoops and over hurdles to get one scene and then to see it again ... you have to jump through the same hoops and hurdles.
So much more wrong with this game. Just go read the other negative reviews. Those other reviews sum it up better. I'd rather just delete mine but we can't do that so I decided to change it rather than just let it sit there.

After playing this game, I realized it would be quicker for me to get back in shape, learn to code, actually win the lottery, and move to Tahiti in order to get some action in my life.

Jokes aside, this game is GRINDY. I'm a guy who likes some grind and when tits are involved (very much like this game) I can have a shocking level of patience for grind. In the end, I was defeated, it still was too much grind for me.

It's a shame because from what I can tell from the intro and reading about this game, it has a very decent intrigue and plot, and I'm a sucker for that. Personally, I love the art, especially the bimbo aesthetic.

So here is my breakdown:

GOOD

- Story: by most account this game has a well fleshed out, engaging story that we have to discover through playing.
- Art: Lovely models that will please breast-lovers and bimbo-lovers of this world.
- Open world: I like the idea of an open-world and the freedom it gives the players. I like the slight confusion of figuring out what you have to do for the first 1 to 2 hours of a game.

BAD

- Art: I've read that some art has been updated to be higher resolution and I appreciate it. That being said, I did not see any of it. While the characters are gorgeous, most of what I saw is too low-res and seems fuzzy.
- Dialogues: With the sheer amount of repetition necessary for this game, it would be nice if the dialogue was more fleshed-out and more different for any girls. As its stands now, talking with any chick is the same 5 lines with slight flavor added to it.
- Narrative flow: Since there is some much repetition and grind, I've been abusing the "Ctrl" key... meaning I'm sure I've missed sparse tidbits of narrative development buried in the umpteenth repetition of a certain event/dialog.
- H-scenes: The grind was so much that I couldn't get to any worthwhile H-scene, but again poking around the game, I've learned that by most discerning account they are quite underwhelming considering all the gatekeeping one has to overcome before accessing them.

UGLY

- Grind: Seriously, this game is grindy. Personally, I believe that some of it is due to a combination of factors: numbers of stats involved, slow improvement of said stats, convoluted and unintuitive roadblocks on stats improvement, too aggressive RNG checks and stat decay.

I think the game has potential, with a serious update pass on the art to bring it in line with 2022-level graphics, expanded dialogs, and a tweak to how stats are handled this game could become very enjoyable and rewarding without loosing the complexity that the dev obviously worked very hard to implement.

PS.: Dev, I see you "thumbs-up" all the 5 stars review, but don't ignore the less-than-5-stars reviews. I've read all of them and with a few exceptions, even the negative reviews like huge portions of your game. We all want to see your game become the best it can be and I hope that you'll see that making your game more accessible can only be positive in the end. I'll keep following your project, because there is so much here that I like that I can't just walk away.