Ren'Py - Idol Island [v0.07] [Wizard's Kiss]

Review for Idol Island [v0.07]
First, I really like this game. It has a straight forwarded and quick expanding beginning. The story so far has 8 cute girls. Each of them has unique stories and personalities.
Secondly, the combat system is simple and boring. On my point of view, it didn't add any fun to the game play by repeatedly defeating three types of animals.
The game has great potentials. I definitely look forward to more content.

I really like this game, but I wouldn't recommend it at the moment.

The girls are cute and have their own story. The setup: Being an idol manager on an island is fun. But the grind needs to be (and probably will be) adjusted, we run out of water and food very fast. Also, the story doesn't go very far and there isn't even a sex scene.

Please dev, don't drop that game and focus on it. It has really great potential.

How did you even get through that?

Water supplies are running out: dialogue with Evelina - ending the game: the battle can be improved by simply cutting it and the map.

There is no help for the game on discord the game is good despite the flaws I don't want the developer to abandon it.

I want to like this game, I do...but I can't get over the collecting water/food feature in the game. The latest update I need to go get food/water for the camp and it keeps saying "talk to Laura" and the only thing she says is the girls "rankings." I know the developer(s) want to have the eating drinking aspect in the game but can there be an option in the menu to turn it off.....I know it's nitpicking but it's just a waste of energy especially when you keep stepping on snakes and "defending" from wildlife....I'm here for a harem not survivor

only thing good is renders
to grindy
using unren to cheat stats gives you error
Story is mixed
The combat in this game is bad
to train your stats you need a item
would not recommend it
No bugs
there are voice sound

[After playing v.0.05a]

At the moment it looks interesting, though there's still not too much content. Storywise it doesn't look like a big deal but characters and humor are ok, game element in survival and training seems ok, graphics are nice. It's worthy to keep an eye on it to see what it offers once the story developes properly.

Beautiful game, not much content yet but I give this a 100/10 if you love the rape genre. We have an interesting and ambitious MC who is able to take control of his life. Morals are not to be questioned when playing a GAME.

Pros:

- graphics are great
- music element plays well into scenes
- ballsy and ambitious MC
- early sex scenes
- interesting character variety

Cons:

- lacking in content atm
- looking for more diversity or expansion of sleep sex/rape genres
- more player choices with greater consequences (on others) will be great, though that comes with time

Overall: Good game that develops well, with a fun journey into rape and sleep sex. Looking forward to supporting the developer after more content release.

Not going to waste much time here, already wasted enough on this terrible game.
Trap is unavoidable, gross, at least have it deeper in the water as an option.
Moronic navigation and RNG, first time in the forest encountered 3 wolves and died, but in retrospect it was a blessing so I can spend time playing absolutely anything else.

I'm very surprised I thought this was just going to be just another mindless harem game but instead there are actual game mechanics implemented "sure very basic at the moment but the games still early in its development" the voice acting isn't bad either I'm looking forward to where does game goes from here

V0.04a
Well it will be a short review since it really dosent have much content yet, but the future tags like animated and pregnancy on top of how the game is now, i think it has huge potential.

I love the voices and its nice to see a game where even MC is voiced.

The story is great and fun with alot of promiss, seen a few that has a issue cuming on the girl that attacks ya but i dont really see the issue since she tried to kill MC, and captures your boss, so he could have raped her for all i care or even killed her to remove the danger, so i think he went light on her.

Even the sandbox feels fun, the food/water issue is a bit of a grind right now, but it will proberly be alot better once you can train str up so you can carry more, the explore part needs some work though since its all just random, so you just have to click right or left 20 times and hope you get to water area or where ever you want to go, it shouldent really be random if you ask me, i could see a map being usefull to fast travel to set areas you already explored but thats not in game atleast not yet.

I got a bit of a mixed feeling for the girls, some look good some dosent but thats pretty normal.

I will redo my review at some point when it has alot more content, i do worry a little about game ever being finished since it seems like alot of work having all chars voiced, but it will most defently be a game ill keep an eye on.

Had to lower this a few stars after replaying, its simply just to boring when it comes to grind vs reward, also i ran into inventory issues where i couldent pick up a any items or deposit any since storage was full of fish, then it changes to picking up everything even though it was alot more then 20 items and everything was just messed up and theres no way ill replay this from the start again with this grind level....i mean just getting a single skill needs like 25 level ups? i mean what the fuck? why ruin a game by making it that bad to play.

Could be good if the resource collection aspect is better balanced. Didn't really have time to progress the actual game because of the 7 item inventory limit you start with. Navigation is also more challenging than it needs to be.

Would prefer the trap to be optional personally, there's a nice image of the "girls" bathing and one of them has a cock I could do without seeing. It's in the tags though so the low score doesn't come from that being a issue for me.

I decided to test the game for myself and draw my own conclusions and at the moment the game in its current state is not playable... at least for me, without the navigation arrows it is very difficult to move around the map, and the combat is not very pleasant... there had to be a way to recover life and a larger inventory, our character can barely carry more than 7 items, a good, unique story with mechanics that leave something to be desired.

A potentially good game buried under some iffy plot choices and a steaming pile of tedious busywork. The initial premise is good, albeit a little goofy, and the LI's are all appealing. The render quality is decent, no comments about the sound because I prefer to play games muted.

Now for the bad stuff. The MC is seriously creepy, and as the player you have very little agency in the matter. During the prologue No choice given, you are just doing it because reasons. That alone would push Idol Island towards the not recommended category, but then you get to the end of the prologue and into the game proper, and goddamn is it rough.

In order to keep himself and his little group alive, them MC must venture forth into the jungle in search of supplies. While he is there he may encounter animals that have to be fought, or sources of food or water that can be brought back to the camp. All good in theory, but the implementation is awful. For one thing you can only carry about 7 items, most of which will be empty water bottles to fill up at the stream, so even if you do find food half the time you won't have enough inventory space to carry it. The combat encounters occur far too often (it's not uncommon to have to fight a wolf, lose a big chunk of health, then immediately step on a snake, lose more health, then have to fight another wolf, and lose even more health.). The combat itself is simplistic and boring, just attack every round and hope that the animal you are fighting runs out of health before you do. Every jungle screen looks more or less identical, and navigating your way through it is needlessly confusing. Once the prologue is over, this is what you will be doing for around 70% of the time you are playing the game. Fun.

There is the germ of a good game here, but it needs some serious revisions before it gets there:

• Significantly dial back the MC's creepy weirdo factor, or at least give the player some level of choice so we don't feel railroaded into playing as an utter creep.
• Revise the free roam part of the game. At an absolute minimum put directional arrows on the jungle screens so we at least know where to click in order to navigate the jungle.
• Redo the combat. Make the fights shorter and much less frequent. Give the player meaningful decisions to make in combat instead of just spamming the attack button because the only other option available (block) does nothing beyond extending the length of an already overlong fight.
• Either increase the inventory size or reduce food and water consumption. Having the player give up a part of each day (or every other day) looking for supplies is fair enough. Having them spend 70% of their time trying to find supplies and still coming up short is not.

in its current state it's not one I can see myself coming back to.

I was soooo in to this game while playing the prologue/intro.
Loved the characters and the renders....hell...even the story up to that point.
Then it got to the "real game" with the grind/management thing
For me it destroyed the game (ok maybe not THAT dramatic, but you get the point )
Hope at some point the dev will also see that this game can be so much better without this grind system. Then I'll be happy to give it more stars than 2 which are just for the introduction.

The game has great potential to be a masterpiece, with a rich story, engaging gameplay, and stunning visuals. However, I hope the developers can get the resources they need to complete the game's many major tasks, such as adding new levels, characters, and features. I also hope that they don't take an eternity to release the next update, as I'm eager to see what the game has in store.

Ridiculous grinding, excessive dependence on luck, poor dialogs, unlikeable and sophomoric MC. A lot of this is fixable, but there's a lot of work needed to make this even playable. The grinding requires 5 units every day, and you can only get 7, which often turns out to be impossible without dying because its far more likely for you to find enemies than resources, which are located randomly for each trip.

As I'm writing this, it's only v0.03 of the game, so it's an early version of the game. It's really well made. The characters are unique and animated and have really good quality. The writing is really good, as well as the whole premise of this game. It has a unique story. I'm really dyslexic so reading for me can be hard, so I love that the game creator hired voice actors.

I like the premise of the game, it's interesting and something that at least I haven't seen before. I also like the idea of it being a little survival game, a little rpg like as well, not just a vn.
A lot of people are complaining about the survival system but I don't get it. You can daily take 4 water bottles to refill, and get 3 food as well. This gets converted into even more. So you could every day train someone in the morning (or yourself when it gets implemented) and afterwards go get the food and the water.
I imagine once you start training str/agi/endurance it will get even easier.
I do suggest saving before going into the forest though, in case you find a panther that just kills you on the spot.

What I would change:
- Make the river a place you can go to directly after you found it once or twice. If you can find your way to the beach alone, you should be able to do the same to the river.
- allow for a cheat/easy mode for people just wanting to play the lewd stuff, so as to not loose fans that way.
- someone else also suggested it and I liked the idea, let people choose if avery is a boy or girl. I for one would just ignore him/her/they completely otherwise as I'm not interested in anything to do with sissification or whatever other fetish it's fulfilling.
- make the mc a little less cringe. While it is very funny how Laura always finds an explanation for whatever nonsense he spouts and I'm sure it's intentional, I would enjoy the game more if I didn't have to ignore how cringe he is.

As a final note: version 0.3 doesn't have that much content yet, looking forward to the next few updates to see what else gets added up.

For anyone that hasn't tried it yet, ver

Great Idea, really bad implementation. The survival grind takes up 95% of the time you spend in the game. I'm not here to play "The Forest". If it even felt like you were making progress the grind might be ok, but i searched for food and water for an hour and occassionally found some, but after an hour my food was 2 and my water was 4. I'm done.

Girls/Models/Sexy Sister: 5/5

Gameplay/Mechanics: -1000/5

These mechanics were introduced in 0.2, I assumed when I played and quit 0.2 cause mechanics suck that dev would fix it...no such luck. Game is unplayable, but not unsalvageable.

Fix the forest system please. When we find a location...aka fruit tree/mushroom/coconut tree and River let us just go directly there rather than wander through the forest like it's our first fucking time off the plane. also need to give like 3 times more rations per item in order to allow us to actually play the game. OR only take 1 food and 1 water per day. OR have the trees respawn every day and increase their frequency in the search and then make the river one of the locations you can just go to. in 1 hour of play I got to train ONE girl ONE time and then search the forest like 20 times for rations before I gave up. Not fun.

For V0.03

First of the good

• The English seems competent. I had no real issues understanding the dialogue. I do think conversations flow a little more but overall not bad.
• The renders look good and the girls look good.
• The sandbox is basically limited to the camp. (three screens) even if it grows a little when the game grows I don't think it will be too bad.
• While not a thing I care about there is voice acting.

Then the bad

• The coding while seeming competent has a bug that allows hovered screens to stay put sometimes (the zen screen stayed up the entire playthrough).
• The hunger/water minigame makes the game unplayable. There is literally no way to get enough food and water to keep you from dying.
• The issues above seem to indicate a quality control issue. Has the dev played their own game enough for these issues to crop up. running out of food and water did only take a couple of days.
• The hunger/water minigame is tedious. I get where the dev is going with this but only 1 in 5 screens have something in it and of those only 1 in 5 have something you need. with the rest being something that will lose you health.
• The protagonist is so unlikable that a lot of players will be turned off by him in the first few seconds. close the game and never look back. (I only survived by gritting my teeth and clicking through without reading.)

My advice to the dev

• I'd rework the intro a little to make the protagonist a little more likeable. He does not have to be an amazing guy or even the good guy. As dungeon keeper proved in the 90's "It is good to be evil." However especially in a first person game where you expect the audience to identify with the protagonist there needs to be something likable or some sort of reason why we want to forgive them for there flaws.
• More playtesting. I can imagine the tooltip bug going unnoticed but the water/hunger minigame issue should have come up.
• Rethink not just what game mechanics you want to throw into the game but how to keep your audience engaged. The hunger/water minigame is a great way to make sure your players will quit the game right now.
• I don't know if the voice acting is done via AI or a real person (line delivery feels a little flat tbh.) If you are using voice actors I'd let the voice acting lag a little behind the game update. It allows you to change any major issues without having to pay actors twice to record a changed line.
• Lastly if I was the dev I'd make Avery optionally female. I think that would increase the reach immensely with minor changes at this time. To limit dev time just have the female Avary languish a bit. I doubt many people mind a short story line while it turns away a big part of the player base when they are male. Up until now you'd only need to make minor changes including reworking one or two renders for this to work.