Ren'Py - Influencing [v0.1.16.3] [Golden Crow]

My review of Influencing [v0.1.12]

An extremely barebones unplayable shell of a game.

My first gameplay impressions
Need some money for... nothing really, so I apply for a job as a college professor.
At the interview, after insulting and groping the female college director, I get the job immediately with no experience.
Get to work right away, masturbating in the girl's bathroom and fucking a female student.
Go to the police station to turn myself in.
I can't turn myself in because the police station is just a placeholder.
Enter the slutty tutorial girl's house and fuck her instead - she loves it.
Fuck her again on the next day (making her cum multiple times) - she suddenly hates it.
The game bugs out and throws an exception every time I change location now - have to restart from the beginning.

Some more details about the game
- The "65+ locations" is more like 5+ locations where you can actually do something and 100 identical apartments.
- Conversations are extremely incoherent, repetitive, and boring
- You have like 50 dialogue options but getting someone to love you just requires spamming the same one for 10 minutes
- Sex is just clicking a position to make a bar go up/down instantly + watching small animation for some positions
- The game can randomly bug out, so you have to do frequent saves, since rollback is disabled
- Simple stuff, like opening a specific menu, is enough to softlock the game because the Close button is behind another UI element
- No background music, but has some fake moaning sounds (bound to the Music Volume slider)

I initially wanted to give this game 2 stars, because it at least has some basic gameplay, but releasing it in its current state is honestly an insult.

The game keeps making improvements by leaps and bounds! First the character creation and now the generation AI ! Amazing. First of its kind!
I am as an amateur coder, very intrigued with the inner workings of the game, and as a player happy with the playstyle.
A sims-style 2D game that has left me impressed. Well done dev.
I will change the ratings as the game progresses.

After playing games for about 5 or 6 years, I have never seen a game so ambitious as this, I think in a few years this could be the best porn game ever.

Only the graphic side needs to be improved, but the creator is transparent with his work and is working on it.

I love Influencing, i play it since June 2022 and it keeps getting better, from Update to Update!
Crow really keeps in Touch with the players, to improve the game!
I know the Graphics are not for everyone, but it really feels like a Real game, cause your choice matter!

It does not deserve to be as low as 3.5 stars for what it is, so let me fix that a little.

Don't misunderstand, this game is not finished, it's not enough for a person who really wants to fap furiously. It's more like the bones for what will come later, it's a demo that shows all the basic stuff, and i judge it as such. And on these bones the flesh will be placed... which can be called "the game just needs to be fleshed out".

Now, as a demo it shows that it will be somewhat like Lifeplay, but 2d. Your 2d avatar will even be able to participate in sex scenes, which is kinda more impressive than 3d. There are apartments for npcs to live in, there's customization for what npc you will see, there's a job system, random movement for npcs, random personalities... so yeah, Lifeplay. The only complain i have is that in this version i need to show initiative with every single npc for anything to happen, and i love it when they do it first, and i answer. Sure hope they will be able to talk to me first in the future.

Art quality might seem "low", but i'd say a different style is better for the eye, plus it's easier to make more content. If it were any higher quality i'd imagine it would've been abandoned, so consider that if you're looking at it and think it should look better - it would've been too ambitious to have both content and great looks, and you would've never seen it being finished, just adding another game into [Abandoned] pile.

Is it worth playing now? Not really(And as of 0.1.11.3 it seems you will have better luck getting laid IRL than in this game, good luck trying to earn something to fap to). It needs a lot of stuff added, and a lot of bones too. You can check it out for a few hours, imagine all the possibilities with this system, and close it.

Is it worth adding this to bookmarks and watch this thread, though? Absolutely. Which is why 5 stars, i sure am looking forward to seeing this game much more filled with content after a year or two, provided the dev will not get "life-circumstanced".

I've been following this game from it's early days and I have to say that it's already grown quite a lot and does not feel like it'll stop anytime soon.

This game is a true sandbox in which you can do whatever you want to, the game can feel a bit overwhelming at first until you learn the ropes and can also feel a bit grindy as others mentioned if you don't come in with the right mindset as each character comes with different stats in which some are easy to have sex with while some are actually impossible as they're loyal to their partners.

In case the grindy aspect is not for you then you can always enable the cheats and cheat character's stats to speed up the process as well.

As for the developer himself, I have to say that I absolutely love how friendly he is and how he listens to everyone's feedback and actively responds both here and on his Discord, it's a quality that not many have which is why I'm rating this game a 5/5 even though there's still plenty of work to be done to make it a perfect game but I'm sure we'll get there sooner or later.

The game definitively has potential, the character customization is great and allows for a lot of variety. The influencing part is cool once you get the hang of it but can be a bit grindy sometimes.
All in all I like it, this game gave me a lot of content!

A real sandbox game, looks very promising. The developer is very nice, active and open to suggestions.

The GUI it's easy and very intuitive, the gameplay is dinamic and the world is reactive.

It's very easy to start a sex scene, you even have a cheat menu if you want to skip all the grind.

Awesome game must give a try, has all the elements that a good games should have , a good map ,wide variety of npc , good mechanics , well make character coustumisation , god player and npc traits that actually matter, variety of implementable options ,

I think it's a very promising idea if it gets polished and gets more content. I'd like to see it more.

It would be good if interactions could be started by the others and if MC have some pyhsical features that could be evaluated by other characters to determine wheater they find us attractive or not.

A weird one to review because it's definitely got the potential to be a 4 but it suffers from the issue so many adult games suffer, it's too ambitious a project. The game mechanics badly need simplifying, it's genuinely cumbersome. The concept is great and it's not necessarily 'bad', it just tries to layer too much stuff that's just wasted mechanics or grind on top of what was actually a good, if already bloated, adult game concept. Sometimes the game feels like a 3, sometimes when all the burdensome parts are in play it feels like a 1.
Really solid concept which isn't totally 'bad'.
Really in need of trimming the fat, refining mechanics, and isn't totally good.

A 2 for me right now but if diversity/sheer number of women in a game is your thing or you like overly complicated games, the game would be a 3 or 4 for you.

Edit: Raising it to a 3, was reminded by an old post that there is a built in cheat menu to the game. Look it up in the forums if interested. While it doesn't solve the issues with the game directly, did appreciate the dev includes it as a QoL feature and it does reduce many of the issues while the game is in development. Game deserves an extra star for that.

So join in and everyone was buff af oh well.

Choose one that looked half decent and started seducing , turns out she is married , proceed to fck her in her house anyway.

The dude show up during oral , proceeds to grab some popcorn and take a seat to enjoy the show, his word of encouragement keep me sharp during the event and end up exhausted , he probably escort me to the front door expecting me to come back for dinner next day.

10 / 10 will play again

I wish there were more updates this year and more location. And interaction if the players character is naked in public places except beach. By the way how to have a GF or BF in this game if its possible.

This game have a great potential. I love it. It looks unique to my knowledge. Each NPC have memories and personality. It's like a The Sims in Ren'py in terms of NPC. The possibility of customize your char in anyway you want is pretty cool as well. It lacks content, but acceptable, since the game in under development. I like the consistency of the updates in this one as well! I see a great potential in here!

I really really want to give a better review but there are factors that I simply could not dismiss even at this early stage of the game. Someone else said the art is horrible. I don't agree with that. That said it could stand to be improved but overall it really isn't that bad. I have seen far worse. What I am not impressed by is the girls have unique but similar features. They are wearing basicly 80's style outfits with 70's style underwear (none). Granted there are subtle differences between the women that are nice to see once you get them undressed. (With cheats this is very simple) However once the animations for the sexual acts begin the women lose those unique features as they do not carry over into the animations at all.

There are a ton of the sexual acts listed that are simply listed as not yet implemented. (Why show them yet then?) What is the whole point of the team up feature with another guy? Tried it. All it doe is result in him cockblocking you by being in the room with the girl. Anyone else in the room results in the can we go somewhere private line. There apparently is not a private place at all in the game as that is a big take a hike line. You ain't getting that kitty when you hear it. With cheats married, virgin, in public, wherever she is solo she will will drop her shorts and sex will occur. Once the combination is figured out you will get 5.0/5 ratings on your sexual performance every time. Massive penis size does not limit your success a single bit. LMAO. Hilarious at the size of some of the hubby's when you interrupt them mid sex act. Now I know why so many are willing to cheat after all.

If you are looking for a story, keep looking. There isn't one to be found. At least I never saw one. Also who the hell am I supposed to talk to about a job? No hints or tips to point you to anyone at all. In fact there really aren't any hints or tips at all in this game for ANYTHING to be honest. There are skills. Those can be learned at the university library. But for what? Never use any of them. Making the same stuff with or without them. You can max out your population but at this stage in the game it is really not worth it. You get bored fast as the sex is the exact same with every girl because the animations are all the same. You can just change up your choices. Apparently coming inside the girls makes no difference. Hope to see pregnancy added to it. Once you have slept with all the women and deflowered all the virgin daughters what exactly is left to do? At this point. Nothing!

After 30 minutes of gameplay. I couldn't unlock any kind of sex scene, not even a visual kiss or something.

The game needs a quest log that guides you on how to play.

The reason I'm giving it such a low score is because I have a gut feeling the game is really good, but I'm so frustrated because I can't access any of its content.

I tried using the cheats, but none of the women will have sex with you, even if you have max love and you take them into your bedroom.

I literally cheated, maxed out everything, took the woman into the bedroom, asked her for sex, and she refuses, LOL.

Limited content but very impressed with the dynamic NPC generation as well as the modular character creation.

Now there isn't much sex or scenes available for the game, understandably. But, it shows PROMISE.

Will keep an eye out for this one.

open world games are always my favourite, so this game started 1-0 ahead for me. Another important factor is that it has its own cheat menu, there are a few other small factors, adjusting the gender and number of people in the city, etc. I hope it comes with updates in realistic details such as pregnancy and hair in the genital area.

It's got promise. It really needs audio and more/better animations. Only a few poses seem to be animated, and for the most part they are just soft fades between two or three images. It is cool to see the random body generation though, and see that populate in the animated scenes.

The gamplay is also sort of complex and empty at the same time. There are a lot of mechanics that I'm not sure what the significance of them is. It seems like the goal is to just fuck around. If so, why do I have hunger and energy and health and etc stats. You can learn stuff at schools but it really does not effect gameplay. Etc. Honestly, I'm not sure that I want them to effect gameplay, could grow into a ballache fast.

Really could do with some story or scenarios too. Ex: You meet your friend's wife in-game and there is specific dialog about it, or your wife's sister moves in and there is specific dialog. Sort of like that other game... LifePlay? I think? But then, maybe thats a bad idea because LifePlay will always be better than this due to 3D and fluid animation... but I really can't think of any other way to improve.

Could be a 4 star one day, I doubt it ever gets a 5 from me.

This game is unique to my knowledge:
It allows you to play for hours without getting bored because
you can change partner and even MC at any time.
Each partner has his own personality, which will determine the time and the manner of corrupting them.
As for the aspects concerning the drawings, the animations, it is still quite basic, but the game is only in its beginnings.