VN - Ren'Py - Intertwined [v0.13.2] [Nyx]

Nice story. Gorgeous humor. Awesome Nik... emm... characters))) Overall one of the best game I have ever played. Seriously I got so deeply engaged that I played almost nonstop)
There are downsides however. Graphics are not too good... sometimes even rather bad. This especially true for animations and backgrounds. Character designs and detail are great though. Not that I need them very much when I have lovely chars and plot but it would be nice to get better graphics too)

My download said v0.9.2 (though I don't see that version in the Changelog).

A teen/high school drama VN.

+ Attractive models
-- Animations are subpar and not very frequent
+ Diverse personalities
> If you're looking for a harem story, this is NOT that. Pick a girl and work that storyline because you only can be with one in the end.
> Emily, the mom, is a MILF but no sexy storyline with the MC if that is another thing you're looking for.
+ MC is likeable.
+ MC's friend/sidekick is very UN-unlikeable (cringe-worth).
+ A detestable antagonist.
-- No gallery, which this VN could really use.
+ There is a good amount of story/reading here.
> A lot of brunettes (which is my preferred type), but not a lot of other variety...or so it feels.
+ I like we have different races...I'm just missing my Asian-flavor!
+ Not a direct point for the game, but the mod walkthrough was super helpful to know what decisions have what impact...especially with so many girls/storylines.
> I don't know if getting points with Layla's mom or teacher Gabi will lead to some MILF action or not. That doesn't seem to be the focus of this story.

OVERALL:
Enjoyable and I'm more than willing to try it again and explore more storylines through multiple playthroughs once it comes along further.

This VN is one of the better quality ones on here. The story is mostly your high school "omg my hormones..." type of setting where drama and comedy collide.

The MC is fairly likeable and I give Nyx points for the ink sleeve he has. Nice to see an MC with tats
He's not a complete dick and can be pretty decent mostly - even though he was a retard as a kid.

The characters are fairly diverse, the girls are attractive and have reasonably believable personalities.

Erryn just irritated me with her possessive behavior which is plain irrational at times. Alexis can get freaky (go girl!) but gives slight stalker vibes...
Layla is a teasing type who gets jealous easily. Elena comes across a bit bitchy but is actually fun, caring and loyal - she can also be interested in a throuple scenario with MC and Layla if you play it right.

My favorite is the later added Valeria. Val is just a smokeshow! she is cool, calm but feisty when angered. She gets stalked by a walking disease called Zach (your friend... *cringe*) who goes full Ted Bundy in his romance attempts.

Nikki and Carla are a pair of sisters the MC can become romantically involved with. I liked Nikki as she was fun, athletic and very confident. Carla is sweet, shy and unconfident for the most part - but she can improve with MC's help.

Now for the annoying characters. Zach. Oh god, never have I wanted to jam my nails into some VN characters eyeballs as badly as his. He's a dick. A diseased, leperous one. The guy knows no boundaries, or hygiene, or tact, or common fucking sense. literally a walking dick

Ethan is the resident scumbag antagonist that is trying to slide into Erryn's most holiest of holy treasures. He is an arrogant little cock womble. If I was Erryn, I would have drop kicked him into a trash bin loooong ago, but nope.

The drama can be funny at times, irritating at others. The whole Erryn/Alexis bust up over the MC, complete with lots of crying, just made me want to bitch slap them both. Hello? you are besties are you not? hoes before bros bitches!

Overall, it's pretty fun and offers a good slice of high school drama if that's what you like. I just want to see Ethan and Zach's exsanguinated corpses and I will be a happy girl

Intertwined just turned into 1 of my all time favourite games,its just freakin amazing.
The story is quite engaging from start & is 1 hell of a rollercoaster ride.

My favourite part is the branching which is insanely good & increases its replay value as subtle changes in decisions leads to various consequences.
LI r also quite wholesome, though my fav is & will always be Nikki (though I'm hooking up with 5 girls in the end of 10.5,needs more Nikki sugar cuz she isn't there 75% game).
I like the MC as he isn't a douche/edgelord infact most of his interactions have a realistic approach

Though in the end i do have 2 complaints:-
1.No music/sound which is a real shame as I've seen games with bare content or 1/2 a polish as this with it.Audio can really enhance the immersion which can literally elevate this game to a whole new level
2.Sex animations though at the start were really subpar I've noticed it getting better with latest updates still the animations could use an fps boost cuz it's really weird seeing 30fps animations especially in 2023

Liked the game, and checking frequently for updates. Decent story line, lot's of paths to take. Alot of li's for every prefference. But i mostly play these games for the story, The "Adult" part of it is just a fanservice in my head like in TV-series like got etc.

This is a five-star game. It has everything needed to make it one of the top games out there.
Overall Impression -
Look, if you are into only immediate sex or quick harems or dumbed-down writing to make sure the MC can just go around railing everyone, this is not for you. I AM NOT knocking those games. They have their place and are very worthwhile and I personally love those as well. It's just time we really categorize these games/novels if we are going to have them taken seriously and we are going to fairly evaluate them. This is in that different category of Adult games that is above and beyond in story and writing and is upper echelon. It has was makes everyone love DIK and the like. It is way more than the "adult sex" game genre. It has a fun story that has some really fun and good (if predictable) twists that make it fun to continue on. Part of the unique fun is not that the twists are so much undiscoverable, but the anxiety they create knowing the twist or after the surprise twists are revealed, waiting for the consequences or the moment they will affect your finely tuned playthrough. The writing is splendid and is the real talent of this dev. The rest is great but the writing has excellent humor that is realistic and relevant and the feelings are real. No over-the-top nonsense or excessive inner monologue (though early on it is too much, this heals itself thankfully rather quickly). The story origin itself is fairly simple and not even that complex but what it does is lends itself to making more opportunities as you progress. It makes for scenarios you may not see coming, opening up new path ideas.
The Characters - Most of the characters are very well thought out. the renders are well above average for the most part. animations are very lacking which may turn people off, but I happen to prefer that. Again, there is very little sex for quite some time compared to most games so animations aren't necessarily needed. The characters are rendered nicely and most are very gorgeous, but more importantly, their development is great. Somehow the writing doesn't go so in-depth for chapter after chapter making them come to life, but they still have enough development to make them very liked and alive. Even the models we have all seen multiple times still have their own unique personalities so in short time you will not have any trouble seeing them as the character in this story and not as the character you last remember that model being.
Story - Overall the story is kinda random. Not in a bad way, but it doesn't tie itself down to the original idea and then force everything. It is almost like one of the few cases I have ever seen where there was a small idea and the writer just went with the flow and developed it as it went, but in this case that was a blessing. I don't know if this happened or not, but the lack of a defined path at the beginning is really useful, oddly enough. It's clever because it develops more plot as it goes forward. There are times when the story is getting good and you are super connected to the characters, but then you change course into a completely new direction. This frustrates you and worries you because you developed your attachments and want to see what happens with those you choose to love, but then the new path reels you in and when you start to love them and want that to go somewhere, you are allowed to merge those paths together and get back to everything. You can breathe a sigh of relief and smile because you are back to your original characters and love interests, but now you feel more whole and have more to care about.
Menus / UI / Choices -
The menus and UI are standard, nothing new and fancy. It works perfectly fine and the options are there you need, including named saves if you need that. Choices are pretty limited but most of them play a small role in developing points toward one character or against another. No grinding and no jumping from day to day looking for certain events. It's linear and there is no veering off the set path, but trust me - this is okay in this case.
If you are a financial supporter of these projects, this is one I would support simply because it is excellent and clearly the dev cares about their project.

tl;dr - Falls into the different category or actual GREAT GAMES developed with thought and purpose. Excellent game. One of the top 3 IMHO. Very good renders, beautiful characters, and character development. Good story. Choices make small differences but there are big choices to make. OVERALL MUST PLAY

This is the best game in regard dynamic and design , first time I played I didn't notice that I missed so much because of poor choices, interaction could be awfuly short when that happening , which shows importance of action and choices ,Nyx really did this masterfully.
Story is classic and beautiful, childhood love something that many of us experienced it growing up and it's unforgettable , and here we have it all in glory , story is really captivating , characters are so adorable I wish knowing them in reality .
Intertwined is really one of a kind .

The better name for this game would be "Soap Opera: The adult episode", because that is pretty much what it feels like playing this game.

So you can expect lots of artificial drama, highly unlikely coincidences, stupid behaviour that makes you want to punch the characters (both the MC and NPCs) and problems that could be solved easily if people would just use their brains for 2 seconds.
I also wasn't a fan of the MC. On the one hand he is this huge babe magnet and almost every girl you meet pretty much falls in love with him undyingly after 5 minutes which was both boring and unbelievable, on the other hand he is often very passive in situations where it's just extremely annoying and on top of that with pretty much every answer that isn't 100% nice and understanding, you risk losing points so if you don't want to miss content, you are very limited in your actions.

But the good news is: while all that sounds pretty negative, just like a real soap opera, playing the game is actually pretty fun when you know what to expect. The characters, while often being quite stupid, are still more nuanced and interesting than in most other games and the story is interesting enough that I was following it until the the end of the current content and I will definitely come back to the game as well. The writing is also not too verbose which is a big plus.

A word about the technical side of the game: Images and especially animations are nothing special, same goes for the sex scenes which are kind of bland, there is also no sound, so the game can't really score in that area. Some of the girls are really gorgeous though (and very well rendered) and the expressions are often on point without the need of further text explanations which sadly is rarely the case in these games and therefore worth mentioning.

All in all I was very well entertained the whole time and that is really impressive considering how extensive the game already is, so while I do have issues with the game, I still recommend it and am looking forward to future episodes. (v.10.5)

Edit: Also read @Kata review a few pages back (May 3 2022). S/he describes much more elaborated and detailed the problems this game has with the storytelling and gameplay design. I still like the game overall and will continue to play it, because like I previously said it can be very entertaining, but the game has problems you must be willing to overlook.

After I played the first section in the plane, I did not expect much from this game. The Render and scene quality was pretty meh, there was no music, and it just didn't feel that interesting.

I gave it a second chance and booted it up again and I'm very glad I did. The story and characters have been quite enjoyable. Quality has been improving and I'm looking forward to upcoming new chapters and re-playing the game with the re-renders.

A little concerned about the length of the game however, we are currently on chapter 10, and there seems to be a some paths left that we have not even begun exploring, like Brooke and Shacarri

For branching we have our main 5, and quite a few characters that seem like realistic main partners, like Elena, Valeria, Iris(maybe?)

On top of others that we will likely get a couple scenes for here and there:
Melissa, Gabi, Tori, Julia(?), Lakeyn(?), Rachel(?), Mom(?)

Curious to see where it goes from here, though I fear we may be in for increased dev time with episodes being shorter for any particular branch going forward

This VN sure shows the touch of a woman in writing. I congragulate the dev for the ambitious writing. In overall, it shows how fucked up things can get if serial monogamy and/or one night stands are too mainstream coupled with lack of contraception in a small town.

Lots of girls with distinct faces and realistic personalities and problems. Good renders, ok animations. Mild het intercourse in general. Unexpected ..cest.

Due to intrinsic issues and complexity in code, in the first playthrough many may experience a hit and miss and you might end up with the girl with the least checkpoints. It's OK tho cuz this game worth a couple of replays. One way to solve this might be giving girls inner dialogue as to show the player their interest in MC has gone or so. Thus, I had to get the walkthrough guide to optimize my experience and RPs.

As in v0.10, we didn't reach the climax yet, imo.

Hope dev keeps up the quality and gives this game the climax and the ending it deserves.

This is my first review on one of these VN's, I've played a good 65+ but this one will definitely be in my top 5 ever. The plot is exceedingly good, the LI's are fleshed out extremely well (screen time for some could be better), renders are okay but I've noticed them improving further into the game and the amount of content this game has is great. Also the MC is fantastic, finally a handsome and likable MC instead of the classic college fratboy.

The only con for me is the classic "RP System", not a huge fan of it and losing scenes because you might be missing "1 relationship point" from a very minimal choice.

Overall this game is definitely worthy of a 9.5/10, hope to see more great content I will definitely be supporting this author!

poorly written story, the mom is a hoe. Alexis is a great girl, and Layla is cute too. However, couldn't get over the mom I just hate her. If you like moms that are whores then this game is for you. Sex scenes are 2/10 there isn't much of passion in them.


Honestly, I have no idea how this game has high reviews. This game literally forces you to play with girls that will lie to you all the time and makes it somehow your fault for being lied to or made fun of.

The mom is a bitch who only cares about how hot men look like and not their personality, your neighbor is a bitch who wants your dick just because you're hot.

Now, all of these things would've been fine if there was an option of revenge or having no scene with the mom and other bitchies. But no you're forced to treat your hoemom nicely, you're forced to treat the girls that lie to you nicely.

Story might be written by a feminist I dunno.

Intertwined.

Finally got around to playing the update (v0.10.2).

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Melissa's very first scene with the MC is a dream sequence...really? Developers still haven't figured out that this trope sucks and kills anticipation, not enhances it? You know you are beating around the bush with a character far too much when you decide to make their first full scene with the MC a dream sequence, in the 10th update,,,, and it wasn't even a tease of a scene. It was literally a fully fledged scene.

On top of this, I think there is just way too much going on here now. Too many girls/LI's, another extremely common trope I am not a fan of.

This is also why I think Melissa got a dream sequence for her first scene, Nyx probably thought "oh shit, I really need to give Melissa a scene with the MC, but want to keep the slow burn going between them" So as a result, we got the dream sex scene. If you absolutely must make a dream sequence scene, make it more of a tease. I think showing an entire first sex scene this way is a massive mistake. Always have, and always will. Intertwined isn't the first VN to do this and sadly will not be the last.

Dream sequence rant over, let's move on to another rant.

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I only really care for Valeria and Melissa, I also like Iris, Nikki & Layla too but all of these girls get sidelined to extremes to fit in a lot of other girls. Pretty sure even more "LI's" are planned too.

Why can't developers ever consider quality over quantity? There are quality girls in Intertwined, but the quantity of them diminishes the entire experience.

I really love a lot of what Intertwined has to offer. Gorgeous girls, with fleshed out relationships with the MC. It is quite well written when it wants to be., the renders are more than serviceable.

This would all be great if only there weren't so many love interests for the MC. This isn't just a fault of Intertwined, however. It's not even really a fault at all if you ask most people, the more the merrier in these games apparently. I just personally feel burnt out playing these stories where my favorite girls get sidelined to fit in so many other love interests, as well as waiting extremely long periods for an update just to see that the girls I like the most aren't even in said update, or get dream sequences for their scenes instead of real ones.

When all is said and done, would I recommend Intertwined? Absolutely. There is a lot here to like & enjoy. As with most Visual Novel's however, get ready to feel disappointed when the girls that you take a shine to the most don't get enough content, in order to fit in a ridiculous amount of LI's for the MC.


And I will say it one more time, please stop with the dream sequence bullshit dev's, for a characters very first scene with the MC especially. It literally ruins the hype.

The story itself is great for a school setting. Just keep in mind that for most of the "love interests" it is a little slow paced. Sceens are also great, no problems here.

But the decision-making part of the game is what's bothering me. This game have meaningful decisions but it's turned up to eleven. Having said that, it is almost impossible to handle without a walkthrough. You want to have sceens with one particular character but suddenly you get -10 relationship because you didn't help some other character which happend to be her friend.

But otherwise it is a great game and has decent amount of content as of v0.10.2. Just keep it in mind.

Seriously one of the top 5 games that I have played so far.
The story is engaging, and not one-dimensional. While there are relationship plots galore, a few side stories are also brewing throughout the game. Characters' relationships between one another AND the MC are carefully cultivated, rather than the typical, "Your Hot, let's do it" you might see in many games. With Intertwined you feel engaged & Invested in the stories between the characters. I'm impressed with the forethought and planning that allows all the characters to be connected to one another either anecdotally or via direct interactions and plotlines. Very clever!

Generally:
Good to great renders
fantastic characters that you care about
Great writing (There are a few minor translation issues such as context, or grammar, but these are easily forgiven and not so egregious as to interfere with the immersion.)

Props to the developer on this one.

Sometimes too much retrospective, but I understand way. I love this game! So good story, and very good characters, not just clones. Every girl is interesting somehow. Sometimes is hard to choose, I have multiple saves with other path, but I understand that. Keep going!

Intertwined could be a solid five star experience simply because it's doing a great job of being an unapologetic telenovela of the highest order. The plot is light to dramatic, with lots of choices and unexpected twists, characters you can empathise with and relationships you can nurture and develop and the stakes for some of the protagonists are high.

But there are also things about Intertwined that I find problematic. This AVN forces you to make mutually exclusive decisions between LI-paths. And even though I think that's okay in principle, I absolutely don't like the fact that the LI I didn't choose almost completely disappears from the plot.
Just because I choose Nikki or Erynn doesn't mean I don't want to have any meaningful interactions with Cara or Alexis. But in Intertwined that's exactly what happens. I feel punished by this mechanic if I'm being completely honest and it breaks my immersion quite a bit.
The way I see it and the way I played the MC he would never abandon a friend like that. It's an artificial design decision that goes contrary to his personality.

Music would do Intertwined a lot of good. There are much worse AVNs that do a much better job of carrying emotions with music and sound.

And finally, I'm not a fan of the points system. Many scenes or relationships are lost because you miss simple decisions. Without a walkthrough, it is VERY difficult to get on some of the LI paths, even if you really like them and treat them with affection.
The plot is written in such a way that a plot-decision can overshadow a relationship-decision and your relationship can suffer if you follow what you consider a plot choice. For instance, just because I want to catch up with Erynn after not having seen her for YEARS that doesn't mean I lack interest or are disloyal to Elena. The game will treat it like that though.

Intertwined is really well done, don't get me wrong. But some of the design decisions are questionable and significantly spoil the overall experience.

largely i enjoy this game. sorting out paths can be tricky, what qualifies or eliminates you from one girl's path is vague. some thing triggers are obvious and some others will probably require a walkthrough. renders have been compressed to keep file size smaller which is appreciated for those of us with bad wifi. the dialogue is decent, it tracks and make sense and characters have a nice back and forth. as it is a work in progress, there are a handful of typos and syntax errors.

characters are often described by a first name so then the last name and who they are and are related to is a "surprise". this gets old after awhile. the whole concept of everything being interconnected is an interesting novelty, but i believe the concept has diminishing returns. this is especially the case with repeated playthroughs, because it hinges on surprise and you already know what that is, you find yourself paying less attention. the push and pull between tension & set up vs surprise.

there is a prevalent use of flashbacks to give backstory and because so much focus and time and renders are devoted to this, i feel it disrupts the pacing and tension of what is going on in the present. it puts focus on the story not the story teller and how they remember the past and what they choose to tell, and what their reactions are to sharing.

the other weird thing is cheating amongst the main character's parents is vilified, yet in game you can pursue multiple girls at once and have a relationship with a married woman. i'm sure because things are intertwined the girls would find out eventually and it would be handled accordingly, but some consistency would be nice if we're going to claim the moral high ground.

on another note, the lack of music is surprising. i checked my speakers twice to assure they weren't broken. i know licensing music is expensive and most sources refuse to allow their music to be in a pornographic game regardless, but something would be nice, it feels empty as is.

the branching paths causes updates to be slow on account of the variety of content and the tricky little variables. the longer the development cycle takes, the more competition this game has. in that way, games with a well defined smaller premise have an advantage over a developer that is attempting a lot by themselves or with a very small crew. i would hate to have to code this game.

a couple other minor points, erin and lexi, if you spend the night with them go to sleep with makeup on. this is addressed in one of the latest updates where you see a makeup-less lexi. another thing is that there are a couple of lines of dialogue where the main character says addresses the plot conveniences of iris being alexis's roommate or his mom going to college with adriana. addressing criticism in game is meta and while i get it, it doesn't excuse the issues.

but the developer is doing the best they can and has a clear vision for what they want to do and is sticking to it. while the game is not perfect, you can't really ask for more than that.

oh, and if we are making pokemon analogies, layla is charmander, lexi is charmeleon and adriana is charizard.

The good
good scenario
good renders

The bad
Limited sex scenes in both duration and number
Points problem the player has to collect points to unlock new scenes one mistake and you are f****d
Only one girl the game restricts the player to be with 1 girl at a time making plus te lack of sex scenes with 90% of the girls this is b****t
Dialogue at sex scenes are terrible

Conclusion there are much netter games out there this is a waste of time

So I was looking for a new game to play and came across this one - it had a high overall rating and the renders from the preview pics in the opening post looked promising...

This is a slower-moving story that focuses more on character / narrative / relationship development, which in my opinion is a very good thing - I find these preferable to games where the MC meets a girl and within an afternoon they're already banging 6 ways from Sunday.

The good stuff in the game are the women are gorgeous, relationships are pretty well-developed, minus all of the women having the fairly typical "goo goo eyes for MC at first sight" that we see so often in VNs - minimal effort required to initiate things with them.

The story is well-developed. You can tell a lot of planning and thought went into the game's narrative - there is a lot of branching code involved for all the interactions and relationship possibilities, so I do give the dev a lot of credit for managing it all.

The negatives are no music in the game, which detracts heavily from the environment - I find that VNs with roaming / situational / character-themed music really helps add a lot of emotion into the game.

And the biggest negative for me is how the mother (Emily) / son relationship is seemingly handled. In the years I've been enjoying VNs, I don't think I've ever really gotten into a mother / son relationship - it's generally not my kink - in the incestual situations of games, I am more into brother / sister stuff, but in this game, I found the mom so unbelievably attractive, that pretty much within the first 20 minutes of playing the game, she was in the #1 slot for me and hasn't budged through Chapter 10. I assumed she was romanceable as there are spots all through the game where you're being shown her cleavage and given choices on how to handle situations with her - even sleeping in her bed and waking up fondling her boobs. There are places later on where you have to decide whether to kiss her on the mouth or not. Whether to let her know she looks sexy or not, etc. See Vidal's Post 17111 for some example screenshots (as long as they're up, at least) - https://f95zone.to/threads/intertwined-v0-10-nyx.53676/post-9328875
What I've come to unfortunately discover in my perusal of the game thread after playing through Chapter 10 is that in all likelihood (if not a certainty) there will NOT be a romance option with the mom. I've lost track of the # of posts where it was stated or implied that that the Dev is trolling people with the development of this relationship. Now I don't know that for a fact, I'm just going off of what I've read in the thread, so we'll see. If something changes, I'll update my review [and the score] accordingly, but I do find this pretty off-putting if it's the case and I think it reflects poorly on the developer as it's literally just teasing people, if true. I am generally the type that, after playing a game on F95, if I enjoyed the game, I like supporting developers by going and buying their game on Steam or GOG and sometimes even backing the game on Patreon to offer additional monetary support, but in this case, needless to say this will negatively affect the score I leave for the game and it will remain an F95 exclusive. This was the first game I've played by this Developer and will likely be the last.