VN - Unity - Completed - Into the Forest [Ch. 1-7 Patreon] [BabusGames]

Hi, babus. I just wanted to thank you for such a beautiful game that Into the forest is.

Every moment I have played of it is saved in my memory and has marked my personality, with the meaningful phrases and learnings it expresses, such as "To become a monster, to kill a monster" or, "There can't be revolution without blood", "The poor had to give up their children to survive, yet the rich ate until they were about to burst". And obviously the extremely well placed ost. I will give more comments on it further ahead.

I have read the game back in 2018, and it has aged well in my memory. When replaying it though, I find the vocabulary and ideas it expresses are unique, but sometimes it's "verbose" and I can't read trought it without repeating the phrase twice or more. Aka I do find the text a little heavy to read, but that might be just me. Plus when I am remembering the game it just makes way more sense. The phrases marked, and else.

I also like the artstyle a lot. You don't get that anime-like design usually. It is hypnotizing to see tbh; I consider Vera and Sekani the prettiest girls, and characters in the game.

I have a weird feeling that the story starts with a reasonably nice plot, gets repetitive at the middle, and then only at the last it reaches it's best. Peasant with friend-sister live some days with a noblewoman and her maid in her manor, while there's this monster around and this (in my opinion) beautiful catgirl called Sekani. Then they spend like 3 chapters in the manor, living very similar situations and only meeting june and july in the process. Just in the 5-6 and 7 we get to see more characters and the spirits/carlis, probably the character from whom I learnt the most.
And you could deduce this all is decent, and it is. But I just feel that, reorganized, the story could easily be way better. The baroque world is also well set.
I haven't got all the endings yet anyway. Only got the happy one I think. Loking forward to make more memories with the game (in these new endings to explore or the same one(s)), but as I said it does look a little hard to read.

As a final wish, I would like you to be more open about what the game is and what it contains. Most of the ost is paid music coming from different artists, but you could add links to them. Also you could say your inspirations, such as the (creepingly extreme) resemblance of Count Bert with Lekain from fire emblem, and the naming of the catgirl sekani after sanaki, another character of these videogames. Also how you make the art and else. I am sure people would appreciate it.

So the game is completely fine, and even better when I am rather remembering it or the important parts of it and taking such beautiful things from it. I am sure there is still some pretty things I havent unveiled, so I will make sure to play the game a lot. Once again thanks babus.

I wondered whether to give this one or two stars. Settled on two because I DID enjoy significant parts of the experience, even if they were almost completely marred by the ending.

First things first: this is a VN running on Unity, not Ren'Py or another specialized engine. As a result, it is far messier than it needs to be and lacks basic features, such as text rollback.

Mechanical problems aside, the art is beautiful. Backgrounds are pretty generic, but characters are easy on the eyes and all sex scenes are competently animated. This is probably the game's strongest suit.

The problems arise when we look at the most important part of a VN - the words. To start off, the text is brimming with ridiculous typos and wrong pronouns abound, for some reason (as in, women will often be referred to as "he" and men as "she". It isn't even a case of characters being trans, non-binary or something - it REALLY is just a textual mistake).

The writing itself is competent and intriguing at first, to the point that it actually gives you the impression that your choices DO matter; if you are the completionist type, you will feel tempted to create several different saves to explore the ramifications of your actions on future chapters. It is mostly smoke and mirrors, though: in classic VN fashion, it mostly comes down to relationship points and you are severely railroaded, with only a few choices truly, genuinely mattering. The ones that DO matter are not always obvious, however, so it might be wise to use a guide.

Regardless of the impact of your choices, the story can genuinely hook you in at first, as I mentioned in the previous paragraph. It often does feel like it is going through the motions and not spending enough time letting you get immersed in the world - I felt almost like I was watching a movie that clearly had several scenes cut due to budgetary concerns - but it still didn't make me want to step away from it all. The story does a good job of making you care for these characters, mostly because it makes you feel as though there are lots of layers underneath them all. What awaits you once you get to know more about them, you wonder?

Sadly, that potential is never truly fulfilled. With a single exception - Vera, the redhead - every single heroine ends up either underdeveloped or developed in a way that feels utterly unearned. One of them is essentially just a piece of cardboard -
And then comes the game's greatest flaw - its endings. There are 5 in total. Two of them are essentially premature endings that serve as heroine-focused conclusions and a third is a glorified bad ending. One of those heroine-focused ends actually feels earned - It remains true to her character and feels thematically appropriate. does make a bit of sense, but it trashes character completely by making her seem as naive as a child half her age.

And then there are the two main endings. Boy, those are a mess. One is also a bad ending - essentially a way of punishing the player for almost getting there, but not quite. It is awful, but hey, it is clearly meant to yank the player's chain. But the golden ending? The one that is supposed to put a bow on the story?

Well, It also makes the main character seem like a pathetic idiot, all while completely undoing the most interesting parts of his personality. The main conflicts are also resolved in a baffling way that borders ridiculously close to being a Deus Ex Machina and feels completely unearned, all for the sake of giving the player I know this a porn game, but for something that clearly had quite a bit of ambition, seeing it dropping the ball so spectacularly was just disappointing. The "main" ending pretty much unravels all the good things the plot had going for it up until that point.

In the end, would I recommend this game? Not really. It had potential, but it was sadly squandered. The sex scenes are good, but there is quite a bit of text for you to read to get them all, so if you just want a masturbatory tool, there are better options out there.

That said... the authors are clearly passionate about this whole Vn making thing. They put out a dud this time, but they do have potential and I wouldn't be surprised if they crafted a truly great VN one day. I wouldn't recommend this particular work, but I do advise anyone who is into VNs to keep an eye on these guys; they clearly have what it takes.

Oh, and they also made Legend of the Spirit Orbs. If you just want to masturbate to a game, they already have you covered.

Decent baseline, good art and character designs and a completely awful ending.

Some characters are fleshed out much much more than others. Sex scenes consist of one or two thrusting animations; if that does it for you then it will here.

Unless some minor decision early on completely changes the end of the game, the ending is really crap and you get cucked in the lamest possible way; or you pick one of the "minor endings" that your earlier decisions can allow you to.

The carry over of information also doesn't seem to have as much of an impact on flavour text as it should as a lot of text from later games seem to read you as having taken different decisions in previous games even if you import your save.

If the game had ended at chapter 6 I could maybe recommend, but I definitely couldn't recommend after Chapter 7.

First - the story. Heavy and emotional rewarding with confusing and powerful outcome.
Second - graphics and the length of gameplay. It had good pace with enough length to cover the story. I think also the graphics coped well with it.
It really left me with jaw dropped. A must play

Ok so first of all, I didnt knew what to expect. I thought its just another plotless, harem, dumn MC game but to my surprise its really good. I played it till chapter 6 which the most that is availiable rn. I really liked the character designs. I'm a fan of this type of art. And the plot was good. So many turns and surprises.
pros-
~ Nice art style
~ Nice animation
~ Good plot

cons-
~ The story felt a little short
~ The progression with the sister felt a little rushed. Not that I'm complaining but if there was somw more seducing and arousing involved, it'd have been even great.
~ No hotkey for skipping. There's an option but it skips texts too fast.


Other than that, I absolutely loved it and would recommend it to everyone.

Only played to Ch1 so take this review with that in mind. As such I will give a brief overview of what I thought of the game

Pros:
+ Beautiful Graphics
+ Sound is done well
+ Skip feature in Unity

Cons
- Crippled version uploaded to the site
- Skip feature has no hotkey (at least none I could see)
- Backstory feels shallow as characters explain their previous life in a couple of seconds rather then minute or more flashbacks
- Story that is there moves too fast. One of the side characters dies it's supposed to be a tragic event but since the player is just introduced to him it falls flat
- Save system offers a very limited number of slots

As such I can't recommend this game there just isn't enough there and that is before the Dev decided to cripple one of the two paths by making it Patron only.

I didnt really know what to expect but its overall a nice game, the plot line is really interesting. Too bad that the MC got the be such a whimp anyway;
+
Nice character design, really love the girls
Nice backgrounds
Nice animations + scenes; they are of good quality.

-
Storyline started pretty good, but for me just took a wrong turn
Also not many choices+ half the choices are for patreons only (major -)
Making the MC a idiot, to me is never fun to play

I hope in future updates that the MC will man up a bit, but agaian thats maybe just my prefrence. Thank you for reading this and as always: keep up the good work !

I'm writing this review after having finished playing Chapter 2, as it is the end of the content at the moment.

It's a pretty good VN made in Unity, with some great drawings, a well written story and animated NSFW scenes (vanilla stuff and some light femdom). Some of the content is behind a Patreon paywall, but it's mostly a few bonus scenes, therefore you don't feel obligated to pay if you don't want to or can't afford to. I was particularly impressed with the soundtrack, since it's very fitting and creates the right atmosphere through the whole experience.
The UI could use some minor improvements, but it's nothing big and the developer seems to be aware of that anyways.

Overall a very promising project to keep an eye on, especially if you get hooked by the story as happened to me.

I would say that this is a really cool game I ever witness! The characters. the background, the story plot, brilliant! It doesn't matter how many chapter you make. I hope I can see the results in the future soon! Have fun making it & take your time as much as you wanted! >W<