Ren'Py - Life in Santa County [v0.10.1] [Bold Bash Studios]

So, first of all, english. Yeah, you know what i am about to say soy, please be comprehensive


In general terms the game is "Good", that's why I give it 3 stars.

To justify this score I am going to basically analyze the story, the gameplay and the renders.

Story and plot.

-Pretend to be something complicated and stick to the basics.

-The prologue with Dave is, in my opinion, ridiculous and doesn't make any sense.

-The MC's relationship between schoolmates and with his "family" is very unnatural.

-Everything happens too fast and in many moments there is a lack of context and it even makes you think that you just missed something and that you need to go back.

-This also happens during the sex scenes. Some start very unexpectedly.


Gameplay

-The different answers during the dialogues are very confusing, and many times they do not correspond to what you supposedly expect to see.

-Sometimes you can skip dialogues and other times you can't. Sometimes you can go back and sometimes you can't ... so....

-The selection of your skills or perks is too simple. The developer has spent time on those cards but are always the same.

Renderings

-Without any place what saves this project.

-Very good quality and careful in the details.

-Has a pretty decent variety of optionss during the sex scenes.

-Animations are very well implemented

-As a personal opinion. I don't like the disproportionate bodies of either the male or female characters. Breasts so big and dicks that look like legs

wow wow this game is fucking amazing. The artwork and the posing of the models is some of the best I have seen on this site. I have two complaints though. Sometimes the dialog isn't clear like if it were written by someone who isn't entirely fluent in English. Second, I think moving around the free roam map can get kind of awkward. Overall I think this game has insane potential and excited to see the future of this project!

Jesus fuck. I'm not sure how anyone could give this less than 5 stars. It's probably one of the best adult games I have ever played. The writing is leagues above most of the material found on F95. The models are meticulously designed and very unique to one another. The scenes are amazing with a lot of interactivity. The posing of the models in scenes even outside of sex, is incredibly erotic. Super impressed with the whole package.

The one criticism I might levy is that it's kinda of unclear how the points affect the story and the lack of things to find in the game. What does the trophies do? Or money? Would like secrets that open up scenes or new art.

Amazing game!

The game have a lot of sexy scene and the design is so perfect ı love it.I
In the game you have a lot of choices and the choices affect your opportunity ı love that feature the best sex game ı have ever seen. I hope it will continue.

What a mess. Everything is all over the place. The story, the coding, so many repeat dialogues like dev doesn't know what to say, the pacing and especially the continuation of story lines. As it's sandbox one must go from place to place looking for interactions, might be easier with a WT, but who wants to read the WT, play 2 minutes and then back to WT, all that with one hand to click and the other to fap. It's a mess. It wants to be Milfy City but it's NOT. Hell it even uses the Daz3d character for the mom (Lauren) and all the body shapes remind me how much I miss MC and curse that asshole Icstor. 2 stars for CGs and effort. Dev should really refine his coding and scriptwriting. For the effort I will come back when it's completed and will review the rating then. Really hope dev makes a better game if only just for the mom..

One of the best games I ever played (i played thousand of f95 games already) and what i can say this one will be in my top 10 I hope the author will non stop updating the game true 10/10 so 5/5

This game is too good to not have sex sounded effects such as moaning and Butt slapping etc. I see the butt slapped and it gets red but no sound I see awesome renders Great animations and I love the story. Plz, allow users that want it to have it and for those that don't let them mute it. No matter what I will play this game but it would take it to a whole other level if that was added. Great game dev

Far too flawed.

The prolog had a lot in it I didn't like.... but I played through it anyhow, because I understood it was there to set the stage for the story. That choices and direction would be yours once things were established.
So, despite many issues with it, I understood it for what and why it was. My rating is not because of anything in the prolog, and if you played and didn't like the prolog, my first piece of advice is to go back to the game, finish the prolog, and then get into the game proper, to see if it is more worth your time.

So, that said, why only 2 stars?
Well, the renders are great, and the story has room to be very interesting. The MC has some depth, and some characters are great.
Those are the pros, and they should be good enough for a higher rating, right?

Well, here are the cons:
1) disabled scroll back. believe it or not, all this does is piss off players and waste their time. They'll just save before choices or events, and reload. Or rely on autosaves. It doesn't encourage us to play any differently.

2) lack of choices. So, here's a scenario that may be very uncommon, but not unheard of. The player decides they are not interested in romancing the aunt. The player decides they do not like the cousin. The player gives his aunt the information he got from his cousin's phone. Aunt now has the chance to fix things. Cousin pays for being a cruel bitch. Both paths are closed (though may effect the story).
Some people would bitch this is NTR. Well, it isn't. You'd literally be turning them away as LIs, and thus they can't cuck you. Aunt would only go back if given the info, and if not, wouldn't, so any path with her wouldn't have NTR.
See, a choice like that allows the player to decide who he is interested in, and what to do with info he has been given in game. Instead, we get this info, we never use it, and we talk to the aunt about what a shitty guy her ex was.
That's a lack of meaningful choices, in my book.

But the bigger issue with choices is... they don't carry over chapter to chapter. I ended chapter one with just a massage. Chapter two is very clear that, canonically, more happened.
In chapter one, I did not talk to the guy playing guitar in school. In chapter two, he comes to talk to me right away about the conversation we... actually never had.
That is a disaster in games like this. Either follow our choices, or don't bother giving us choices.


Those two issues could be the only cons I see, and still effect the game so much, in both technical and story telling ways, that I feel warranted in giving it a low rating.
Add to that some very bizarre dialog choices that read like 90% native english speaker and 10% google translate, and a lot of story inconsistencies, and you have a game I got no enjoyment out of playing.

Which is a shame. If the aunt hadn't been manipulated out of her relationship by her bitch daughter and instead was just single, I would have been into her. The chemistry behind you and your mother (and the quelling of a concern about her behavior in the prolog), I would have been into her. I genuinely like Iris as a character, and would have loved to love this game, just for her.
But I ultimately think this game is a highly-polished looking.... but awkward and mediocre, game... that seems to utterly forget that you are making choices towards your own end, and railroads you into the scenarios it wanted you to play.

Incredible Work.....ONLY STANDING OVATION for This Game. Every aspect of the game is very high Level.
Very Interessant Story, Gameplay and litte elements of a Sandbox are very functional and they make the playing experience very Enjoyable. I really enjoy this game.

This needs to be way higher!!
Renders look amazing, animations are VERY well done and even the story keeps you interested. I can see 2 path unfolding, which is a great promising start for a relatively 'new' game. Not sure why this is 4 stars while other games with lower quality renders, animations and/or story content seem to be better rated.
I will say that I don't like this GUI, it is the same pain as "Deliverance", for those who know the game...

Good Points
+ Story feels kind of interesting.
+ We have good looking animations and a lot of animated position for sex scenes.

Bad Points
- Thanks to weird IU sandbox feels pretty annoying and its tied with other things aswell. This game IU and menu design is kind of annoying with couple of different ways.
- Menu changes have unnecesary effects only makes things slower and thats just makes things annoying. Classic Renpy menu style is far more better and easy to use than this one.
- In Renpy games right mouse button nearly always opens save section which makes saving pretty easy but here its not...
- Thanks to custom IU and Menu even some basic things like skipping text feature sometimes not works and thats kind of annoying.
- Art style need improve and can be lot better than current one, with current style girls/women looks kind of unattaractive while they can look far better than this with couple of changes like smaller heads suited for their body size, little bit change on their facial features or maybe little bit more firm tits instead of shaggy ones could be good. Currently we have good amount of positions/angles for sex scenes and animations for them but because of art style being not good they do look bad and thats kind of waste their potencial. Espacily Camelia looks awfull... I mean look at this face: whats wrong with this face? LOL

For The End
I can see DEV done a lot of thing for this game but couple of bad points kills game joy, while others can bearable i cant say having unattaractive characters are not bearable, its just makes whole lewd part unenjoyable and kills all fun.

Really fun game. Loved the cg, the models and how fun it is. I think the writing could be better, but that's not something that will ruin your experience.

Really looking forward the next update. Well done dev!

CG: 5/5
Story: 4/5
Models: 5/5
Gameplay: 4/5

Really promissing game, and you should definitely give it a try

Absolutely amazing renders and beautiful ladies! Story is somewhat bland due to its similarity to practically every other VN, however the gorgeous animations and details more than make up for it! I will be watching closely the development of this gem. Five stars!

Great game there are lots of hot moments i highly recommend this game. In some scenes it made me laugh too try it! Scenes are well made by the developer and MILF's are hot! nothing else to say 5 stars

This game has the potential to be one of the best. It is a slow burn with the main characters, but the scenes are still amazing. If this game can reach its conclusion with all the main characters, it will be truly fantastic.

Deserves at least a 4,5/5 score.
Good renders, animations, story is nice. The build up with the main characters is a slowburner, but if you want lewd scenes some other characters will take care of that.

One of the greatest game at the moment

- pretty good renders of the girls
- amazing MILFs
- nice story for a sandbox
- sandbox but no click around game to waste time
- english is good enough for a game
- incredible build up of tension between son and family

AS OF 0.4.2

The game manages to enchant with every update. Now, I can easily say that this game is the best 3d game for myself. I don't know where to start praising, the game is close to perfect for me.

Characters- Let's start with the characters. There is almost no character model in the game that I can call bad, even the figurants in the game are fascinating. If we evaluate the main characters, it is difficult to choose between them. Mother, sister, aunt, cousin are all like disasters. (5/5)

Scenes- Sex scenes are quite diverse, there are many options in terms of positions in the scenes. In terms of quality, as of v0.4 (with or without sex), there are many quality scenes in the game that will drive you crazy. (5/5)

Animations- Animations are very successful, they certainly do not look artificial. (4.5/5)

Render Quality- The render quality, which is my favorite part of the game, is almost flawless. The colors are quite saturated. In my opinion, it is one of the most successful games that gives a sense of reality with its animations and renders. (5/5)

In-game progress- I wouldn't have thought choices in previous versions would affect gameplay this much, but with the new update almost every choice affects your progress. Gallery scenes or not, I had to play it over and over for hours just to see all the scenes, I'm not complaining about this situation, I really enjoyed trying to find the scenes, it's a positive feature in my opinion. (4/5)

Places- Place designs are very successful. The atmosphere in the house is quite good. I especially liked the school environment. There are a lot of characters in the school and we can interact with most of them. I'm sure it will improve further. (5/5)

Gameplay- As someone who likes sandbox gameplay, it has a gameplay that can satisfy everyone. It has neither repetitive activities nor simple gameplay with no options. It's a gameplay that will please both sandbox lovers and those who don't. (4.5/5)

Personal Likes- I was happy to see that immediate sex with mother and sister wasn't done. For now, our relationship with our family is progress by sexual impulses, and I think that's how it should be.

Some suggestions for the future updates;
- The phone should definitely be made more useful. That's why I'm giving the in-game progression a 4 out of 5 rating. There is no place where we can track our choices and relationships. Therefore, we do not know how to proceed and it is very possible to miss the scenes. For a sandbox game, I think the phone should have such features.
- More clickable items and quest materials.
- Being able to sniff the panties we collect, in our bed or in the bathroom

These are my general evaluations of the game. The front of this game is very bright, I have no doubt that it will be successful. This game definitely deserves the best. I would like to thank everyone who contributed to the production and wish you success. I will be following the development of the game with interest.

Version 0.4.2

Art: Sometimes pretty good, some faces suffer from deformity, some necks twist in weird angles. In the end it has too many flaws to call good or great.

Story & Characters: The characters don't click with me, and I consider them somewhere between forgettable and unlikeable. The prologue is just plain bad, it gets a little better after that, but not enough to recommend it.

On a side note, almost every sentence feels translated by a non native English speaker. With highlights like "It feels like I'm starting to make a meal out of him, to think too much. I have to get away. The way he make me feel is not right at all" ==> huh? An expression in some other language I guess. But it ruins the flow of the story.

Gameplay: It has a lot of free roam point and click stuff where you need to search for items, panties mostly but also money and other stuff. Then the order in which you do stuff matters, making it very easy to miss things.

TL;DR while it does some things pretty well, it has too many flaws to overlook and I recommend you skip it.

The prologue was kinda lame, but the first chapter was great, hopefully the game will continue on this direction, the writing got a lot better, the characters and the plot too, It has a good rhythm and is quite entertaining, I wish it had many more sexual scenes, but for a first chapter it has a lot of content.