Others - Life in Woodchester [v0.11.4] [Dirty Sock Games]

First off, i love the art style. Chars are cute and unique.
Sadly it just has the shell of a good game.

There's this whole environment with things to click on,but none of it matters.
Dialogue is dreary and hard to get through just with left click or spacebar.
Events happen a day apart, so you'll be sleeping again and again. And they trigger by being in a location on a specific part of the day, again rendering interactable environment irrelevant.
Story feels rushed and just fleshed out really.

Some bugs have been squashed, as the numbers in dialogue, save bug, progression bugs. But overall the direction it's taken since it's initial release, doesn't fill me with hope of a change.

But i could be wrong, and game could be great eventually.

It is sooo good! The story, the art style, the characters! I love this game so much! Hope it will get lots of updates and content! <3
Me personally I loved Lillys' story line. Her friends are also really interesting. The only thing the person that uploaded it on here could improve is to showcase the other characters beside the 'mom' and 'big sis' because I wasn't trying to download this game at first because I did not like them ... then I randomly saw a gameplay of this game where the other sister Lilly was in the thumbnail and I downloaded it right away!

Good art, story isn't super cringe or generic. Some odd time skips between scenes that don't make sense but that's pretty common when specific events are tied to locations.

Only gripe would be that development is kind of slow though I'm not gonna presume to know the work conditions of the creator.

This game's premise is "stop me if you've heard this one". A young man of indeterminate age lives in an American middle-class house in a beachfront city. He is the archetypical protagonist of the Suburban Harem subgenre. He's lean, generically pleasant looking (close cropped hair, t shirt, jeans/shorts, you know the drill), good-natured and horny. His initial harem are the standard soft drink selection trope: innocent and naive childhood friend (small body), tsundere girl (medium body), and motherly milf housewife (large body). Like most of these types of games, you start the story at "brimming sexual tension" and progression consists of saucy situations that push that tension into release.

That is, when this game actually gets out of its initial development. As of time of writing, the game is not ready to play. The routes for the main harem are barely developed, so give it a year or two if you care enough- you've probably played this game before in another form anyway. On the plus side of this, if the devs keep up a content schedule, we'll have a rote Domestic Harem game since the blueprint for these things are obvious. On the other hand, it's more of the same so you can safely skip this if you're looking for uniqueness or novelty of concept.

On the plus side, the art is top tier as far as these games go- it draws comparisons to the other incredibly similiar titles (in premise and execution, you know which game I'm talking about) and can hold its own. Its UI is sleek and clean an easy to understand.

So, 3 stars because, barring the art, it's as middle of the road as possible. There are other games that match this beat for beat that are either further along or even completed (though the one I'm referring is advancing so slowly that this game might catch up by the time it releases another major content update). If you want more of the same within this genre, give it a shot once it releases more content.

The game has potential, I'll admit, but dear gods is it intent on not letting you know that.
I'll begin with the characters. Their personalities are as typical as they come: Mom is motherly, little sister is energetic and bubbly, and older sister is mean and rebellious. They have perfectly serviceable designs, with the little sister having the strongest of the three. It's not as boring as the mom's, nor on the nose as the older sister's. It just works.
If you manage to get past the bugs and get every event triggering in the right order, every character's events are riddled with menial shit that all leads up to a sex scene. Problem is, the content stops just before said scenes. The mother is the only character you can smash before you run out of content.
The map is gargantuan. Impressive, considering the current build only really has a use for the house. The older sister's route is a frantic rush to explore as much of the map as possible so the dev can justify its scale as her story has you spend about 3 minutes in several different locations before you have no reason to return to them after.
The story is just passable. You please your mother with the bare minimum of chores because her standards are so low that you changing around a load of laundry is the equivalent of building a house for this live-in maid. After a while of perving on her you're rewarded with wine and dine followed up by 10 seconds of your hard-earned lay. The scene is short, non-repeatable, the only one in the game with sex in it, and takes all game to get to it.
The strongest of the routes, your younger sister, has enough characterization in it to make you actually want to hit it. Her friends are more eye candy to make you come back for another update, but they're mentioned all throughout her route, seen once, and disappear as soon as they introduce themselves. Your reward for playing her route is some suggestive scenes that last as long as a morning piss and offer the least nudity of the three characters. Despite all this, I look forward to her content the most because she contains the majority of the game's highlights.
The final family member you can make Don Toretto proud with is your older sister, the most rebellious rebel to ever rebel against the oppressive authority of your mom's frustratingly lax chores. You hear her bitch and whine and yell for a Stephen King novel's worth of dialogue and get rewarded with mild nudity. If future updates don't let the MC take revenge on her, I'm declaring him a masochist.
With one h-scene, some mild nudity, and a lot of dialogue that goes nowhere and ends suddenly, it's hard to recommend this game this early. unlike other games the reviewing rules forbid me from mentioning by name, it doesn't have enough in it to make you want to come back, and despite its lofty goals, its content drags on and on with nothing worthwhile at the end of it all.
My advice? Wait a solid year or so, then come back and read the patch notes. Once you scroll through all the hopeful bug fixes, maybe you'll find that there's finally enough in it to warrant spending time on. Until then, it's just okay.

To be honest I admit that the game has potential. But the current lack of content is a turn-off as well as the fact that events happen out of order. I played for like an hour, which is short I admit.

But my expectations fell straight to the ground after i started the game, I was thrown to the world-map. Then when I click on "home" I'm met with an event from Janice which confused me as it seemed to mention things I didn't yet know. Then I went upstairs and was met with an event from Tara which was actually supposed to be the first event which would then be followed by the one from Janice. So until the order of events is fixed for every event I will not give this anything but 1-star.

It is a very simple thing to do and if after 0.5.3 it hasn't been fixed then my hopes are not good for this game as a whole.

Version: 0.5.3

Design
Nice artwork. I like the various attractive body types in the girls. Personally like Molly's design - hope to see more of her. However;
Janice and Lily's default drawings are outlined too thick (in comparison with MC and Tara). And Tara's fighting pose looks too confident for scenes where she obviously is upset.

The subtle animations are a big plus. Janice's blowjob scene had a really good loop, I couldn't tell where it ended! But the drawing of her head looked too flat and moved a bit too fake.

Content and flow
There is surprisingly a lot of content/events, however; nothing that gave me more than a brief stiffy. For now, the events consist of the MC getting into mildly suggestive scenarios with his family.

A lot of items to click on for trivia (that I wouldn't say necessarily push any intriguing narrative except for cute details) - makes me anticipate searching for items to progress the story in future builds.

The order in which events unfold is jumbled. For example:

• Janice's character being in living room after an event of her going to work or her room.
• in Janice's bedroom; her character disappearing from the background when you interact with an item.
• when MC's phone is damaged from sinking in pool, it would be immersive for the phone icon in the HUD to not work as well - there was also no follow-up to that event as he never had to get the phone fixed.

There also appears to have some drawings missing; like when MC and Lily go to mall; we don't get to see Lily's 'risqué string bikini'.

Events are limited to one unique animated drawing. There is obviously a lot of opportunities for more erotic images per event, such as when MC helps Lily move the desk; there was a good chance to show another image when MC was tugging Lily; to see MC's POV of Lily's ass or when they fall; see her sitting on his lap.
It would help a lot in making scenes actually fap-worthy but I guess that's where the issue with cost of drawings from an artist comes in.

Story
Story is pretty much the ongoing of the family living together and your typical family dynamics - bubbly sister, tsundere sister, sexually fustrated mother, and boring beta male protag. Choices made are inconsequential so it reads like a VN.
I don't have a problem with any of these story elements but if so then something needs to do the heavy lifting. That being the art and eroticism of the game which is lacking in this one.

Interface and bugs
There are a number of mechanical issues and bugs that lower the overall quality of the game. I'll list them out in the discussion thread, in hope the dev can make use of it.


In conclusion, the art is nice and story/dialogue/plot is mediocre but cliché. Erotic scenes are short, frankly tame and lack enough art to savour the moment. Lastly, the game looks unpolished and behaves buggy.

Very good game.
There's a great variety of characters; plot is funny. Much appreciated the presence of an in-game hint system.
The only bad aspects are represented by the planned presence of too many locations (and, probably, of too many characters) and a skill system: both might result in difficulties to manage the whole game.

Man, this game has a lot of potential. Art is great, writing is decent, and there are really good ideas behind it.

However, there are a ton (and I really mean a TON) of bugs that need to be ironed out, and it is extremely concerning that the bugs are not being fixed at a quick pace like they should be (I mean, fuck, does the dev even HAVE a play testing team?). The game is also severely lacking in the lewd scenes department for a self-proclaimed "Adult Visual Novel" (ONE fucking BJ after a YEAR of development? Really?). With the amount of money already being thrown at this dev, updates need to come sooner, bugs need to fixed faster, and the adult content needs to start coming with every update or else this project is going nowhere fast, and it will end up being another adult game full of potential that's wasted by the dev's inability to recognize what their audience wants and actually give it to them. I know that may sound a bit harsh, but it's the reality of the situation. I've seen it happen many times before.

Honestly this game may be too ambitious for its own good, at least right now. It's important not to bite off more than you can chew and it feels like the dev is trying to do way too much at the same time. It may be best to simplify things for now and wait until there's a bit more meat to the game before adding in more gameplay features such as the skill system.

All that aside, I still have hope for this game, and I think it can become an all time great adult game if the dev takes the time to polish it and deliver satisfying updates more consistently, but at the moment that is just not the case. This is not a "top quality" game in the slightest, at least not yet. Wait a few months before you download and see where it is then.

TL;DR Is that this game has huge potential and incredible visuals, but the bugs and slow addition of content are in the way of that potential for the time being.

There’s been a lot of frustrations expressed over the most recent version of the game, but it’s mostly coming from the fact that people desperately want this game to work out. The art in this game is amazing, and is honestly better than comparable games such as summertime saga. The smoothness of the animations and the interactive nature of the H-scene present in the game makes me excited to see more. I also love every single character and want to see content for all of them, something I haven’t felt for sandbox games before. When the game works it just feels good to play through.

However, there are a couple of large aspects that get in the way of a great game. The newEst couple of versions seem to have introduced a couple of large bugs that heavily impact gameplay, such as lagging and skipping entire scenes. Apart from a couple of large bugs that were recently introduced, most of the bugs and lags are small, but they are numerous enough to make the game choppier than the beautiful art and UI would suggest.

Despite these flaws, I still think this is a game to keep an eye on. If the foundation gets patched up and content comes in faster as a result, then this could be one of the best sandbox games on the site.

This is a game full of potential in terms of writing and art; the drawings are extremely appealing and the characters are fleshed-out and realistic. However, the entire thing is being held back by an extremely buggy framework. I don't know if it's Game Maker Studio not being well-suited for a VN-style game, unfamiliarity with the engine, or a poor workflow, but the bugs in this game are more severe than anything else I've seen on here. Once whatever is holding the dev back is worked through, I think there is a great game underneath, but as of now there needs to be some fundamental retooling done.

EDIT: A lot of badly-needed bugfixing has been done since my last review. It's still got some jank to work out, and the addition of a gallery as has been so long-teased by the title screen would be greatly appreciated, but overall the game now has a strong base for future updates, and if the art keeps the same quality as it has right now, the wait will be worth it.

EDIT 2: It's been months and months since the last meaningful bugfixing in this game, and the scripting and core framework holding this game together—particularly the save system—is still clearly spaghetti. This is a fundamental flaw holding down the entire rest of the game.

I've been holding off on scoring this for a time when there was something more substantial to review. There still really isn't but, after a year and only three major updates, only two of which had porn, I can only wait so long.

Basically, this game is riding the coattails of good art. The character art, event art and the (under-appreciated) overworld art are all very good, and that's what's getting people into this. Even so, cracks in that are showing up. As of the update I'm writing this (0.5.2), there's some very obvious cover-ups for incomplete art such as blank screens, close-ups on character model faces and whatever the hell that butcher-job was on Lily's "swimsuit."

The big drawback, however, is that it is buggy as hell. We all know we are playing games that are in-development so we expect things not to be running perfectly yet, but this game is riddled with bugs that are immersion-breaking at best and game-breaking at worst. I personally have seen save/loads not work properly, visual glitches, coding appearing in story text, and the game flat-out freezing up, but others have also reported lag and resolution issues as well.

For what little there is, the story is good enough for now. The ladies don't jump on the MC's dick as soon as they meet him, nor does the story show signs of disappearing up its own ass. Getting the balance between good characterization and GETTIN FUCC ON is tough and they appear to be doing it. The devs do include a sneak-peak of upcoming scene dialogue in the game files (which is really cool and more devs should do that) but a word of warning with the future of Janice's story: please don't overuse the blue-balled plot device. Given how long updates take, let alone updates with actual sex, that's going to go down like a lead balloon.

On that note, the porn-content is very low at this point. The three main ladies have nude shower scenes, and there's a bj. It's good. The art, sound and jiggle-physics are good. And will probably continue to be good when we eventually see more of it.

But still, I used to pony-up dosh on Patreon for this game because I thought it had potential, as a lot of folk in the thread have also said. But I can't fap to potential. Until this dev can produce some actual porn content with at least fewer bugs in a more timely manner, I'm out for good.

Looks like it's moving in the right direction but there are quite a few bugs. UI froze on me multiple times, one time it was in-dialog so thankfully I could do a quick save quick load to fix, but it happened again outside of dialog and wouldn't let me do anything. So I force close the game, and of course those earlier quick saves didn't actually go anywhere I can load them, so there's 1.5 hours down the drain.

But there are also SUPER obvious bugs, like in every dialog you get a number at the end for the line in the dialog sequence it is (first line ends with 1, then with 2, etc). Like... all you have to do is read even one bit of dialog to see that.

Idk, the art is good, and I like the classic boy-stuck-in-town-with-lusty-women setting, but damn it doesn't even work. I saw like... 2 images of NSFW content. That's it. I'm sorry to give this a poor review, but my experience sucked ass. Would not recommend at all right now...

Edit: after reading comments from others, it seems like this is not isolated to me (I was trying to be optimistic), and that this is a recurring theme with this developer/title: lots of bugs. It also sounds like there is not a ton of sexual content (can't confirm as game crashed on me per above and I refuse to waste more time on it). So unfortunately that boils it down into an art gallery for me, operating under the guise of an H-game, so really I should be giving this negative stars.

I really wish people would rate games "as they are", not "as they hope they will become". Rating a game 5 stars at initial release makes no goddamn sense.

really like it. especially love the tara character and i liked the bra arc but it feels little bit like there's missed oppurtunities or like these setups are made and then redirected into tangents, like the bra arc feels like it's missing idk some inbetween scene before the wine scene where she expresses some more clear but still restrained reciprocation like "if you have these desires maybe i can help" sort of thing and escalating from there, like maybe she's stuck on not moving it further and then that's when the wine scene happens. it seems little out of nowhere that she'd be kinda disappointed or somewhat disciplinarian-ish all of a sudden toward the protagonist the next day to me in the way she was.

this is also the same with tara's arc and the finding the nude selfies on her phone. i do actually kinda like the story arc between her and the protagonist with the whole job thing but it just seems like maybe 2 unrelated stories kinda frankensteined together a little. there is a sort of "je ne sais qouis" to her character/design/story tho despite these issues. i'm definitely curious to see how her arc develops further. i do wish more erotic content found its way in her arc (that'd fit of course). i think maybe her earlier introduction maybe should be reworked depending on how future releases develop her arc.

as for lily, i feel like the wrestling and warm/friendly relationship are a very distinct opportunity for very pleasant feel-good erotic content but i feel like there were missed opportunities in that too. like the massage scene seems almost off for her setup. it's not bad but idk i feel like that sort of scene would be more erotic as a lotion scene with tara sunbathing or something since with tara it'd feel more like an honour or like a privilege since she's normally mean to the protagonist and it's like she's finally starting to warm up to him but it's still a sort of service to her which fits her character more. with lily, i feel like something like idk getting an erection in the blanket fort and them having like some sort of "show you mine if you show me yours" kinda scene that feels kinda naughty/forbidden or like mischievious. like the way best friends who realize they're sexually attracted to each other would become physically intimate but are nervous because they aren't sure about if the other feels the same way kind of thing and don't want to ruin their friendship. or like if during a jump/riding/wrestle they get into somekind of position where because they're struggling, they're rubbing up against each other inappropriately or something and get turned on.

also there seem to be a lot of errors with the names if you customize them, like sometimes instead of using the custom name, it says the default name or like one of lily's friends gets a [xy_name] thing instead of a name.

overall though, i am into it. it doesn't feel hellishly grindy. the protagonist isn't insufferably douchey or a total scumbag. there is maybe kinda a lot of filler dialogue in proportion to dialogue that is related to erotic content or setting it up/suggesting it.

My first ever review, but this game, i think it deserves it, English is not my first language so i apologies for any possible mistake.

-The first think i want to talk is about the whole hud/map, it's amazing!!! all animation well done, it's very practical and lustrous

-The story at this point (0.4.1) is a little bit flat, i hope in the future this changes since is a very early relese

-The game is very green yet (0.4.1) but what i looked so far, is going to be a good game as minimal, that's for sure, there's not that much games that has this amount of detaill, i hope this developer/s gets to finish the game, and that's going to be a long way.

-The art is well cared for and very well done, as well a good art choice, idk who's the drawner but cheers to him!!

PD: in the future i may be editing this review as the game evolves hoping to see his final release. Peace!!1

I like the art but after several versions now the adult content is falling behind what other adult games would have at this point and that's concerning, showing some progress on that would be a plus. The other elephant in the room, it's an uncommon game engine that's produced glitchy results in the past and has a UI that's just not as smooth as alternatives. If you're going to use something less common for your engine then you need to execute it equal or better than Ren'py, Unity, Unreal, RPGM, etc. I don't think this game is achieving that and the devs either need to shore that up and show why they made this choice or switch to something smoother. Either way there's good ingredients in this mix, they're just not being applied and stirred right so far.

The graphics are great and the story is well developped. You can feel that the team behind the game is enjoying working on this project. It's hard to stop when you start it. The hero is the typical guy we can all identify and this feel this game even more great. Updates have a lot of content.
I hope this will continue in the future updates

Art 5/5
Potential 5/5
Playability -300/5

For a game thats been in development as long as this one, its absurd to have the amount of errors it has. The performance of the game is ridiculous!

The dialogue creeps at a snails pace and theres no auto skip option at all. If you want to speed it up you can go from a snails pace to an elderly womans walking speed.

Dialogue will occasionally overlap and for some reason theres a number at the bottom of each chat box that slowly counts up.

Any time theres a transition in the game, whether you click on an object or leave an area, the game buffers for a full second pause. I'm not exaggerating here. Its every time.

I couldn't make it 5 minutes in before I got overwhelmed by the amount of blatant issues. I believe I played an earlier update that was better optimized than the current mess this is.

Users in the thread talk about blocked HTTPS connections that game is trying to make, so something very suspicious there potentially.

I really think this game has the potential to be an incredible one, but the current rating of a 4.5 star average is a crazy misrepresentation for what this project is current presenting.

NOTICE: I dont like giving a one star rating and I promise to adjust my score as improvements are made, but as it is, this game is untouchable.

My old review is a bit scathing, but for the update it was reviewing it was accurate. Most of the bugs have been eliminated and I'm pretty excited to see how quickly its progressing now. Rating adjusted from 1 star to 3 stars. My biggest issue now is clunkiness of the UI.

It's still early, but this game has all the ingredients to become amazing! I could explain why you should or shouldn't play this game, or I could just have an imaginary conversation with myself:

Q: Do you like Summertime Saga?

A: Fuck yeah, I love that game!
Then you should definitely give this one a try.

A: Hell no! Terrible game.
Then you probably won't like this one either.

A: What's a 'Summertime Saga'?
Forget this game and play that one first. By the time you're done there might be some more content here.

P.S.: At the start of the game you can change the names and relations of all the (main) characters. So incest is very much possible, even though it isn't listed in the tags.

Overall excellent game. Animation, UI, Art, really solid. I really like this style and the dynamic conversations. Despite this, I would not recommend playing this just yet. There genuinely is very little content, although what is there is very good. Lots of effort put into every convo, scene, etc. This is purely from a v3.0 paythrough. I would highly recommend keeping this on the radar and it's a must play a couple of versions from now.

EDIT: V10.1 Update: Honestly still a great game. The art/animations/UI is top notch and only gets better the further into the game you get.

Big issue continues to be the code, every release seems to have a lot of freezing scenes and broken storylines, etc etc. But I'll take a slightly annoying/buggy release when many other VNs are taking literally years to post small updates.