Others - Life in Woodchester [v0.13.2] [Dirty Sock Games]

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.

So...life in woodchester(0.1.3) is a classic game as many others you probably already seen before but, for the little content it has, it delivers it perfectly.

-The game runs VERY smooth, which is what you'd expect from a 5 minutes game but that's not always the case.

-The U.I. is very nice and satisfying to look at

-The writing is not phenomenal but there's a lot considering how little the dev has to work with and is generally above average (maybe a little clichè but that's just me)

-The models are pretty subjective but I like them, not identical to the other 90% of the games like this but neither too different.

Overall as of now, this game would be a 4/5 but I'm giving it +1 because it is very well done and because it has a TON of potential depending on how the dev will continue this work.

Game is only a month old at the time of review. Art is good. Not much story yet and the only location is the house. Not much content in general, but that's to be expected.

What made me write a review of such a new game is how bad the UI is. The load button on the main menu doesn't work. Once you're in game, there's no way to get back to the main menu or to exit the game (other than x'ing out). There's no way to fast-forward dialogue (even already read). Sometimes clickable objects will highlight on mouse-over and sometimes they won't. Finally, saves seem broken. They work while you're in game but once you exit all progress other than your location resets, which leads to some weird situations like having to leave your house and then re-enter in order to trigger the opening cutscene again. As a result, this game is pretty much unplayable in its current state.

Again, love the art and the devs seem very active so I'm hoping they can iron out all these technical issues and then roll out some great content.

[v0.1.3]

Game is pretty early right now but it was an nice start. I really like the artstyle and animations. No big scenes yet but just from the start you can tell that this game is going to be good.

I will be waiting for new updates.

As soon as I got into the topic and saw the game cover I became very interested, if I like the game I will think about supporting it in some way, the art looks very good and this is a very important factor for an adult game with more cardboard features.

Fucking Amazing Start, Great Art Work, BUILT IN Guide (mega thumbs up), not much content but i give it a pass for the first release. Cool looking open world, with a lot movement (doesn't look stale, Which means effort was put into it), also ty for letting us change what the girls relationship and names are to something we like.

Pretty good start, I'm super exited for the future of this game, hope it doesn't get abandoned.