Ren'Py - Completed - Lust & Life [v1.6.241029 Extra] [Astaros3D]

Astaros has improved the game mechanics drastically. The older negative reviews below should be read with that in mind. I tried the game way back. It was a bug fest and frustrating tease grind. I came here ready to rip the game mechanics and give it one star. Just downloaded the newest version. And it seems Astaros has heard the complaints. All *minigames can be skipped, money making easy, *instant travel possible with purchased item, no sex yet, but *plenty of nudity and lewd interactions and no aimless guessing since the *hint system keeps the game moving and *fast forward lets the player progress to the next stage quickly and finally, I encountered *no bugs. For a sandbox it's become fluid and easy. It's still a bit of a tease but there are rewards and the character renders remain beautiful.

tldr Game is vastly improved. Recommended. 5/5 to compensate for out of date one star reviews. True rating 4/5. One star off due to dearth of finishes in the action scenes ie. blue balling.

Version Reviewed 0.9

This game starts off with a pretty exciting escape sequence with a lot of promise, but quickly devolves into a run of the mill sisterfucker. Unlike most of these games the time runs constantly, ticking off about one minute per second. There is a fast forward button you can use to speed through the day as well. While the game is set up like a free roaming game the plot advancements are laid out in a very linear fashion so it's more of a VN where you have to hunt for the "continue story" button. There is the trappings of a money grind, but since you get the money more or less exactly as you need it there isn't really much grind. There is the possibility of buying the wrong thing and locking yourself out of a story trigger however I think. Generally once you buy an item that way of making money will disappear and only reappear right before you need to buy the next item.

There are 6 possible love interests in the game currently:
1. The mom. Does some handjobs and you get some peering at her oversized boobs.
2. The younger sister. Peeping at her while she's changing, and some semi-forced blowjobs. Also some spanking.
3. The bitchy older sister. Handjobs, Blowjobs, lots of ogling her body.
4. The other bitchy older sister. Some muff munching early on and then the content completely dries up.
5. The doctor. One scene where the fact that you have magic powers suddenly comes up (only time in the game), then she disappears forever.
6. The neighbor. Nothing yet.

So overall it's still a bit thin feeling, especially since the game takes several real world hours to get through all of the built-in delays and time wasters. Luckily the tedious minigames can be skipped. What sucks is when you do some activity on Sunday morning and the in game tip switches to "Interact with X on Saturday Afternoon". This happens several times.

The renders are nice enough to look at. Not top 1% stuff, but respectable. The wheels come completely off of the story once you get to the house, and as of this version little to no progress is made on it. The MC is so laser focused on banging everybody in the house that he basically forgets everything from the first part of the game. The game doesn't have grind so much as it has forced delays waiting for the clock to come around to the right time so you can do the next thing, or hunting around the house trying to figure out what some overly vague clue is asking you to do.

Bug wise I had several problems with the quest tip system not updating correctly and a fairly consistent crash to desktop after about an hour of play. If you're going to play this game remember to save regularly.

The above average renders are cancelled out by the below average story and occasional crash. Overall the game is average.

game launch date: Nov 1, 2018

current version: "0.9.00 Extra"

pros: beautiful renders

cons: never ending tease. MC jumps hoops. games drops the ball when it is time to deliver the "rewards". poor writing.

this game is like that hot chick poser, she just teases and teases, no sugar for you though ... or anyone else.

great game for people who like to grind for some tease posing, a frame or two of action, but no finish.

for an 18-month game, there is almost no finished sex scenes. so if you like porn games with a oral sex or hand job or titfuck with a beginning and a happy ending .... this game is not for you.

His last game is one of my favourites but this game after a year and a half is terrible, the story seemed interesting until you get to the house then it's boring scene after scene with a few nudity or bjs slipped in and that's it, nothing with the angel or devil, like 2 scenes with the devils "special xray power" and everything else is just boring.
I'm a fan of sandbox games like his last one but this one is so badly done. The character models are nice though.

Review on v0.8.00 Extra

Still a somewhat early release, so maybe this will improve, but so far this has been really disappointing.

I really loved My Cute Roommate by this dev. I am one of those weird guys that generally actually likes the sandbox format because of the freedom it allows and I can take some pleasure from grinding because when you have to work for your sex scenes, they feel much more rewarding.

I also thought the characters just looked so hot in the previous game, especially the main love interest, who just had the hottest body I've ever seen.

All of these things seem to have worsened in this game. The grind and sandbox format isn't fun or rewarding in the slightest. Luckily you can skip the minigames, otherwise I would seriously have raged, but even so, you just spend an eternity earning enough money to buy all the shit that doesn't actually give you much rewarding content.

The animation is still top-notch, and the main reason for this game even getting a second star from me. But even so, you only really have content with one of the girls, with two others you have some really small teasing and the fourth one is just sitting around, and you have no storyline whatsoever with her so far.

The time feature, while more realistic than in other games, is also therefore more annoying; if you missed a girl in the specific location at the specific time you needed to be there for a scene by one minute, you just have to skip through an entire whole day again, that gets really annoying real fast.

Because you're so far only stuck in this one house, you have also very limited locations to explore.

I don't know, can't really recommend this game which is really disappointing because I absolutely loved My Cute Roommate. Maybe MCR was as bad in the early stages? Idk, I just came across it when it was already finished. So maybe this game will also be amazing by the time it's all said and done but I've seen other devs make more out of early releases, so that's not really an excuse.

I'll probably still revisit this game at irregular intervals to see how it pans out with future updates because I really like the animation and then I might change my review, but so far, 2 stars is all it deserves in my opinion. Disappointing.

Good:
- Renders/Girls
- Sex animations

Bad/meh:
- Bad sandbox implementation.
- A lot of scenes have really bland/bad dialogue. (the whole game overall is pretty bad, compared to other games)
- Many pointless/stupid comments by the devil/angel in some scenes.
- The MC image on the left of the screen is useless/annoying, since its pretty much always the same, not showing any significant emotion for what is being said by him.
- no rollback.

Also, im not a fan of the animated mouths (eyes are ok in some scenes/renders but not always), rather have the dev use that time and effort for the story/writing.

TLDR:
good looks, everything else is bad.

This is a good game with excellent animations and delicious models, especially the Milf (my favorite for now). However, there are some flaws that do not allow greater immersion by the players. For example: You progress with a model to the point of receiving a handjob or blowjob, however, right after the event, the relationship goes back to the beginning of the game, the same dialogues and the same indifference, there is no evolution in the relationship, which makes the game and the character extremely lifeless. Another downside is the fixed and connected variables between them, this usually causes annoying bugs and makes very difficult to progress in the game, even with a walktrought and cheating system. With a few tweaks, this game has everything to be one of the best on the site.
Forgive me for my bad English!

I didn't find the game as bad as many comments say. I knew about the good and bad points of the previous game from this dev, and here I believe in Girl House he took care of most remarks, and the game is playable this time.

=== Chara Design :
The girls are nice and sexy. Renders are good
Their personality are nothing special, typical girls in porn games
The MC is a bit clueless and neutral
The demon/angel are fun, but the same jokes gets old after a while

=== Story/Background :
Not that great, not that original, not that interesting
The dialogues are ok, easy to read
The relationship build with the girls are the main focus so far

=== Sex/Animations :
Very good, without surprise, as those are always the best feature of Astaros games.
The animations seems smoother than his previous game. They are top tier, especially when it comes to deepthroat scenes which are hot.

=== Gameplay/Contents :
I'm not a big fan of the gameplay that consists on freeroaming with a weekly schedule, it is a waste of time, especially when you have to do most actions anyway in some specific order to advance further. At least I didn't find any bug, so it's a big improvement from "my roomate".
The minigames are fun once, but get quickly annoying.
I don't know why many devs spend that much time on creating minigames that will mostly annoy the readers more than amuse them. This time could be invested on more story/action with girls.
The music fits the situation well.

===
To sum up, the game is not perfect, but still quite good overall. It is visually nice to watch, the scenes are rewarding, but the story and the gameplay are a bit on the boring side.

All points stated in previous positive ratings don't need anything added to. Just wanted to put a five star rating in to move up the overall 2,5 star rating.

This game deserves at least an overall 3,5/4 star rating for the simple reason that the milf and the older dark-haired bitch make you whip it out fairly quickly through the game, even if there is not much sex going on yet. Plus that blonde middle sister is intriguing, a good cliffhanger for more. Nothing to say about the little braided puppy with those strange looking eyes, I skipped through her sex scenes since innocent teen virgins is not really my thing, but that's just my taste...

All reviews here are subjective and based on players preferences.
So Im gonna allow myself to be subjective as hell well.
Apart from being sandbox, this truly becomes a great game.
The chicks are gorgeous, Im not sure which is the hottest one - the milf, the young cutie, the blonde or the brunette vamps...or the doctor...
The story seems to develops slowly, and is interesting enough, though not so original.
Only negative I found are "minigames", yet it could be easily skiped in options.
Five stars from me, and Im looking forward to upcoming updates

the game has some bug that made you scream for hours if you find them ( phone icon gone = restart game at the moment no solution ) and no sex scene ( but there are blowjobs titsjob and handjob ) graphics is fantastic and realistic and i think that this game need great support because if creators will remove bugs and add more scenes we will have an excellent game

Well I really enjoyed this game played v0.80.00 love the ladies in it and looking forward to the rest of the story, Renders are sweet and the animations look real good IMO. I understand the negative comments about the mini games but personally I did not mind them too much, maybe if the dev puts in a way to turn of mini games then the game would get an overall higher rating. my only other negative and its a small one is that I was hoping that there would be at least one of the girls fully putting out by this stage of the game.

That could have been a really good game... ...

But:
putting more effort in anti-cheat than into actual game code...
stoopid and annoying and random mini-games...
having to find important items at arbitrary places with minuscule hitboxes...
no rollback!
almost everything has timer running, you can not stop it, you can not advance it, f*ck you!

If the devs don't want the game to be played, why putting up with the hazzle at all?

Final resumee: do not even try to download!

How does a dev create a pretty damn good game then make a new game that is nothing like the previous, the character models are pretty good, the story started off decent then it just turned to boring crap, dragging out a lame webcam scene that wasn't even good, youngest sister seems brain damaged and 2 updates with hardly any content

excellent game it has an amazing render and gorgeous characters it requires a walkthrough though because it has a lot of tricky parts in the gameplay that is said i recommend this game its a must try and great fap material

Played through 0.6.05e

Good:
Graphics are decent
Story is Ok, there is much more life left in it that hasn't been explored yet.

Bad:
The hitboxes for some of the interactions are really dodgy
There are no facilities for hints if the objectives for a given scene are not obvious enough. The dev relies on obscurely placed objects in various scenes to further plot lines in 'quests'.

Not much sex in the sex game. The method of making money in the game through casino results in a random inexplicable ban from the casino for cheating.

Glitches prevented one of quest items from being upgraded because the playthrough requires it to be upgraded twice, the final time is glitced making the objective for a sex scene (and furthering the quests) unobtainable.

Good Points
+ We have good looking/hot girls/women.
+ We have good looking animations. (Their physics can be better)

Bad Points
- Playing as a this game MC is not enjoyable. He is pushover who nearly all girls act like BOSS to him, tell him what to do and we are just doing things girls want from us for only getting some tease and sex scenes... Wow amazing MC to play...
- We dont have enough content for story. We just know prologue information about story after 2 year and after that point we got nothing. DEV didn't tell us anyting about main story. After prolugue we just got some naught scenes and thats all.
- Story is not well written or interesting.
- This is Sandbox game and it doesn't have walkthrough... For doing things and learning right answers you gotta try options or ask help to threat and wait... Yeah... Cool...

For The End
This could be realy good game but DEV didn't done good job with development of this game... Sadly its nothing more than quick fap game with poor story and characters.

I really wanted to like this game - because the characters pretty are hot. But holy crap - you just wander around the house clicking on everything, trying to advance the story. Seriously, does the Dev play his own game? I had to watch YouTube Walkthroughs to have any idea what to do next. The Dev could have made things so much easier for everyone if he included Hints. Some things........ you know what - I'm not even going to try to explain anymore.
There are tons of great games and vn on this forum, this is not one of them.
Don't waste your time.

Awesome grafics, interesting story, lovin it. Keep up the developement. Looking foreward to further updates. Debugging has improved over the last few months. Dont really understand all the negative comments.

Firstly sorry for my bad English.
I really liked this game and enjoyed playing it. The animations and characters of this game are excellent. It also has a pretty nice story. I can't wait for the new version of the game. I also loved the game My Cute Roommate by the same producer. This game is like an advanced version of My Cute Roommate.