Ren'Py - Moniker Smith's Bloodlines [v0.68 Public] [Moniker Smith]

Review of version 0.20

Who knew that the one thing to finally make me care about vampires was giving them massive tits?

On a more detailed note, the main gimmick of this game is to essentially follow the line of "infection" among an expanding cast of would be victims and seeing them turn into depraved blood hungry nymphomaniacs. The game does so by providing regualr opportunities to switch either perspective mid-scene or to a different character's path, the titular bloodline. This creates a branching narrative and doubles as the main replay value of the game.

I've been following this game from somewhat early on (0.03-ish methinks) and it's best described as hit or miss. The very first scene sets the tone for the rest of the game in both H-scenes and "corrupted" character design and it never really deviates from it . Meaning you'll either fap into oblivion or get bored within 5 minutes. To combat this the dev has started doing two things:

1. Implement an option (for select scenes) to switch between the character's "vamp" textures and their "people" variant, meaning the bloat of big boob goth GF is somewhat counteracted while also giving more creative leeway to the creator when it comes to making the characters more distinct post-vamping.

2. Actually make a somewhat compelling narrative. Although the story is still mostly filled with excuses for sex, quite a large amount of effort is put into making the characters and even the lore fleshed out. There are traits, backgrounds and interpersonal connections for a large part of the cast as well as significant amounts of dialogue spent towards wordlbuilding on both a large and personal level.

Especially this second point makes the branching narrative concept actually work. While it is interesting to watch people get pornified, it is vastly more compelling when said people have their established place in a world that feels properly developed. This makes their eventual fall feel significant and creates anticipation, qualities which distinguish the good corruption media from the bland.

Some further points of note, while there are a minor number of false ending options, the canon path is purely linear so don't expect major choices. Also the scenes can be very descriptive, which is a plus if you like erotic fiction but does mean it can drag on a tad sometimes. Finally, the game also doubles as a neat Spot the Tattoo simulator, as some designs are blatantly ripped from existing characters (Yakuza anyone?) which isn't inherently bad but can be a wee bit distracting.

Overall Moniker Smith has managed to make an actually interesting branching narrative corruption porn game and I for one am very curious how it develops further.

Some people enjoy vampire porn games that spend 17 hours laying out the various sociopolitical affiliations of everyone you've never met before today only to tell you male vampires have fucking E.D.

Some people enjoy vampire porn games where big titty vampire sluts get fucked starting within about ~7 minutes.

One's certainly better in most senses of the word, except in it's core reason for existing: being porn. Note that this is a non-linear, multiple-perspective narrative structure; if sharing/non-monogamous promiscuity is an issue this probably won't do much for me. Not usually my cup of tea, but this is so over the top it's addictive.

This game has grown from a pretty thin initial premise & difficulty initially knowing who to empathize with, but develops it in a way that highlights and plays on its strength-allowing the player to track the sequential and interconnected encounters that propagate the porn star variant of vampirism through a town. Which in hindsight seems exactly as it should be. Also bonus points for a number of subtle bram stoker/classic dracula allusions and homages (three brides being the most obvious). The scene quality and writing do improve somewhat in newer updates, although it seemed like the narrative branched a bit too broadly and recent updates sometimes struggled to figure out where to take the framing story.

Tracking an infection is one of the few scenarios that actually use many perspectives and diverging/reconverging storylines as more than just a gimmick, and given recent events it seems even more... cathartic? I had trouble getting through the first 3-4 bloodlines, and kept getting confused about how progression worked, but once out of the first cluster the stories got more and more interesting. It's kind of like The Room, that hilarious abortion of a movie that adult swim used to play on april fools day. You keep watching because it doesn't seem possible that the writer could take it any further and it kinda grows on you after a while.

The tongues take some getting used to, but it didn't take too long for me to be convinced of their utility.

Generally I don't even consider playing HS model based games w/o animations (it's fucking 2021), but the body art/transformations are absolutely gorgeous and worth seeing. Even if the you skip the variably coherent narrative, it's worth looking through the renders in this, they are some of the most striking stills I've ever seen using this engine, and I've seen a lot of HS models. I personally love well done tattoo art and almost every other example of tattoos I've seen on HS models are like hearts or butterflys that look photoshopped on. No idea how the creator went about it, but I'm almost positive they're custom and not part of any texture pack I've ever seen. Worth a look even if you don't like tattoos all that much. I'm guessing that the effort put into the tattoos' detail may have made animations less practical.

Also the cum... texture? sheen? I'm not really sure what term to use, but the cum is rendered really crisply, bit like Dr. Vibes. Some games it looks terrible.

Oh, and please, be sure to light your characters enough during bedroom h-scenes that the viewer can make out who and what is going down without straining their eyes. It's only like 2-3 scenes that have the issue, but it was memorable.

Wow, looking back at everything I typed, it appears I liked this a lot more than I thought. Guilty pleasure, I spose. It's not the best game of the year, but it's damn good over the top slutty bimbo vampire porn, and at the end of the day I'm not really sure I need much more than that.

Also there's a LOT of content (many hours, I still haven't completed all current (0.15) content. But it's both a time sink and zero grind at all, it's pretty much all h-scenes. A strong 4 stars, pending further growth.

The bodies are amazing. Some of the storylines... not so much. (Sharing partners, etc.)

The real problem is the amazing figures and absolute absence of animation in any respect. Whether it's a titjob, handjob, fucking... even the transformations - it's all done in single frames and it's incredibly dated.

It's a shame since I love the style, even if the sharing aspect is a turn-off, but the lack of animation is a killer!

I like huge boobs, I'm cool with vampire type stories, I even like some of the other fets, but this game doesn't tread on a lot of new narrative ground and the renders, the renders are near identical to ones you can find in games from 2, 3, even 4 years ago.
It's a 2.5 and I'm rounding down because it just blends into so much of the market. It's not bad, if you like the preview and it hits your specific fets it won't be the best you can find but if you've played the better this will do to keep scratching your itch, but it's just average in it's niche and it's below average in general so going with 2.

Excellent Visual Novel. To be clear, this is not a game, if you expect it to be that you will be disappointed. But as a visual novel, it's five stars, amazing images, amazing story so far, one that constantly has me theorizing what will come next.

This game is certainly not without its flaws, but 3.5 stars seems too low for me, so I'm adding my vote. OTOH, 5 stars would be too much.
The corruption and bimbofication elements of the game are first-rate, and the writing is very good. The models and their outfits are at the upper limits of what the render engine (Honey Select) can produce - they're good, but not fantastic. I must agree with other reviewers that the characters are all becoming very similar, which I guess was always going to happen when the girls all turn into raven-haired, sex-crazed bimbos.
There's no gameplay to speak of, but the ability to stumble around the threads of the story, seeing the events from one character's perspective and then from another's, is unique. At first it was a real plus for the game, but as the amount of content grows (and it is becoming very large now), it's becoming confusing. Some sort of graphical overview, showing which scenes have been viewed and which are still new, would be really helpful now.

I feel this game had a lot of promise in the initial setup a few versions back but now tends to suffer from a lack of depth. The core gameplay mechanic of selecting a bloodline and pov to follow gets very repetitive, and the volume of new characters (which all get turned into similar looking vampires) becomes confusing to follow. Potentially focusing on the MC/a core group of characters might have improved things, but as is it feels the focus will be continually shallow.
Models are quite quite cartoonish but this isn't overall a negative. I'd recommend maybe waiting a few more versions before trying this one for the first time.

This game is great... so many games with over a year of development that still haven't gotten to the main point of the game yet.

This game delivers the smut, a welcome change. No walking between the bedroom and the living room, no getting caught in the shower, no getting a job and going to work... this game gives a brief intro so you can identify the stereotypes and then dives right in to the bimbo vampire sex and delivers.

Hot!!

After playing this game here is my review. All the previous reviews are correct in the game's use of corruption, bimbofication, supernaturalism involving dark evil powers, balloon tits, blood or gore, and having no game play. If any of these sound like a deal breaker or turn off for you then this simply isn't a game for you ... move on... but if they aren't AND vampire corruption stories are your thing then this game is great! The game achieves what it sought out to do and does it well!

The game's story is initially about a school girl who goes to meet her older librarian male friend to check out an ancient serpent artifact The guy inspects it and unintentionally activates an ancient curse converting all his deep sexual desires to take hold and turn him into a vampire and corrupt others. In the next scene he drinks the blood and bites the girl also turning her into a vampire slut. The game then proceeds to corrupt other characters.

About the game itself ... it features some background music and a lot of sex scenes and has multiple branching paths and one game over scene. The sex scenes or story events allow you to play the game from multiple perspectives (usually the victim or vampire mc). The game at this point of time is starting to develop a new twist in the plot. Instead of simply allowing and normally going off corupting peolle they introduced the holy cross into the story burning the vampires

The only drawbacks if you can even call them drawbacks are there being no animations as far as I saw, the one and only abrupt game overs bringing you back to the main screen (which was when given the choice to betray the evil serpent dark forces the serpent just flashes a light at you then you are brought to the main screen without even a game over screen)

All in all Its a great game if you just want vampire sex scenes, do not want gameplay, and do not want to get too much into the story

The following review is based off my personal experience with playing this Game/Visual Novel... I try to be as brutally honest and detailed as I can, and these are my own opinions and thoughts, from one or more play throughs... The version this review is based on is v0.06...

The only unique thing I found in this VN/Game is the that it continuously asks if you want to change perspectives during content events... So in a sense, it offers multiple protagonist choice, if you can even call it that...

The visuals of the characters are what you tend to expect from low to moderate resolution Japanese style models, probably using Honey Select... The most disturbing aspect was that the three primary female characters appear to be barely pubescent, which is bordering on under aged porn, depending on the laws of the country you belong to... They do not appear to be aged 18+, visually, in any way... Then there is the male protagonist, who becomes this giant muscular tattooed vampire, with a penis the width of most adult men's arms... It was so completely fake looking and overly done... And then to have him actually having successful sex with the females a quarter his size, where his penis was almost a third if not half the width of their waist lines in some of the scenes... I mean come on, any possible immersion is just tossed out the window... It's so fake looking and over done visually, for all the models, it's more of a turn off then a turn on...

The backgrounds mostly looked unique, and in some cases, looked higher quality then the character models themselves...

The script of text was decent, as it didn't appear to have many spelling/grammar errors... The plot (what little there really is) revolves around a waking evil that turns the male protagonist into a super horny demonic looking vampire, who then targets several school kids... From there any sort of story depth or meaningful story telling is practically non-existent... It just becomes a series of sexual events involving the various characters... Many of which are somewhat fast paced, and add practically no story depth...

The biggest claim to fame for this VN/Game is that it constantly asks if you want to change to a different perspective... Sometimes multiple times during a given event... So you can either keep to only one perspective, or switch it up and see things from other characters points of view as that scene/event plays out...

There is no real character development, beyond the very initial character interactions... And the character personalities are very stereotyped... The content revolves almost entirely around fantastical stylized sexual encounters, with extremely small amounts of connective story... Even though the text reads fine, this VN/Game is in essence a meaningless porn fest...

Overall, I really do not like over exaggerated character visuals, as they tend to defy any sort of realism and/or physical feasibility... The fact that what little story plot there is takes a huge backseat to the visuals and sexual encounters, means there is little in the way of story depth/meaning... The tiny amount of story seems more like excuses for the over the top and stereotyped sexual content... Yes, it is very early in it's development, but you can tell what currently exists is intentional, and most likely it is how things will continue, for the life of it's development...

I was very disappointed, as the vampire theme is rarely done right in most erotic VN/Games... And this VN/Game falls short in the same way/s as most others... I will not be revisiting this one, but I wish the developers the best of luck...

Slight edits for 0.7.4 [mostly the story won't have more to it in the future, it's secondary so run if you are looking for an interesting tale, this is sex and nothing else, the 4 stars stay for now as it is a porn game and that part IMO is very much well attained]
Alright this is a weird one.
If you do read from here on, please read more than the first sentence because it's not reflective of my position.

I'll start by saying it probably deserves 2/5, because the story is almost non existant. There is one and there is a lot of space for the story to grow into something very fun, but and this is why I'm giving it 4/5, so much work has gone into making it as lewd as possible that, if I had to guess, about 80% of this game are sex scenes, if not more.
So at v0.06 there hasn't been time to develop the story at all, though the creator seems to have a story in mind which tends to be a good sign for the future development.
At 0.7.4 not much more story, this is prolly going to be sex sex sex... Not that I mind, but some story ideas that show up at 0.6 haven't really been explored further

Another reason for the game still getting a 4/5 is the game structure, I have never seen something like this (mostly I play 3dcg male prot ren'py vns and I run away from sandbox games so I'm kind of biased). There aren't many choices the only one I remember right now leads to gameover if the wrong choice is made. The menus are always about choosing a characters perspective, and you can follow almost every character you see. It's actually kind of refreshing since the story with other chars goes on when u leave them. And the way it's built you don't have to do a playthrough every time...

It's pretty gory, so if blood bothers you just forget about it, it's not violent and there is almost no pain, but it is gory.

The renders a fine, nothing special but there are plenty! The sex scenes are long and I enjoyed them. (Longest scenes I have ever played and the way they are described make it very arousing )

The characters are kind of forgettable, they are turned maybe a little quickly but the whole game is rather about them once they have been turned not so much who they were before.
v.0.07.4 Well I might have spoken early no char depth, every thing about characters the dev focuses on is their lack of humanity basically making them into horny robots with only sex in mind

Good luck moniker! Will follow up on development

Really enjoying this game. It has great renders, fairly engaging story, good polish for the current state, and a clear and consistent development path. The UI works great and the multiple perspective mechanic is an interesting take on the usual visual novel structure--you end up with a very large story tree which develops the world in a unique way; definitely a game that breaks from the pack of other visual novel-like titles on the site. I'd say it plays like a multiple story kinetic novel. I kinda admit that the transformations may need a bit more variation/theming and the smut/dialogue writing needs a tiny bit of work, but I'm sure that will come in the later updates.

I really enjoy the concept of corruption games and all that, but one thing that makes me startled every time is how the the main girls change during the game. There are many games that do this well and bad, and unfortunately this one ends up being bad. The story might be interesting, but when every character needs to become a gigantic bimbo bleeding from their tits the enjoyment kinda dies down for the lack of variety. I even enjoy TSF games, but since every character becomes basically the same that part also gets boring far too quickly.
Another interesting feature would be the viewpint change, but it happens far too frequently during each scene becoming more irritating than fun. And since you can just choose to re-watch a scene just after it ends there is no actual reason to make the viewpoint choice appear every 10 fucking lines...

TL;DR: Girls were too similar and not my type, no real difference to spice things up. Choices barelly matter and are annoying at most. 1 fap out of 5

This is excellent, and I am enjoying it a great deal. Turning victims to darkness, body transformation (enhancing of body proportions) and domination is all here. The art is gorgeous, and the different viewpoints is a unique gameplay choice. I look forward to more from this dev and for this game!

Corruption done right.

The good:
The dialog flows naturaly.
Corrupting people in this game feel vampiric.
Vampire's being predatorial.

The bad:
Magic item turns closet pervert into sex god.
Huge tits everywhere.
No replay value.

I would recommend the game if you are looking for a good story.
Not if you are looking for a good game.
Because gameplay is none existant.
You just watch different perspective's.