Ren'Py - Mothers & Daughters [v0.5.2.2] [Spin256]

PSA: There are no sex scenes or animations in this game as of the v0.5.2.2 version. This game is a slow burner and the story is pretty generic. If you are looking for sex in a game or a great story then this is not it. Some models are off putting and just look odd. I give it a one star because it has typically nothing people tend to look for in an AVN

VERSION: 0.5.22
SUMMARY: Great waste of time, with a great amount of untapped potential and wasted opportunities. Would love to love it, but have to hate it.

PROS:

1. Nice looking models, the young girls look usually pretty good and older range between ordinary but attractive and full on milfs, but at least seemingly realistic models.
2. There is plenty of variety (spice of life and all) but there is a con to this (see below)
3. Writing is good, structured good and pacing is actually not bad despite the massive Cons listed below.
4. Story is simple and ordinary but that actually works for this game. The point system is a little weird, because you don't know how the character will be influenced later, so there is replay value but also a big drawback to it, see Cons.

CONS:

1. Models and look, while fine and all, is dated, the style is old by todays standards and the game has hardly started (at least in terms of lewd) and if it does "start" how much content can we expect (if current amount for the years is any indication)
2. Too many characters. Keeping track of the names is hard if not impossible and then not having access to the phone unless you in free roam mode sucks because you can't see the stats or pull info on any girls. You also can't see your objectives unless in free roam and you can only then answer messages. This is a very poor design of a thing that should be a resource that is always available.
3. As mentioned writing, dialogue and story are good. Problem is that nothing is really happening, the game plays like a soap opera, meaning that it takes forever, or will take forever to actually get any "action" which is exactly what is happening! WTF. The pacing is fine enough for all these characters, but at the rate everything develops it will take ages to complete the game (that is to say while having plenty of content with each woman)
4. Added to the above, there is little to any lewd content, most of the action is fixated on zoomed/focused stills of boobs or ass (clothed). WTF is with this, there is zero action and this game came out in 2021!?

TLDR: I would love this game, it has so much to offer and its done well even with the models being only "good" but fact is, here is fuckall here to even put this down as an adult game and I believe by the time there is any, its little or it will take years before there is enough (at least good content for all choices and woman) SAD!

[0.5.2.2]

I'm actually somewhat sad that I'm giving this game two stars, but I just can't pretend that its a quality product and I can't say that I'm a fan of dev's ethics (or the lack of it).

The game tries to be everything at the same time: a VN, a sandbox playground, a voyeur experience, a corruption saga, but it's... shallow?

No matter what you do in this world, it just ends up not being satisfying at all. Almost no sex scenes, constant teasing/flirting to a degree that it makes MrDots look like a genius writer.

Spin is saying, "its a hobby, however, thank god steam sales are motivating me to continue developing this masterpiece now!" and I'm thinking OMG. Finally! We will see an update that has 1400 (avg before was 600) renders - should be insane, right? Nope, its same stuff but packaged similarly the way Ubisoft or EA Games package their "games".

The game also "lies" to you in a way because the walkthrough still locks you out of your choices. I.e., I can't get to the last Maria scene as I'm not "bad boy/affectionate" enough - like what?

You are also constantly wondering if you unlocked ALL the scenes as the gallery is honestly... confusing to say the least.

It's a sloppy work, disrespectful to the audience. I'm just upset that it could have been an easy 4-star game, but ended up like this.

This project is doomed and I suggest not to waste your time even if it has your kinks included in the list.

Firstly forget about any decent sexual content that's out of the question. From a storytelling perspective, there are way too many characters, a mistake I've seen in several other games. In my opinion this stems from the writer's desire to add excessive diversity and too many plans, leading to confusion. I've seen the same mistake in a few other games where the developer stuffed the game with 40 characters, each with their own corruption subplot and separate story. However each character only consisted of 3-4 scenes in a 1-hour game to fill it up with all of them and there was no adult content whatsoever. Typically these games end up exhausting the developer due to their magnitude, and the developer decides to move on to something else. We can't even talk about the characters or their stories because there are too many so we can't spend enough time with them in the game. Every 2 minutes, a new character is introduced. Additionally, there are phone and computer mechanics that you can interact with. It's a nice idea, but adding a phone and computer mechanics, money and job mechanics, difficulty mechanics, and affinity which is percentage-based point system on top of so many characters is overkill, even a team of 10 developers cannot come up with a quality product for this game without spending a considerable amount of time (at least 8-9 months of consistent work time maybe even more) and i highly doubt we have more than 2 developers for this game. From a story standpoint, I couldn't see one honestly, i paid attention to it but I'm still not sure what the story is, I can't even remember. In short, if you're going to play for story don't bother, it's not worth it. I can only suggest this for a night fap, even for that better alternatives exist but It's up to you.

The thing I enjoy the most is that the older women look like they are aged. It's rare to find any games that portray older women as such instead of 25 year old models.
Unfortunately, that's about all I have to say about the game that I like. To be honest, the whole persona/affinity thing is just a huge headache. I don't want to have to try and guess if someone likes bad boys or not and then try and keep track as to who likes what with so many women. It is just tedious. The game doesn't have a natural flow to it. I feel like you are always trying to squeeze out points for the sake of points. The sandbox is also unnecessary and just convolutes things even more.

Best way I can sum up this game is as wide as the ocean with less depth than a puddle.
There is so many characters and stories in the game. The only reward you get for this is barely a blowjob and loads of creep shots. If thats your thing its a game for you.
The issue is this game needs to narrow its scope. you have 3 different starts. multiple women to romance. Is it any wonder why there's no real content.

Has potential. I like the premise. The renders are okay and the story is fine. As of this content update 0.5.1 I wouldn't recommend it because it has no actual content. I can't foresee any real content for a very long time yet.

I have given a five star rating, the review might read like a totally unrelated review, please hear me out.

This game is a perfect example of making the gameplay hard, harder, even harder and hardest because easy games are no fun right, yes that is right, easy games are too easy and wont be of any fun to someone even remotely as smart as this developer, I tried to see the code and there were so many layers of hiding that I had to cross to see the complete code, then comes managing saves, it is super hard to change something as simple as money, I like the way things are harder, but it gets so hard that many people might lose interest in it, I think the developer himself is stuck now since the game has gone on in such a tough loop that making new releases often is probably tough, the game in itself deserves a five star rating, the graphics is good, the story is good and the dynamics are ***reasonably*** belieable, however I dont think many people will enjoy playin this game given how tough it is and how slow it is in terms of releases. The developer is not making a lot of money as far as I could see in Patreon, but I think that is a direct result of this state of the game.

I hope the developer can see this, relax a little bit and that could result in an epic game with great followership and fun for everyone.

This game has potentional, but I can't get over how ugly some of the characters are. Why does the MC look like the pervy grandpa from other games? Dude is at least in his 40s.

I do like the idea of this game and the many branching paths.

Awesome game, only problem is slow updates and having finished the content you want more because its darn good! There is enough for now but the build up is great and I really want to see more of the girls and especially their moms!
There is actual choice and it was fun replaying /scumming to try get the best outcomes. Its not just a boring kinetic novel.
More please!

I'll give it a provisional 3 stars for the moment for the work and effort put into it, but unless the developer massively exceeds the usual expectations you get from most projects you see on F95, they have simply bitten off more than they can chew here.

The style of the game is decent, the choice of UI that was designed by the developer is also commendable, but the manner in which the plot has been laid out with the LIs (especially because of just how many branching paths have been set up) is simply too much of an overload.

I'm sure the developer means well, obviously getting an abundance of choice and free reign over what journey a player gets to pick for themselves is a huge appeal to a lot of people. But the problem with this here isn't just how massive the workload would be to develop a game like this (as other reviewers have pointed out, this feels like it would take forever to get anywhere) but it is yet another example of "too many cooks spoil the broth".

There are simply too many potential LIs that are introduced far too quickly. I will come across a character that I'll find interesting but no more than 3 minutes later I will have to navigate my way through 15 other LIs before I can get the chance to get back to the character I was invested in. And the worst part is simply that you get no actual time to really process and register all of it. With the rate in which I was struggling to remember the names of most of the girls because they come and go so fast, you may as well use this game for short term memory tests instead of porn purposes.

And as other reviewers have said, this whole "look closer" mechanic is simply overused WAY too much. If it was used sparingly it would've been completely fine for the UI, but jesus christ, with the amount of times the plot has to abruptly stop so that the MC can have the option to be a pervert and peak up a woman's body I'm surprised he isn't already on a sex offender registry. Making this such a core mechanic of the game feels like a massive swing and a miss.

So overall? The theme is alright, the renders are decent, the idea was nice. But the execution is absolutely off the mark. There is simply too big of a mountain to climb with how many branching paths this developer chose to take on by themselves. For a project that has seemingly gone on for over two years, the amount of content that each individual LI has is barebones at best. By choosing to try and even out the content for each of the 20 something LI's equally, it ends up with all of them having barely anything.

Maybe the developer can eventually prove me wrong, but I can't imagine that happening unless this game gets constantly updated for the next 10 years. Don't show up to a buffet and trick yourself into thinking that you can actually eat everything.

Even if the tile and some part of the story were appealing, there are many things I did find lacking or badly done:
- the free roam /sandbox aspect is not very interesting, and doesn't bring a lot to the game. In fact, it could disappear and it wouldn't change much.
- the girls are visually varied, and that's very good. But the girls didn't look very appealing for me.
- the mc appearance is very strange. There may be an explanation for it, but still, it is a blocking factor.

At the moment, I do not feel like the game is worth more than 2 stars, but perhaps it will grow and become better. I'm not giving up on it, but will play later when it has got more content to see what its strength becomes, and if its weakness are compensated by the strengths.

This is a really hard to rate game. Some parts of it are really unique and extremely well done, like the UI, the affection system, unique modells (real mature ladies), choices that matter etc.

The main issue with the game is the writing. It's not extremely bad, but it's not good either. Dialogs are pretty meh, there're too many LI's and "paths", sometimes it's hard to follow the different characters, families scene-by-scene. It's not too efficient either, if you play through the game once, you miss 90% of the scenes. Too many unnecessary branchings IMO.

I have a feeling that the author of this game is more like a developer than a writer. It's a real shame, this could have been a real gem for mature lady lovers.

Face models for some characters are abit iffy and there arent much scenes so far, but games looks very promising, expecially the mother's, I was conflicted at first but after finishing the current build I bought the steam version and Im looking forward to next updates.

The game is excessively slow and boring after a while; furthermore, the renders don't stand out for their quality. As for the story, it's quite simple but not handled properly.

Note: Probably shouldn't even bother including NTR. According to the developer's notes, there will be so little in the game that NTR enthusiasts won't really care. However, any NTR element, no matter how small, gives headaches to NTR opponents. If 95% of the game is harem/vanilla/no-NTR, it might as well be completely no-NTR.

I think the single word to sum up this game is: Ambition.

The Dev clearly has tons of talent, and I love that they can make the situations sexy and thrilling WITHOUT just jumping into full penetrative sex five seconds after meeting the MC. There's a huge scope and scale. Tons of LI, tons of paths, meaningful choices and consequences.

However, if I'm being honest, the game is too ambitious. Even a AAA AVN creator like Mr. Dots or DPC would struggle to bring all these paths together, keep all these LIs separate and useful and most importantly, produce the game on a reasonable timescale. This dev is definitely going to fall short. My prediction, it gets abandoned rather than finished, which is why I knocked off a star. That said, I hope I'm wrong, cause the game is very impressive otherwise.

Pros:
Decent storyline
sexually charged situations
Above average renders

Cons:
CONTINUOUSLY ASKS whether you look at chest or underskirt CONSTANTLY! Please stop!
Prerequisites not met for this choice ?? really?

Great game, with quite interesting tags. It will be interesting to see the different paths of walkingthrough.
The picture in the game is nice, the characters are revealed quite well, huge variation, even in such a small version.
Overall on my wishlist on Steam, as soon as the game is in Beta, I will definitely buy the game. Also hoping for various purges or achievements on Steam

Same problem here as with the DIK game. Great game but so many routes means a lot more dev time between updates it seems. In this case the content update pace is absolutely glacial. That's a bummer because this game looks like it will be fun. In 10-12 years.

It's so hard for me to rate this properly because of two main, very competing factors: the actual concept and foundation itself vs the actual content present and the potential for future content.

The concept and foundation is fantastic. I think if the quality of the foundation was throughout the entire project, it would be at LEAST a 9/10. Over a dozen women, most of them MILFs that actually show aging instead of being just a 25 year old someone calls "mom", and the ability to choose who you want to spend time with.

The issue comes in everything after that: For an AVN that is over 2 years old, the sexual content present is basically all teasing and flashing. Currently, updates run through maybe 4 conversations, and then abruptly end. It would be easy to simply blame the dev of laziness, but I think another issue is that they overestimated their abilities. Spin256 adding so many women at the same time means that his attention has to be split on so many different threads. Combine this with the amount of deviations he adds, and not only does he have to try and make an equal amount of content for several different paths and women, but also the player probably won't see half of the stuff he actually adds.

The worst example of this is the fact that at the college, early on you choose which classes you'll take. This means that you won't see the MAJORITY of the content relevant to the classes. Why? If you're actually doing a degree, most of your classes are pre-requisites during the first year anyway, but even just as a GAME you shouldn't be dividing your content up so much.

Purely for concept alone I'd rate this a 9/10, but as a product now, it's probably a 6/10.