VN - Ren'Py - Move the Chains [v0.3.5] [MissFortune]

Overall: Okay/Promising

Renders are great!! Beautiful even. That said, I am a little thrown off by the fact that the player is just inserted into this world without much knowledge of the other characters that are introduced almost consecutively. It's like all of these new characters show up for the first time (restaurant, bar, in the street) and all know or head over heels for the MC. Almost each one of them has similar looks and personalities (tough love or edgy personalities). Despite that, the premise is there......an unfortunate football star looking for redemption for himself and his family. Pretty interesting to attract an audience's interest based on first impression. However, it fails on developing that connection from player to MC. Most devs fail to realize that this can make or break how invested players are into the story and its characters. For example, Laura and Diana each has a supposedly sad backstory, but because it was rushed there is no empathy from a player perspective for these characters who are important figures of the MC's life. I just wished it was more developed that's all.

Absolutely excellent game - large cast of characters, lots of dialogue, solid renders, many LIs, lots of choices, and love the college football angle.

Seems to be a bit of a slow burn, at least with some of the LIs - I enjoy that slower build up so this was a big pro.

Animations could use improvement.

Looking forward to more of this game. I even bought the Early Access on Steam to support dev as I liked the game so much.

V0.2

I came in with a bias when I started playing this game. It sat in my "to play someday" list for a few months as I have been burned by low quality sports VNs before where there is not much story involved and I like some meat on the bone.

I am happy to have been wrong on this one.

Graphics 5/5

The developer is using modern genesis models to great effect. They light their scenes well and angles make the scenes seem natural and don't detract from what they are trying to give you. In the VN world, modern assets are expensive but this developer invested a lot of money to make sure the world didn't seem like a repetitive block of the same room, and each area is it's own environment which I really appreciate. Some areas are only used for one scene but they put in the funds to give it it's own which is really rare. With what their patreon numbers say they are bringing in right now, they have not made back the return on investment and I hope that changes as labors of love rarely pay the bills.

Story 4.5/5

Was pleasantly surprised with the direction the developer took. The story revolves around college football but the writing doesn't force it. Instead, they are weaving a tale that leads up to when the MC will take the field. There's a couple of sport scenes but the first two episodes are dedicated to flushing out the MC, showing us his roots, and looking at the business side of modern college football. I look forward to those intense action scenes on the field when they come but they are being built up to instead of given right away. It is a great tease to what happens next and has me hooked.

The reason I can't give story a 5/5 is the way the story is leaning into crime heavily. Yes. Tragic backstory. Got that. A bit of a thick brush though. Could have been less intense for a teen athlete. Might not be as necessary for the story going forward. Sports rivalries would make more sense with other schools or athletes the Mc is trying to take the roster spot from. Thug gangster life with multiple gun scenes feels like a direction for another VN so I'm hoping this falls behind the sports backdrop when it gets into high gear.

LI 4/5

You have a lot of tropes in this one (which game doesn't) but the developer tried to give each of them their own identity. I think they did well separating the different characters. Visually, some are a bit similar looking but I give developers a pass on this because as I said before, assets are expensive and you shouldn't rate a game on graphics twice. They did make an effort to differentiate with tattoos, piercings and character arcs. A couple overlapped a bit to me though. There are three different "dom" girls that pop up with a "sub" girl attached and they felt pretty much like the same "dom" character, but their "subs" are all distinctly different, which is interesting. Also, so many girls in the game that giving full stories for all of them is a challenge, but so far, all the mains have gotten some spotlight to add depth and a few other characters have been teased. For example, I want to see what happens with Parker even though she might have had a total of two or three lines in the first two episodes. If you are looking a t longer release schedules though, I expect I will be challenged to remember who some of the minor role girls are when returning for future episodes.

My favorite main is the MILF next door. Instead of her jumping the MC, you actually meet her kid and the story doesn't just focus on her wanting to get stuffed, but that her child comes first and she is a good mother doing her best. I really like her and love that she feels real.

Polish 4.5/5

I found the game very immersive and the developer did a great job. It is such a minor thing but I have to highlight the one small negative. The game could do with a proof read before it is released. Sometimes you find a sentence that has some grammatical mistakes or a missing word. I get that as a solo developer it is tough because you can end up reading what you think is there after the tenth pass so a second set of eyes might help catch a couple of these. I never got lost on what is going on but it happened enough that I noticed.

Release Content 5/5

Holy crap there was a lot of content in this game! I was expecting an hour or two of play but it just kept going and I lost track of time. I think about 4 hours in is when I looked up at my clock and was taken back by how long I had been playing/reading. The two episodes I played are longer than a lot of other game releases and not sure how they got that much done so fast. From game release to episode 2 was roughly 8 months. episode 3 is coming out this month which would be another 8ish months so if it has similar content volume, I don't know how they do it solo.

I am putting this game in my top tier list. Really looking forward to seeing what episode 3 brings. I admit I am primarily a leech with games on F95. I have sadly only supported one project so far, but depending on the next release, I could see myself giving a lower tier subscription, because so far I think this deserves support.

My first impressions after playing this game, it literally blew my mind due the facts that,

The renders are top notch

The girls look unique and their body proportions are much realistic that many games are missing nowdays

MC is a tall guy, looks handsome and not one of the guys who wont retaliate if you try to cross him(again one of the character traits that most college theme avns lack)

Also choices matter here, if you dont like a particular girl, you can reject her without worrying abt her dropping over you again and again

And lastly it got a freaking HAREM lol, not worry of leaving someone behind if you like them all

Whats not to like abt this game

Definitely a 5/5 from me, well deserved and kudos to the dev for creating such a gem

Move the chains v0.2

Enjoyed this one nice visuals hot and pretty girls hot and dating Mc with fame who can build his own harem. Also sports themed too. There are plenty of girls to caught. My fav is Kara she's hot and a milf. Loved the bonding of Mc with her son. Hoping to see more of her in episode 3. There's fair amount of content here.

+ Hot Mc ( glad dev decided to his full face in episode 2 )
+ Visuals
+ Pretty and hot girls
+ Milfs
+ Harem
+ Sports themed

- to be honest that yellow and blue texts in the start are such a pain to read. ( Hope dev avoids this in next updates)

Overall i enjoyed this one. Keep up the good work dev looking forward to next updates.

V02 at time of review.

I'll say what everyone else has said, the art work is stellar. The problem is that the artwork isn't enough to keep you involved on its own. The dev seems to have things to say, but can't seem to stop saying variations of them over and over again. I'll try to generalize without specific spoilers so as not to ruin the experience/story for others.

Pros:

- Great art
- A good premise and a somewhat novel approach to the beginning of the story
- Finally a game where we don't have to suffer through the "lovable doofus" sidekick.
- The writing seems intelligent, albeit lacking in focus.

Cons:

- Everyone speaks the same way and with the same tone. There's very little differentiation in characters and personalities because of that. I often felt like it was like having a character talking to himself in the mirror, no matter who he was talking to. In almost any 2 person conversation in the story I felt like it was two facets of the same character talking to themselves.
- It's preachy, and overly verbose. There are too many unnecessary lengthy speeches
- The fake company name dropping and the overuse of jargon is annoying. It's also somewhat of a barrier to entry for those who aren't fans of American football. Still, it seems like a passion project so that last bit may be forgiveable and will certainly have an appeal to a certain segment. The game name dropping is frankly ridiculously overused.
- The pacing is terrible.
- There is an unnecessary overabundance of characters.
- MC isn't consistent in his characterization and the dev can't seem to make up their mind who he is, except that he's kind of a douche.
- "choices? what choices? We don't need no steenking choices..." (insert bandido accent here)
- Not every game needs to be a laugh a minute, but there are some obvious attempts at humor that simply aren't humorous.

This is an exceptionally promising game if some attention could be given to creating distinguishable, individual characters with some depth to them. You could easily axe over half the story characters and not miss them at all. It woud be better to have less and go deeper than to spread so wide and be so shallow. Be more economical in writing the dialogue and cut some of the verbosity out of it. It would be more than ok to talk that much if it were dialogue and story advancing discourse, but the preachy soliloquies get really old, really fast.It's too much and you find yourself clicking to get through it. It's a lot of talking, but not a lot of story development or character evolution. I'm making this sound negative in a way because a lot of it is, but there's something in everything in this story that is promising and could be great if it was executed better. Until it is though I think I've had enough of this one. I really want to like it, but when I'm honest with myself I just don't want to continue playing it.

I dont know man, this game is weird and kinda disappointing to me.
On one hand the renders and characters look great, but on the other hand the pacing of the story is terrible. Barely anything notable happens most of the time, people are just talking and talking and talking, and all the technical stuff about american football i just could not care about.
The game introduces a ton of characters in almost every scene a new one, i just could not keep up with who is who. There were a few notable ones that i quite liked, like Laura, Maya, Jude, but nothing happens with them relastionship wise, like with most characters. There are a few bare bones lewd scenes sprinkled in but the downtime between them sometimes is way too long and not worth it most of the time.
The passage of time is also hard to follow, and some of the story progression was jarring. At one point you are on the roof with Diana having a deep personal talk only to be followed up with you having an argument with her because of some dude of her roomates. It was weird. Other times i cant tell only a few images in that we are actually in a flashback.
Like i said, the renders look amazing, some characters look great and promising and i see a lot of potential in this game, but so far it was quite boring and underwhelming in a lot of areas.

Awesome. Finally a football VN. The BMS reference was also a nice touch


There is a good amount of content here for a game that is just over a year old. The graphics are good, writing is good (albeit with occasional spelling mistakes), and its a good story. MC is a bit of a punk at first, but it at least fits what the developer is going for

Only complaint is there are too many characters. There are a ton of LI, which always slows down game progress.

Looking forward to seeing this one progress.

So far so good, imo. The chars, writing, and developing plot lines seem interesting. The dev obviously has a good foundation of college football knowledge which adds to the immersion.

Gonna keep an eye on this one for sure and see where it goes/can't wait for more.

I'm torn. The author tries some admirable things (a more ambitious way of storytelling; making use of gradual exposition and coming closer than any other game I've played here to polyphony; chief among them), but lots of it fails to connect with me personally. I can't help thinking that this is the wrong medium for larger-than-life characters (the auto-dealer NIL guy being a good example).

I also never felt like I was Spencer, just the guy behind the screen watching Spencer go about his days. The fact that half the girls you met have a great deal of history with Spencer, which only gradually gets out into the open, doesn't help that case.

But the wigger stuff is the worst of the bunch. You couldn't have picked a less compelling perspective if you racked your brain for all your life. I don't care about some semi-savage primitive chest-bumping about family, when it introduces neither conflict nor motivation. He could want to make it for any other reason, and if the tribalistic familialism doesn't at least come into conflict with one other value or principle, as happened with Marcus Junius Brutus or between Michael Corleone and his brother*, the story is bereft of purpose. The Godfather, Once Upon A Time in America and Goodfellas make for much better blueprints for a crime story than Scarface. Petty criminals and their ilk make for neither compelling characters nor narratives. As it stands, it just makes for very replaceable motivation and atrocious, broken English.

At the best of times, this reminds me of GTA 5, with its biting humor (before it got nuked for the E&E re-re-release), but I don't care for Franklin, but Michael and Trevor. In some ways, it is also more blatantly and unhealthily nihilistic (from the "Be who you are, do what you want" to a nigh paraphrasing of Dostoevsky's warnings in Brothers Karamazov**), but I find it's more than balanced with the references from anything to "Lia" Thomas, Rittenhouse, Musk, Tate, the latest crypto scam and the totally not chronically-online specters haunting Twitter, and any other number of things. It's quite nice.
But some other references to millennial pop culture I find quite bad.

The renders fall within the uncanny valley for me, the mother being the most blatant example of that, but I also don't happen to care for them, outside cases at either extreme (good or bad), which this isn't, so take it with a grain of salt.

There's also a good number of spelling mistakes. All I remember is a missing letter or word somewhere, nothing which renders any piece of dialogue incomprehensible, but it is very much enough to be noticeable and annoying.

Pacing will be off for quite a few people, and some of the tones are quite heavy.

I think you have a talented author who chose the wrong premise, save a re-write or jolt in direction. It's not flawless, I've made as much about my perspective obvious, but the larger point stands. I can't yet say whether I'll follow the game beyond this point. I might give the author's other Ren'py work a shot though, though it doesn't seem to be quite up my alley.

*The prevalence of which is still wide-spread, as I happen to be privy to, through my father.
**"Dost Thou know that the ages will pass, and humanity will proclaim by the lips of their sages that there is no crime, and therefore no sin; there is only hunger? 'Feed men, and then ask of them virtue!' that's what they'll write on the banner, which they will raise against Thee, and with which they will destroy Thy temple.".

Pros:

- Renders


Cons:

- Story
- Main character
- Cringe worthy writing
- Characters


I had high hopes for this VN, I really wanted to like it but it was so God damn cringeworthy.

- Story

Your a white kid from the hood... No, that's not a joke.. You're from Inglewood, California. The MC looks like a goth member of Three Days Grace but throughout his series he has the verbiage of Marshawn Lynch, if I said his name correctly. There's plenty of things about the story that just didn't appeal to me and MC was a huge part of it. Throughout the story he's talking about stereotypes this and that but every other time he opens his mouth was a blatant contradiction. The whole Jakeem scene where he practically glorified assisting in thugs sticking up people. Aside from the cringe slang the story was all of the place tone wise. The dev has woke-liberal talking points as well as conservative-red pill ones. Hell, even Kyle Rittenhouse got a shout out, check that off of my "Things I didn't expect" list. When the MC isn't this poser "hood" cliché he's pretty much a obnoxious arrogant tool. Main characters these days are either tools that are full of themselves or doormats.

- Characters

Not really all that blown away by the love interest in the game. Majority of them all dense or have shallow personalities. Diana, Laura and maybe Kara seem to be the only ones worth the time. Laura isn't romancable but Diana is which is a head scratcher. Yuna wasn't there for you and pushed you away but the MC broke out the cape for her while ignoring Diana that was pretty much in your corner the whole time. Make matters worse is Yuna then lives with you.

Again, I wasn't blown away by the characters. Most of them just throw themselves at the MC which makes this a bit lackluster. No real connections other than sex. There's literally a character named Swallow...

This just doesn't get me invested, I'm sorry.

I hope this game doesn't get abandoned like other games. This game is in my top 10, renders, story, and characters, all good. I really want to support the dev but with last 2 games didn't give me hope.

Overall i like this game. it's a good 4.5 stars so i rounded up.

Renders are beautiful, there's a good variety of LI (seems like it still early on, 0.2)

The story is cookie cutter, a great athelete that comes from small beginnings. It's well told so far and if this trend continues it will be a good story.

I like the dev. went for menu choice rather than qte, it gives it a more novel fell rather than reactionnary game. (so far)

The only minus for me, and it's not a really a minus just a bit confusing (maybe it's just me). Not all flashback, but some where introduced confusingly (imo). Some of these flashback are introduced perfectly either while sleeping or while seeing a trigger. Others seemed like they just happen for some unknown reason.

Keep up the good job.

I am really enjoying this AVN. It is very different than any other game I've played out there and that is refreshing in itself. I agree that it may not be everyone's cup of tea, but those of us with lesser political sensitivities will find this game to be a gem to enjoy. I can't wait for more. This game gives me Rocky Balboa vibes, but in American Football context!

There were a few typos here and there, but that wasn't a deal breaker for me. The dev will do well to iron out these simple errors in later updates. Sometimes it seems like too much text cramped into one frame. Other AVNs do a good job by largely keeping the writing short and to the point for each frame. This AVN can benefit from that example.

I've found the writing in this VN fantastic—one of the very best with regard to style and story. The graphics while to me are second to the story/writing, are themselves extremely top-tier. This is not the standar fuckfare VN, and it is not trying to be something it's not. It's obvious the dev took a story-first approach, lude scenes happen where they make sense. And they are good too!
Love Move The Chains. One of my new favorites.

I abso-fucking-lutely loved the update. Don't know why people complain about MMC being an asshole. The environment in which he was raised, you have to be asshole to survive and it's not like it's out of character that MMC behaves that way. I believe this attitude and personality suits MMC perfectly, especially after he spent a year in jail.

Dev melted my heart in UI department. I just loved the UI and the animations used in UI. Renders and animations as you know are already great, no lagging when animations play.

I really believe think that story will get more and more interesting as we move forward and this episode shows exactly that very clearly. Loved with the ease the story flows, reveals the bits, immersively.

Characters are lovely and I love detailing on characters. You'll see what I'm talking about when you play the game.
Emily gonna lose her other eye too. Bitch emptied her brain when lost first one. I already knew she will jeopardize Diana when MMC saw her with Dwight the twat.

KEEP GROWING!
STAY HEALTHY!

GOLDLUCK! MissFortune

The premise is a good one, not enough games of the sportsball genre here. The story feels a little disjointed in the beginning, that it doesn't flow well. Part of me expects that's intentional... that the game is trying to introduce the player to all of the set pieces before jumping into the meat of the story and that requires going to all the places, for better or worse, and being introduced to all the people. While it's likely the developer feels this is necessary to ensure players don't feel like the story is being cobbled together on the fly, it isn't really necessary. We don't need to introduce the player to all of the people, places, and things to know they were fleshed out and exist, we only need to hear of them. It feels like we ran into 15-20 girls (I'd have to replay it to know for sure) during the first episode's content, and most of those interactions felt forced.

In spite of the early story tripping over itself to introduce us to all of the players, I do actually like the characters being introduced. Most of them seem to have very different personalities with some gentle overlap, even if the characters with personality overlap don't necessarily interact with one another--yet. For instance, Nicole and Swallow come to the story as a sort of package deal, yet have personalities that are as diametrically opposed as the north is from the south. Episode 1 wraps up with tension between characters simply being a part of the MC's life in various capacity, and while I'm sure it will ease up--the MC's sister of all people can't keep up jealousy of other women without causing social problems for the MC in the long-term--It's still a fun hurdle to come across and overcome.

Scene backgrounds are choice and the character designs are amazing, they are very high quality and while they're obviously 3DCG, they have very realistic qualities (I loved seeing the MC and Yuna in the pool at the end of E01; that is high detail). I don't intend to come off as mean to the other game in the sportsball genre--it's a good game and I'm still playing it--but realistic faces really give me a better impression, and the visual quality is on par with some of the very best games on the forum... in any genre.

I enjoy most of the music. I look forward to the developer adding more to the jukebox. Ambient sounds work well, all of the music and sounds are generally normalized so nothing comes out of left field suddenly blowing out your eardrum (problematic in one or two games I've played). I will note that I'm not a fan of the music stopping when you go to the menu. It feels like it pulls you out of the element, and I understand the very action of going to the menu technically takes you out of the element, but it feels like some platformer being paused rather than simply going to look at something in the menu... the menu isn't just a pause button, after all; it's where all the extras are at.

For the moment, I'm giving this 5 stars.

Through about 3/4 of the first episode, I was leaning towards 4 stars... and that had pretty much everything to do with how forced some of the scenes felt in the beginning. However, as I've moved into v0.2 content (S01E02), I've come to the conclusion that it was simply the developer trying to plug us into all of the coming content rather than letting it come naturally with the story... it really feels like the story has slowed into a more natural pacing, and I appreciate it.

Looking forward to future content, and hopefully that will include a season worth of good sportsball content. The adult content will come, but remember: Without a good story--chock full of as much detail that a genre-savvy player can stand--all adult games will simply boil down to a lazy porn plot. Don't be that writer.

PS: Love Dean, he sings the song of the MC's people--loud and proud.

I wouldn't know a cornerback from a diamondback, but I still enjoyed this game.

For a start, the game explained a lot of the sports terms as it goes, so that helped.

But the characters were great, and they acted consistently with their personalities.

The highlight though is the rendering. It's amazing, and definitely some of the best work in any AVN.

Outstanding job.

So I love the game. Renders are awesome, beautiful girls. Very interesting story, which has some great potential for some deep moments.

Aside from a few weird grammar things, and a few misspelled words, the dialog makes sense and reads well.

The only real complaint is I want more, and I want it now, lol.

Keep up the terrific work, really excited to see how this game comes together.

Enjoyed the game so far; unique and interesting premise, nice renders and good writing. The HUD looks crazy good with all the animated logos.

I quite liked the choice to keep the MC's face a mystery at the start, it kind of left the visuals up to imagination, so I was a little disappointed when you could see the MC's face in the renders afterwards, but that is not really a big issue.