superb image quality and animation.
Most of the time you have to understand what to do depending on the dialogue and the MC's intuitions.
There are 3 main girls available for various tastes and the ability to skip chapter in case you get stuck
It's a very slow game but it's worth it!
If I could give a big fat 0 I would. This game is extremely grindy with very little reward with a convoluted story and dialogue that is betrays the low level writing skills of the author. It's technically a repeat of his previous game but the novelty has worn off. I couldn't find a single fap in all this mess, you try.....
An author who gets bored of his own games to the point of abandoning them and constantly starting a new one with the same procedure already foresees the result of this one.
The corrpuption system is good and so are the images, but I'm afraid that his inability to introduce more fetishes or sexual perversion to satisfy the player leads to a tedious routine that does not make it clear what to do or where to go, limiting you to repeat and repeat events already seen constantly.
Now, to make it more difficult, or get someone to pay 48,50€, 97€ or 193,50€ monthly for this (are we crazy?) add a system of money (or rather throwing money away), schedule events (some impossible to do that make you skip the episode out of boredom) to extend this as long as possible without getting nothing more than to see naked girls to, probably, create a new game when bored again .
Decided, against my better judgement, to try again with a Cielavie game... where to begin?
There is no challenge here, it is just pure grindy-busy work. The title of this game should "Chores: the Video Game".
Not to mention, the reward isn't even worth the grind, since the lewd scene are not that great.
Also, the writing, somehow, took a step down since My Bestfriend's Daugther.
As per usual, this has all the potential in the world but it is squandered on a grindy, zero reward game that could be way better.
Love the idea .
i dont mind the grind as much... for me it's a lot more realistic and rewarding to work for the corruption.
some bugs.. Especially near progressing to the next episode.
Yet awesome renders.. good writing.. Yeah.. thats a solid 4 in my book
Imense grind and most tips are unhelpful.
Extremely large number of progression breaking bugs, even in several months old chapters, meaning not even the dev dares to playtest their own game properly.
Extremely low content.
My advice is play with URM and checking decompiled source code to be able to get past the labirinth of gameplay and endless number of bugs.
Story is pretty pretty bad.
I only advice this game to fellow programers that enjoy debugging. The kind of person that spend more time fixing their skyrim instalation than playing it.
My Early life is a painfull torture.. But, Tbh... I am quite impressed by the dev the way he manages to stretch the events like spandex. Have you heard the saying " Work smarter, not harder".. well My Early Life is exactly that.
The length of this game is an Illusion. The dev creates a scene of like 25 images, and then drags them 1 image at a time over countless episodes. You keep on doing the same event day after day after day. and every new day the same scene repeats with ONE new image in the end.
The story / characters and models itself are quite good , but I seriously feel this dragging bullshit should be cut. He's been running the same pool, beach, homework, bathing scenen for over 5-6 episodes now. This game is Minimum effort, maximum outcome
There's a gem buried somewhere in all this mess, and even though bob's games have been getting better as of late, I'm still afraid we'll never get to see said gem.
This starts of rather well, there's some problems that I will get into later, but overall I feel like chapters 1-4 of this game are his best work by far.
The models are great, at least to my preference, I'd give them a solid 9/10, the progression of the corruption is great, it goes at a perfect pace (getting prudish teenage girls that are for all intents and purposes your siblings to go around naked and slobber over your dick is not a fast-process and if it were it would not have been satisfying). That's most of what this game is and aside for the writing it's one of the better ones of the genre and that's because bob doesn't stray from rendering, there's a lot of them and they're quite detailed, bob's work ethic is pristine (about the only good thing you can say about him unfortunately tho)
If the game had continued at this level of pace and quality to its completion, it would have been good, but it doesn't and in comes chapter 5 where everything aside from the art completely falls apart, some of these problems appear in previous chapters as well but the egregious ones start here
All around:
- the MC's model is trash, it's unpleasant to look at even, he looks like scum, and I guess that fits because he is the most unlikeable scum too
- while quite nice, the models are incredibly similar (almost the same) and in a cruel statement bob decided that they will have the same name as well just use different abbreviations for it, for this I like to play a mini-game in my head where all the LI's are actually the same character with schizophrenia, because aside from looking similar and having the same name they show other signs of this particular mental disorder.
- the plot is just barebones and cliché. As much as I praised the progression of the corruption, it is within the bounds of the same old shit (family dead, step siblings from different marriages etc), it's extremely unrealistic but that's not the point of the game anyway. This problem is exacerbated by the complete absence of grammar, proof-reading and the insanely basic and robotic dialogue, bob desperately needs an editor (or more like a new writer)
- the grind, while not as bad as in his other games (as of chapters 1-4), it has the biggest problem of the studying. Now I know little bobby is probably a doctor in real life (or failed to be one but likes to larp) and I know becoming a doctor takes a lot of work, but the studying in this game does nothing, like absolutely nothing. If you don't do it however, you straight up lose. This is a problem because little bobby also doesn't go to school or university, but the reason to keep studying is to not get kicked out of it, you're constantly reminded by both your sisters, the in-game walkthrough, the narration text and even the fucking man himself to keep studying so you don't fucking lose. But then the studying has no benefit to the progression of the game, it's just busy work for no reason in a staggering example of just utterly miserably failed game design. And it has no reason to be there, because there's other shit to learn IN THE GAME: massaging, self defense, photography and other dogshit that's cliché but has a purpose. The studying is only there to suck his own characters dick which by extension his own I'm pretty sure.
- the man, the myth, the legend, bob himself is one of my biggest problems with the game. The amount of self-insert humor, 4th wall breaking to criticise the player by both the MC and the NPC's (poetic when we know how he feels about criticism on this forum alone), MC turning his head towards the camera when he does something that's "cool", it's the 2nd biggest offender of immersion breaking in this game that's all about immersion after the dialogue and I in vain will forever wish that he stops doing that. Nobody likes it and if they do they need help. Even the act of renaming your character is done in spite (my name's bob, but call me whatever you like cause it's wrong anyway). There's even instances of the MC's name being hardcoded as bob, it's just the worst.
Starting in chapter 5:
- the previous problem with the grind gets at least 5 times worse. You get scenes that have to be repeated upwards of 10+ times (sometimes even more than 20, no joke) with the progression being only one render, and sometimes the render doesn't even make sense to end on. The amount of money you need gets exponentially higher and the opportunities you get to make photos get lesser. Your best bet is to grind the money for the entire game in the first few chapters but:
- in chapter 5 we get a nice game-breaking anti-cheat solution, where in one day of the week you get teleported to your room to be notified of random damage that has been done to the house. This is unavoidable because it teleports you, this takes up a time slot and a very busy one at that AND this costs *all your money* - $500 every single time. Not only does this actually punish you even if you're not cheating, because if you play the game at least as slowly as I have you can definitely get past the "arbitrary cheat number that bob decided upon" easily and get punished when playing normally (also this doesn't stop the cheaters because they can just get money between the events, what a great example of modern DRM). This becomes game-breaking in chapter 6 where instead of just taking all your money, it asks for only $20 while still being unavoidable and taking up a very busy time slot, so you're stuck with that event and unable to complete the chapter until your money gets low enough to not trigger it.
- you can't skip the text anymore. Until a scene is completely done and you've seen all renders associated with it, you cannot skip the text up to the new render. There scenes that have to be repeated upwards of 20 times with 30-40 clicks each with no lewd render until the very end. You honest to god have to click 20x35 = 700 times to get a scene over with and it's not even a good scene, it's actually a terrible scene that highlights the next problem
- variable corruption levels (usually downwards). So the game does this amazing thing, where when you finish a chapter all the girls go back to being like they where at the middle of the previous chapter (and onwards from chapter 5 they go back even more). At first I was skipping the episodes when I felt like the grind for the last few scenes was not worth it, and I thought that was just bob discouraging me from skipping the levels, so I would go back and do them properly, but no... It's just hard-coded in there. The story progression is all over the place starting chapter 5. The girls go from having no problems being naked to wearing a burka to the beach from scene to scene. The girls show up in your room naked asking for money but then when you walk in on them partially unclothed they call you the scum of the earth. You'd get one of them to touch your dick of their own volition and then refuse to kiss you on the cheek. In later chapters the opposite happens, where you can give the girls a lot of money and they will instantly go up in corruption way over where you have them at that point in the story. It's all just random renders at this point with no continuity or logic and honestly it completely ruins the immersion and enjoyment of the previous episodes.
It's a shame really, this is already verging on good, maybe even great. And it could definitely be excellent, but is bogged down by some major problems that have plagued this series since the beginning. I hope an actual writer will be involved with these projects some day (maybe someone to do the game architecture as well)
TL;DR this would have been at 3 stars if it stopped with chapter 4, but the game is getting progressively worse as it's baiting more people in and such malevolent business practices don't really deserve praise.
I love these type of games where you are a player in a setting, and the setting changes as you play more and more. It is pretty grindy but addictive, the more the scenes change, the more you want to play.
Models are decent. Only thing I can criticise or attempt to- is when there's finally vpenetration scenes. If the dev teases us for too long, the sex scenes will not be too interesting since we have already spend HOURS playing. I am interested to know how sex scenes will be installed into this game, can't wait for more!
I love this game so far. It could be a little less grindy but the tension built up between the characters and the renders are one of the greatest so far in the sandbox game genre.
Tried a lot of games but this here really catched me so far.
Please keep up your good work! I just hope it will be not like in BB where the devs decided to leave this project right in the middle
I've been a big fan of all this dev's games. They've gotten fairly similar now with the models and playstyle but I just love it. This slow corruption process of cute girls is just the kind of grind I can enjoy.
Especially now that you can slip episodes when there's some buggy last bits you can't get.
I want to like this game. I wanted to support this game...I am happy to support quality games and devs who clearly are going to go the distance and truly care about their games and making them the best they can be.
That's why I usually wait until a game has reached at least a version 3-4 before deciding to support it. I played this game back during Chapter 2 and loved it even despite the bugs which I was sure would be fixed in later versions. But the models were good and unique, the writing/humor was good even if not always perfect English, and I thought the grind level was just the right amount. There was noticeable progression in both dialogue and image content between each time you visited a scene and the amount of repeats seemed reasonable. Plus the dev was active in the thread answering questions and such which made it seem like they cared. Awesome. I forgot to bookmark it though so I missed a couple releases and so when I saw Chapter 6 decided to do a full new playthough.
Playing this game this time... I can't help but worry think the devs don't actually do a single complete playtest of their own game or to even enlist someone else to do it before releasing a new chapter...
The game is on version 6 and there is STILL a freaking dead end choice in the first Chapter that the has not been fixed. I mean how dam hard would it be to either delete the dead end choices or put in a scene/couple lines of code that at the very least loop back to getting to make one of the other choices until the player chooses the exposing in the shower method to move the game forward? Has any attempt been made to fix the 6:30AM not getting marked complete in the first two chapters? Has the dev looked into why the event for buying Eve's bikini in Chapter 3 doesn't always trigger despite finishing the conversation tree with her? Because again none of these fairly game breaking issues has been fixed yet months later. Fine you know I was still willing to give some benefit of the doubt. I don't know a ton about Renpy, maybe there is a reason the Dev really doesn't know how to fix these or didn't want to break saves and force everyone to start over? Of course there were also things like Bob saying the phrase "I'm not your sister" which was pointed out here also wasn't fixed in Chapter 1 which was also somewhat disappointing. Still not a total dealbreaker for me though.
Then I liked Chapter 3 (besides having to use the console for the bikini bug), and then came Chapter 4 which it was slightly annoying that the Lina shower plot was playing out a second time word for word as an event with no further progress Ch2 but otherwise no really major complaints. Had I downloaded the game when this version came out I probably actually would have still supported.
Then came Chapter 5...and it seems like this is really where quality control was pretty much completely flushed over just getting the update out as it was all just an mess. Where to start...
The scene with the grocery girl photo shoot is missing the Camera and the whole photoshoot mechanic which pretty much every other photo shoot scene has. The whole point of this highly plot important scene is to be taking pictures of her so the omission of the interactive photo element as the MC is taking pics is quite disorienting.
When the MC is later editing the photos of grocery girl at the beach instead it shows pictures of Eve. At first I thought maybe this was because the dev accidentally inserted the photos in the wrong scene, that he meant to put them in the scene where the MC is editing the Eve photos later in the episode....except they aren't even photos of Eve's photoshoot they are random pictures of Eve topless in the pool with the MC from a previous chapter. I then checked the image folder expecting to find potential before and after lighter/darker duller/vibrant versions of the same grocery girl picture or Eve's photo shoot pictures to fit the scene assuming wrong image numbers were maybe typed in the script, but no such images seem to exist so I honestly have no idea what the intention was here. Ugh.
The Kitchen scene with Lynn washing dishes is a complete disaster. There are not one but THREE lines that are said by the wrong character...
Code:
m "It's just work and life, you know. I've got a lot on my mind today."
li "Thanks, %(m)s. I appreciate it. For now, I think I just need a few moments to myself."
m "Bob, can't you see I'm stressed and not in the mood for your games right now?"
All three lines should be said by Lynn...
The dev even corrected this in Episode 6, but seemingly couldn't be bothered to fix it Chapter 5 the SIXTEEN times that this scene plays out. (The only other wrong narrators I noticed before was in the pre-story "The winner is %(li)s" is spoken by the Lawyer instead of Eve...which I completely missed that the lawyer wasn't there the first few times I played it so I get how this hadn't been caught, and in Chapter 3 the line "What the fuck are you doing? - GET OUT" in Lina's room is accidentally said by Lynn. Given that the only time she says it is if you take a picture of her when she is naked changing under certain circumstances it's much more understandable that this could have been missed in a playtest since angering her means lowering mood and increasing your grind.)
This kitchen scene has other issues though. The line "Bob, can't you see I'm stressed and not in the mood for your games right now?" has the word Bob hardcoded instead of substituted with the player name variable %(m)s. (This was also NOT fixed in Chapter 6). The result is apparently a "ValueError: unsupported format character" error crash can happen (This may only happen if the player chooses to use the built in name changer to rename Bob?) that was easily fixed by putting in the %(m)s for "Bob" in the script file.
(I don't know enough about renpy to figure out why it's causing an error in this particular scene. Maybe the absurd quantity of 16 duplicate scenes with this line plays a factor as the error mentions something about a lot of previous lines duplicated? There are two other lines with hardcoded "Bob" both also in Chapter 5 that don't cause an crash though again should have been fixed to use the name variable instead of Bob.
ly "Bob, this is stunning! You have impeccable taste."
ly "Bob, you're sweet, but we have a math problem to solve, remember?"
One other minor gripe is how Lynn's line "It's just work and life, you know. I've got a lot on my mind today." doesn't fit the story... She complains about work? WHAT WORK? I mean not only do we stalk her the entire day to see that she never works but it's a pretty major plot point that she doesn't have a job which is why she needs the MC to buy her things, and she is willing to do the photo shoots to earn money and feel like she is contributing money to the house hold? Plus Eve even told her two younger sisters that they needed to focus on school and could not get jobs... Was this originally an Eve scene that was instead given to Lynn? (Again I may not have thought about this crap if the game didn't make me read the same lines SIXTEEN TIMES).
Eve's pool scenes are an editing mess. They start off fine with her laying under the shade and telling the MC that she's laying under the shade and it's too hot, but as the scenes progress in the grind the exact same dialogues occurs only now she is sitting on a stone in the middle of the sun with her legs in the pool yet still claims to be laying under the shade because it's too hot, only to then teleport mid conversation to be actually laying back under the shade, before then teleporting to be in the pool with the MC sitting beside her as happened in Ch4...
All throughout the dialogue there are lines which it's amazing they weren't caught and fixed if someone cared a little.
The scene in the bathroom where the MC is convincing the girls to let him post their pictures on the internet contains this line
"It's 100% secure! I've checked with a test site (more or less...)
Which would be fine if a single % in script wasn't a renpy protected character which causes the game to spit out <renpy> code in the middle of the sentence in game. This seems like it should have been impossible to miss with a single playthrough? It's easily fixed by instead using %% in the script or if you didn't know that use the word "percent" instead of the symbol.
I've play plenty of ENGRISH games. I understand that some devs don't speak English as a first language so rely on things like Google Translator which doesn't always give them the right words or phrases... I'm assuming that's how you end up with things like this from an earlier chapter:
"I'm just sneezing, what are you photographing?" (Grocery girl had a couple more similar lines)
I'd guess that the words sneezing things is a bad translation of words trying to say that she is just being nosey. That's fine...although ideally something an English playtester would fix.
What really seems lazy though is when there are words that aren't even close that go uncaught...ie
"Look what I bought! Do yo like this floating mateless?" when he buys the floating MATTRESS.
my favorite though is from when Lynn finally gets her laptop..
ly "Bvadrr"
That's not even close to being an English word??? Did her brain just break? Was she electrocuted?
Honestly for the most part I don't mind grind. I played the original Big Brother, and games like CureMyAddiction, WaterWorld, etc which were total grind fests and mostly loved them. Long conversations trees, having to solve puzzles visiting different places at different times. I'm fine with all of that. (Although I do certainly prefer a good hint/walk-through be an option) Especially in the first chapters of this game as I previously mentioned I had no issues with the grind. It followed a steady noticeable chain of progression. It had a rhythm. Something like scene, rejection, bribe/plea, rejection, bribe/plea, scene. You could tell you were making progress on each visit both from the dialogue and the pictures. I'll also add that I also didn't have a major problem with the shifting attitudes towards nakedness and the MC, I mean beyond the obviousness need for it for story purposes the "sisters" are all hormonal teen/twenty-something girls...and girls at that age can certainly change their minds about things quickly and often IRL.
Then again in came Chapter 5....
I do think it is lame as hell when the exact same scene plays out in multiple timeslots without overlapping progression and you consider it two separate events. That's not content... or remotely enjoyable grind. If anything its an immersion breaker when you are going back in progression bouncing between the scene in the morning/afternoon and the scene in the afternoon/evening... I can't be alone in preferring to go back to less "events" like the first chapters than having more when they are the exact same events almost word for word (I think the morning version of the Lynn kitchen scene in Ch5 did have an added "Good Morning" line compared to the after dinner version...whoopie) running simultaneously. A little effort in making the various grind scenes dialogue occasionally different would also not be the worst thing ever. I mean take Lina posing in her swan costume in Ch4-5 at some point she loses not only the top but her underwear as well in the pictures, and then there is increasing level of touching, but the dialogue does not change one line to acknowledge any change to the status quo. Lynn lying on her bed in her bedroom has the excact same dialogue (which means the same level of reaction) when the MC puts his hand on her leg and when he tries to actually put his finger in her pussy...which is a pretty significant line to suddenly cross with her. Would it be really asking too much to put in a little more effort to spice things up a tiny bit with a couple extra words here and there when the scene calls for it instead of mailing it in like this?
At least those last scenes I mentioned had a noticeable visual progression. The Lynn bathroom scene where she is wearing a towel in front of the mirror had a difference so subtle you could barely tell anything changed until the last variation when her tits fell out. The Lynn kitchen scene had a similar issue of just dragging on and on and on and on with barely a change after the first 2 versions. I mean it went from hug to kiss and then I guess the kiss got like one frame longer each time and it went from hot to tedious as it dragged on and on (and again the forced double repetition did not help this scene feel less tedious).
I started Chapter 6...but after that same DAM KITCHEN SCENE WITH LYNN WITH THE SAME DAM CODE ERROR happened right at the beginning I just quit. I then had to get all this off my chest. At some point in a few days I will give it a try see if it's any better than Ch5, maybe that chapter was an aberration for some reason? Fingers crossed.
If more effort is placed into later chapters and ideally fixing some of the more basic fixable issues I outlined above I would still be happy to support in the future as I do think at the core there is what I consider a good game here.
Heck for all the complaining I just did about Ch5 there was still good stuff about it too like the progression with Eve, and the dual bathroom scene with Lina/Lynn. And I liked how the blanket scene was handled, where the clue was given on how to trigger the scene and then the reminders were given afterwards on how to keep progressing.
Wasted far too many hours grinding nothing at all. Everyone is stuck everywhere in the progression rather than progressing. No replays for what little you might unlock.
If your game requires a walkthrough and cheating (which I did not use,) then you are not a game developer. Give it up and go find something you're actually good at.
My Early Life is My Coding Failure.
I think it gets more flak than it deserves. The girls look great, the "plot" progresses nicely, and I have no troubles clicking through everything without reading. I'm excited to see how this one plays out.
Bad dialogues
Bad story
Retarded grind mechanics, click 30 times a week on a button in top screen or you lose.
Retarded walkthrough/playback
Hell even close screen buttons are made gray out, are barely visible and are located in the different part of screen for different windows. I genuiney think, the author is a sadist who takes joy in suffering of players.
Characters which feel like dumb npcs with the only goal in mind to blueball player.
Corruption that is not real corruption, just being cuck with sluts.
A repeat 10000 times to get one new picture kind of game play.
I find playing this game interesting with good progression. The Story line between all the different games released are all tied in. It's will be interesting to see how bob ties into all the games released. The graphics and girls are great, leaving you wanting to push further into the game.
where you have several good selection options ... like apply sunlotion ...shoulder massage... you take some risc ... like a only 50% chance you are successful.
more resistance from some of the girls.
the should have different character traits!
let them wear some sexy dresses and underwear... would be nicer do undress them as you wish... or as the let you...
I like the art work. The storyline is bland.
This is a terrible grind, one of the worst I have encountered for a game.
The amount of times you have to click to just observe events is ridiculous, move the event menu to the bookmarks heading so it's a single click.
This is not a game that you can just closely read and know what to do. You might have to go through weeks just to trigger an event if ever. The lack of direction and well written dialogue quickly make this game boring.
This game is even worse than the once before it, in my last review I said the devs learn nothing new and and don't listen to the critic.
This time though it feels like the devs even forget basic stuff and did things people don't like on purpose.
This game is even more tedious than the once before and in my opinion the CG got worse. Avoid it.
