Ren'Py - My Early Life [Ep.1-16.00] [CeLaVie Group]

Very nice renders (some scenes are best i see), moderate dificulty, little grind, slowly corruption of girls and photo shooting. Its not for simple people like only VN novel. If you read text not problem with game. If you using unsen text + ctrl = problem. Many people hated it but everytime wait for update Simple try it and make your opinion. Its a game, not VN.
After EP.3 with small look at EP.4
PS: If you played tief version dont cry about bugs.... wait for release public version which catch all bugs...
PPS: money and study hours have silution only use brain (activate console)

UPDATE after ep.7
add animations, arousal system, better hint system + up one star = promising trend
subjective - missing continue swan line with Lin
missing in hint system counting of sub events 1/4,2/4 etc.
4,5 stars for now

I dont mind sandbox or grinds but i do have my limits, and this one goes way past that, its not that its hard in any way but it just takes forever and you get absolutly nowhere, 4 chapters done and you havent even kissed all the girls once yet.....considering the grind vs rewards its just not worth playing, it will proberly take 10 chapters for MC to fuck someone, if that will even happen.
You can skip chapters which is nice if you get stuck which i was already in chapter 1, had to enter a girls room at 9 and 9:30 if i remember correct and i tried that for a hole week and she was just sleeping and nothing happened.

Game also has alot errors, money vanishing in chapter 4 for no apprent reason, inventory is bugged i never could open it without getting the grey error screen.

The story isent that much fun, mostly just vanilla and all you do is take pictures and sell them or upload them to your website, the girls has some small issues like work problem and boyfriend issues but its all a bit boring, you will also get tierd of the constant "your not my brother/sibling" comment, you will hear that a million times.

To give you an idea of how fast progress is, if you visit a girl on the toilet, she stays on it, she gets up and hide pussy, gets up hides move leg one step to the side, gets up hides move other leg one sted, gets up you shows a little pussy, and so on each of those moves are per day, so one leg move 1 day next leg 1 day...you get the picture right.

Same thing goes for storylines, you have to see the same scenes the same text a million times over multiple days to just add a few words each day, it just gets to boring in the long run, and add 15 hours to study each week which you just do on monday to get it over and done with, it just adds up and becomes to much wasted time for no rewards.

The in-game guide help a little but it dosent really tell you want to do, it might say go to a girls room at 9:00 and when you do nothing happens and you have no clue what you need to do to get it to trigger, its a bit annoying when you only have 4 missing steps and none of the does anything, making you stuck and forced to use skip episode button.

If game was made so you atleast got faster progress with one girl or even with some side girls to keep it fun and interesting it might not feel so bad, but without any lewd stuff doing so much grinding it just gets to boring.

The only thing game got going is the nice looking LIs with good builds and would love to see the creator start making real AVNS without sandbox with the same kind of girls since they are nice in all the creators games, and it could be a game worth suppoting maybe someday it will happen but dont have my hopes up.

The game itself is very attractive to the player on the inside. When all the lines of behavior are already outlined and progress is already visible and the further development of events is clear. This is when the girls are no longer ashamed, and the bob is already accepted by them as a man. But all this nullifies the process itself and its features of the game, which in previous versions only annoyed, but in this game they simply do not allow you to enjoy the game. In my opinion, the balance of the game between money, slow progress and temptation is just wrong. Scripts should make it more interesting, instead, they are such that in most cases the player is unable to complete the quests, leads to the completion of the game in only 20 quests out of 90. This is manifested in the fact that the hero must not only win the favor of girls, but also take care of money, which the game requires much more than it provides opportunities to earn. This is an imbalance, a failure, a shortcoming, and a significant one at that! When you don't have enough $150 to rent a house, it's one thing, but when the main character manages to go into minus $100, it's completely absurd! It's a shame, because exactly 3-4 episodes are the most attractive and seductive, when the process of seduction is in the middle. In addition, the author has closed the possibility of adding money by editing saved games. It was generally unethical and rude.

God I wish this dev would learn something along the way!

After years of producing games with great models in unbearable grindfests, it seemed like he might have picked up a clue with MBFD2 where you could actually progress through the game in finite time - so much so that I supported him at one of the highest tiers for quite a while (that ended once I'd played through several hours on this clunker).

Rather than continue MBFD2, though, he chose to suspend development of a game that was working to start this one and let all of his worst instincts come back to the fore. Once you get past the intro it's all grind, all the time, and when you do chance upon a new event that sparks a ray of hope that maybe you've opened up something new you get ... barely anything noticeable in advancing the story.

I'm fine with a slow burn, but there's barely a hint of warmth in this mess, and no matter how slow you like your burn, this is slower than that. He's gone back to a hint system that's been shown to be nearly worthless, demonstrating that MBFD2 was the exception, not a sign of newfound awareness that people want games to progress.

I'm giving him an extra star because the artwork is quite good, though these models aren't anywhere near his best (that would be MBFD2, again). Maybe in a year I'll come back and, if someone's written up a walkthrough, give this another spin.

Life's too short to spend it wading through crap like this.

Version 2.03

Every new CeLaVie game has better graphics and models. I love the new premise of the game and I really like the evolution of the game's gameplay.


I may overrate the game but
I remain attentive to the evolution of the story and I hope that the game loses interest (in other games the end is worse than the beginning).

Nice models (not as good as in MBFD), dumb plot, some grinding. Instead of starting new game I'd rather would like to continue playing MBFD 2, which just started to be interesting, but well... Let's see how it will be going.

It's difficult to find a good slow burn game but this one checks all the boxes for me. Personal preference plays a large part in everyone's enjoyment. I think that the tag system will benefit games like this so people will be able to filter out more things they don't like.
I play games for the chase and the "game" aspect of it. Some people like VNs that are linier and they don't have to think much. To each their own, but raking a game negatively just because it doesn't fit their preference never made sense to me.
Corrupting to the point of casual nudity/sex is a main aspect of this developer. That combined with the sandbox means you can be a part of the process. You can earn it. That is why I will play an adult game vs watch an adult video. You are more a part of the experience.
If you are not interested in putting work into a game like this then that's fine. I wouldn't even bother downloading it. The "I hate sandboxes" people on this site are overly vocal and need to stay away from these games. They are not built for them.
To be fair, one negative aspect of this developer is the 7 tiers of patron support. I don't begrudge anyone making money off of their work. I use this site to find games I can support. But as someone who has supported many developers this makes it difficult to find an entry point. By the time it gets to a reasonable $10 the game has been out for almost a month. It doesn't feel worth the investment. it's not a big issue. This may just work better with his supporters.

I love this game, I have played all CeLaVie games and i think this one has a lot of potential. Yes, you need to repeat a lot of thiks a lot of times, but it's like thinks works. Models are very good.
I hope never stop creating games like this.

Terrible gameplay, no logic, empty rounds over and over again. Another game where the developer's idea should be guessed. Help is minimal. Enjoyment while playing is also minimal. As an our forum member said, if you are not in the right place at the right time and the Earth-Moon position is not lucky, you have no chance of getting ahead in the game. I would seriously like to know what is the purpose of the game creator? Of course, he don't like such reviews , but this is not the first brain fucking game of this developer. So, He is right, we need to find another game.

- 1 body type for the girls : check
- 1 facial type for the girls (even those that aren't sisters): check
- in fact, except for hair colour and length and skin tone all girls look very identical : check
- very bright renders as in unrealistic because shadows don't seem to be a thing : check
- all girls looking barely in their teens : check
- wack a mole grind : check
- the girls threaten you as a pervert UNLESS you do the particular action deemed appropriate by the developer at the particular time in the particular place : check

It must be a CeLaVie production : check

Prediction after a dozen and a half updates the girls will be gagging to have sex with you in about every place even full fledged orgies BUT until that time you'll have to spend hours if not days in real time trying to reveal some under boob or being able to hug them. And if you dare to kiss them on the cheek at the 'incorrect' time your progress of the last 20 play days will be undone. That's how it was in every of their previous games.

In short, a hard no from me.
I don't mind a grind but at least give us a story that is more believable with characters that are likeable and don't look and act like carbon copies of each other.
If you like heba girls, grind, renders which show a lack of inspiration, grind, lack of imagination, grind, being milked by a developer that keeps making the same game over and over again but calling it prequels to stories that he never actually finishes, this will be for you.
The rest of us are better of watching paint dry.

Such a shame. They do everything almost perfect to my standards when it comes to corruption progress, good looking models, nice chonky updates with plenty of scenes. Decent story/writing.

Then they score an own goal with the gameplay yet again. Gameplay feels like 'My first love' but doubled down further on everything people complained about.

The game requires you to menu after every scene and gives you very vague hints in the process. If you skip dialogue which you will do when you have to repeat the same scenes constantly you will be instantly punished as it might be a time or a location to go to next but of course doesn't show up in the hints progress.
Anytime you have to stop playing the game to menu to figure out the next part is BAD, and you basically need to do this every interaction.

The three girls are very similar in personalities and looks. Even the mini portraits, they all have the same pose so very easy to click the wrong one and of course you cant roll back. Again names are similar Lynn & Lina which is mighty confusing.

Menu buttons in top left feel off having 1 hour skip, then 30 minutes skip, then 1 day skip on the outside which is the one that you instinctively go for.

Many times girls will ask for money which you will ask for pictures in return. These events repeat even if you haven't gotten the pics yet (oh and also u get no hints or reminders or even a time given for when to get the pictures, just a location if your lucky). So usually will end up paying them the money again in hopes you don't miss the next one.


I consider myself to have decent tolerance for loopy/grindy games but this was bit much for me and quit at 63 out of 77 bookmarks.
And its only grindy because of the bad vague menu hints.

I am an enjoyer of CeLaVie Group's games in general and their one of the few that do corruption type games well, but the gameplay that comes with are really so uninviting to play.
A accurate quest toggle on/off overlay is badly needed. Someone else shouldn't have to make a walkthrough mod just to make it playable.

Still though, even with the grievances i recommend the game as everything else is done well overall. And for sure ill give it another attempt for episode 2.

*Edit
+1 star (from 3 star) as dev added a 2nd walkthrough system & also improved gameplay where having to repeat scenes to find the next trigger happens much less - Its still not perfect but its much better and the content & updates the dev pushes is S tier

I played it a bit more, am now somewhere in episode 6 of 9
The bad lighting, coloring and bad scenery is getting better with each update.

also some damaged renders made it into the game and instead of removing them the game just plays trough them and makes weird jumps like 10 to 20 images in the ~2000 of an episode

wording/grammar didn't really improve
grinding is still the same shit as in the beginning
an episode has 80 or so "mayor" events but half of them is divided into a couple of substeps, and some need to be triggered trough events at other time.
the 2 different event progress screens don't help with it all the time, cause the trigger isn't included in the tips.

some events do happen without em being in the event list, episode 5 at 17:00 bathroom, no indicator or whatever

girls and stuff that is happening is still very good stuff, the slow corruption towards exposure and exhibitionism is nice.

but again the grinding trough different events and finding these ruins any kind of what a porn should do.

a shame there isn't a VN version, or at least some markings for the locations if there is something to trigger

If you like slow progress with lots of tasteful corruption this is your game,
love the new engine and graphics.

Only rating Ep.1 so far but this is in my opinion so far the best Game from and with Bob.

If you liked Room for Rent, you gonna love this.

Based on Episode 1 and examining renpy code. Excellent FCs and background graphics, even with hi-res screen. Lots of helps to get through game fast if you want to. Coding very clean and neat, meaning next episodes can be added without major code surgery. Story line consistent and VN-level reasonable. Style (slow burn) same as previous games; more sandboxy than previous ones, however. No game crash bugs but a few typos.