VN - Ren'Py - Completed - Now & Then [v1.00.0] [ILSProductions]

This a real great Novel! damn i ended to miss Naomi and carol!! Devs characterized all the NPC so well, with the high peek about carol and Naomi..ahhh expecially naomi..i loved her attitude, her crassy comment and humor so much...sex scenes are maybe the less interesting...being all so much equal to themselves..but the whole story and drama was fantastic...the only thing i missed is that in my playthrough i can't have a 3some..NPC spoke about it more than once , but at the end i can't get the scene..maybe i will replay this gem again in the future. can't wait to see if devs will get us another VN masterpiece lkike this one.

More of these long games plz. Im getting tired of those 30 min. max of content.
I like the female cast a lot here, it would´ve been hotter if Carol was the MC´s actual daughter tho....Just sayin.
I like the zombie aspect of it, there aren´t that many porn games with this type of approach surprisingly

Another fantastic story peppered with porn. I'm not sure why I'm surprised anymore to come across actual decent narratives when playing these games, but it's a welcome surprise.

The setting was nice and ground, the story focus and constant state of danger and chaos was realistic and impactful, and the real gut-punch moments did a great job of counter-balancing the sex so the story never felt too floaty. Overall, the story is pretty good.

The characters were also nicely believable, especially Naomi. Not to say the other girls weren't real enough, but sometimes they felt sorta...niche in a corny way. However Naomi had actual real growth, from the flashbacks to the present to her relationship with her mom. I really enjoyed her arc.

There were some pretty glaring problems with the game, however. First off, while it's nice to have "voices", it's not so nice when those "voices" are just the same high-pitched female orgasm done over and over and over with every girl. Quite annoying, really, especially when the sound isn't TIED to the voices volume option and you have to basically turn off all sound to get rid of it. I guess I'm saying it's not needed, and it will get on your nerves very fast.

Also, some of the coding is a bit wonky. Some of the choices I made with the girls didn't really seem to matter. Both Hana and Sydney, who I rejected to focus on the main girls, kept referencing when we had sex, and I was literally forced into a sex scene with Sydney. Also the Epilogue was just fucked straight-up. All the girls were there and all the choices were like I had basically roped every girl into sex at every opportunity. I also REALLY did not like having to sit through eeeeevery girl's long-ass sex scenes just to get to the actual story of what happened with them. I honestly cut it off after just two because it was taking so long, which is kinda a bummer....but I was tired of fast-clicking through all the annoying orgasm sound effects and 'keep going' scenes. I know that's probably a funny thing to complain about in a porn game but...honestly, the porn was the least impressive part of this game. It's just the same scene over and over and over with the same sounds over and over and over.

STILL....this is a great story, and since most people coming to this are doing so for the lewd aspect that should just be a cherry on top. The renders are nice, if repetitive, and the girls are great, if a bit shoe-horned in. Overall, a worthy expenditure of my time.

Fantastic story, didn't want it to end. I don't love the Honey Select graphics, but the characters rise far above worrying about skin texture. The sex is hot and emotionally convincing, and I truly appreciate that you don't have to lie to the girls or pretend they're stupid and don't know what's going on.

Alright, this game here... Wow. First of all, I don't bother writing many reviews. For one, I'm a dev also and it doesn't feel right to review the work of my colleagues. But damn...

Let's start with the only 'con' this game has... graphics (mainly posing of characters and facial expressions). Having worked in HS and HS2 myself, I know what can be done. And there are just too many places where hands could have been posed better. Guns aren't always held with a straight pointy finger (not to mention, sometimes the pointy finger hand pose isn't changed for the next scene). At other times, poses are just, I don't know how else to say it but... weird. Or don't really fit the dialogue very well. But, this is just me, as a dev, noticing those little things I've learned to try to watch out for in my own work. For visual novels, facial expressions are arguably the most important part of it, especially in an emotional scene. Sometimes, for example, a character might have a surprised expression when the scene calls for a sad one. However, I want to point out that these really are just minor issues in light of this amazing story.

I hate zombie stories. Really. I mean, come on... Walking Dead, Resident Evil (1, 2, 3, 4, 5... 11, 13!??) and so many others. The first thing I thought when I ran across this game was that it would just be more of the same. Wrong. Now & Then is very original, even if it can't escape some of the usual 'zombie story' tropes. The moment the world changed, I was helplessly locked in. I could NOT stop pushing forward to see what happens next. And this thing is super long. I spent hours at a time on this and it still took me about a week (in between working on my own stuff and full time job). Amazingly, as long as it is, the filesize for the download is surprisingly small considering. So don't let that dissuade you.

Rarely do you play these things and really truly feel something for the characters. I'm not even sure if I accomplish that feat in my own games. The story is so well written (even though the use of "of late" in sentences is just weird to me), it is really hard to find an issue outside a VERY few tiny spelling mishaps/typos. But these characters, each and every one of them have LIFE. And the choices your character is given to make in situations dealing with them blessfully gives you options some games like this miss out on. The MC is not a jerk or an idiot whose nose erupts and gushes blood at the sight of a nipple. He's a normal, stand-up guy that has a heart and a conscience. He is, for the most part, a gentleman. And isn't 'instantly' the hero. He grows into his heroic role. When he had to make some hard choices or do something terrible, I felt it with him. I LOVE that the writer did this with the MC.

The common things you see in 'zombie' stories are mostly all there and most things you would expect to happen, do pretty much happen. Bandits, infected, etc... it's all there. However, your choices while navigating this part of the adventure will usually lead to victory, even if there is a bit of pain involved. I only noticed maybe a couple of choices that had me backing up and rechoosing. The writer does an extremely commendable job making it feel realistic, while also letting you 'win' the situation at hand. So, while some bad situations might be resolved fairly quickly, it doesn't feel like it was that way.

There is one other extremely minor flaw that I know some others will (and have) mentioned. Boy this is a wordy vn! Yeah, I have to admit that on a few situations where it showed some stuff from the past (then), I did control click through some of it. Now, writer if you're reading this, don't get mad at me. I only did that because I was to anxious to stay on the main arc and see what happens next. Generally, I love to read already, so I didn't skip but maybe 2 of those 'then' scenes. In hindsight, after playing to the end, I want to replay it again and not skip anything at all.

Finally, sex scenes. Someone else mentioned in their review that sex scenes go too fast later in the game. I didn't find that to be the case at all (no idea what that person was talking about). Admittedly, beyond chapter (I don't know) 14? I tabbed through most of the sex scenes. Yes, they are done very well in my opinion. They are sexy and the animations are well done all the way through. Not to mention, there are a LOT of them (depending on how you choose your path). But, beyond a certain point, I was here for the story and how our little crew would deal with situations. To me, that was the most fun part of it... what's going to happen and how will they deal with it. It can go full harem for those harem fans. Or you can focus on a couple or one (at least it looks like you can, I stuck to the harem route simply to see as much of the story as possible).

This is long, I'm sorry. Regardless of my feelings about the posing and graphics... I still give this 5 stars, and would go more than that if I could. If the dev decided to come back and redo the graphics in this thing in HS2 with some better posing, I'd be all in and would probably patron to see that. So, if you're there dev, hint hint! Though, knowing how much work goes into this (from my own experience), I doubt that will happen. Still, this VN deserves a place in the top of any VN fan's list. Simply fantastic. Thanks for all the hard work on this, Dev. Well done sir!

One of the best adult visual novels. A zombie apocalypse happens and it's treated with good realism. You play a guy whose wife died years ago and you adopted a girl (Carol) to help fill that missing piece in your life. And over the years you were a good father figure, and now she's 18. People are just trying to survive, including you and Carol. She is a woman with her own thoughts and feelings, she has a well-defined personality all throughout the game. It's very good.

Now & Then has a very compelling narrative and interesting characters. It was great to see how choices I made altered dialogue and subplots. I almost dropped the game in the first few minutes because I was disappointed by the use of real photos with filters layered over them, but this is infrequent throughout the game, and I'm so glad I stuck around.

Loved this game but it sort of ruined me for others. The game was well thought out, had wonderful renders, and kept the player enticed from beginning to end.

My only complaint? Wish the author would make another one. LOL!

Now&Then is a VN set in a zombie-postapocalyptic timeline "now" which develops its characters further by making flashbacks to "then". An approach with finesse in a literary sense.
The first thing I found interesting was the fact that the novel was written in purely 1st person POV in early chapters. Although pacing was a bit stale and dull, I thought to myself dev goes for realism etc. so I continued to read. Then harem started to expand and narration shifted to 3rd person omnipotent POV. It was that moment the novel lost its charm on me. The novel had to become more exciting but it did not. The tension of unknown had been lifted by that change, so zombie apocalypse setting just became a decor to justify a formation of harem, nothing more. You can't keep the tension up if you feed the readers all the details and information. Sometimes LESS IS MORE. The writing became more and more bloated. My hand slipped to skip button more frequently.
I know this game is all about the relationship build-up by dialogue and flashbacks but I didn't find it appealing sorry. Slow pacing and constant daily small talks which serve little purpose for the reader are a bit too much for me. Feels like watching a reality show, survival aspects are toned down.
Visually the game is average. Honey select renders, not much appealing to look at tbh. It fails to give that apocalypse vibe too. I'm turned off by anime sex moans but if that's your thing then it is good, fap away.

Summary: Lots of non-impactful reading, slow pacing, anime sex moans, Ok scenes, pseudo-incest, softcore survival, vanilla sex... If you are into these go for it.

The story is decent, basically the walking dead as a porn game.

The renders are great, love Honey Select.

The audio is decent, it's nice that some sound effects are used throughout the story to make it more immersive and some generic moans are always better than silence.

The animations aren't the best but it's still more enjoyable than still images.

The amount of content is insane, probably one of the longest western VNs I've ever read.

I cant say i didnt enjoy the game. But choices of this game makes me sick . It feels like you are foeced to femdom ,its not femdom of course . As a vn enjoyer i felt playing genshin impact ,there's choices but it doesnt matter . Your lover will cut her hair ,you cant say anything about that . You are forced to say its good . What im saying ,you cant have negative point . Other than that great writing and story that you can play if you dont care about not having multiple options and cant create your personality .

Here be the bullet points:

Compelling relationships? N&T's got it.

Sexy art? N&T's got it.

Smooth animations? N&T's got it.

Hot sex scenes? The best! Simply the best!

Easily some of the best writing for an adult VN. Do yourself a favor and give this one a gander, you will not regret it.

Its a masterpiece

Zombie apocalypse and you need to survive with your adopted daughter. Sexy stuff ensues. Very wholesome story even with all the blood and gore+death around. It is also very linear every once in a while there is a choice which is basically just whether you want to be a strong leader guy or nice leader guy, but I dont even know if it makes a difference

Sex scenes are also animated, and there are quite many of them. So, your sexually frustrated daughter wants to suck your schlong and you let her as you do. 100% a must play game if you like degen visual novels

A post-apocalyptic setting--whether it involves zombies or not--works extremely well for an AVN, in that it allows the author to explore outside the conventions imposed by modernity. Unfortunately, this game makes little use of that freedom, delivering a mundane story, where the most boundary-pushing moment is when the characters are forced to relieve themselves outside of a restroom.

I found it a tedious slog to reach the ending, as there is a lot of unexciting text. I get it that being forced to hide in a building for long periods of time, with nothing to do but pace around and occasionally fuck, would be really boring. The author did a great job of conveying that. The MC wakes, takes a piss, drinks coffee, makes breakfast, patrols around to check the windows and doors, takes another piss, engages in some vapid chit-chat and/or fucks one of the girls, makes dinner, takes a last patrol and piss, goes to sleep. Then he does it again the next day, and the next, and the next.... This monotony is occasionally interrupted by a bit of action, after which the chit-chat will be even more vapid than usual for awhile. More often the glacial pace halts entirely, and we are forced to endure a flashback to pre-apocalypse times when things were even less exciting. I think the game would be more compelling with 90% of the text--and all of the flashbacks--removed.

One area where the game shines is in the programming: the web of choices and consequences is very well put together. If the author learned how to light his scenes, and partnered with someone who could write a compelling story, he could produce a first-class work.

I would cautiously recommend this game, with the caveat that most of the dialog can be safely skipped.

As I fired up the game and saw 0.26 (I forgot that it was "completed") I thought it would be short, it turns out to be the number of episodes, a very pleasant surprise.

I do not know exactly how much time it took me, but I think it was around 10h if not better, the more I am positively surprised.

The characters in the game great, I really liked the fact that I had a choice with which girls I can enter into a relationship because Alice I was not interested at all.

Cool story with a cool ending, well maybe with a small extension I would like to see, but it certainly will not affect the rating of this work.

I had a good time, even at times the story raised my blood pressure, as if I had grown close to the characters and didn't want to see them get hurt.

Highest possible rating. And I'm off to see if you've written more games, if so, I'll definitely play.
Thank you, I really enjoyed myself.

Now & Then: v0.26.0 (Completed)

Review: 6/10 (Includes Spoilers)

Firstly. This is probably the most torn about a review I have ever been. The game is good and the story is really fleshed out with decent dialogue (for the most part) and a lot of characterization for everyone. It however, falls flat for me once you enter the school.

I went with Carol as my main LI and at the start of the game I would say the game weaves story and romance together. You decide to explore a relationship with eachother and have a nice montage of you fucking to show you getting closer/more comfortable with eachother.

Shortly after this you find another survivor and have to move into a school and from that point there is a DRASTIC shift with the game, and we go into HARD story mode. This is where the game starts to drift off for me. You become more disconnected from the characters even though the plot is advancing. Therefore more disconnected from the plot and game as a whole.

Common intimacy is the biggest problem (or lack thereof). Carol is meant to be deeply in love with you and you barely touch eachother. To clarify: I am not talking about sex here, sex is the least of the problems. Where's the hugging, holding hands, kissing, cuddling, reassuring your partner in the middle of the fucking apocalypse. I'm not asking for her to be clingy either, just a natural amount. You get the occasional "love you" and that's it. Any physical contact such as hugging 9/10 times leads to a sex scene and It's just not how people act. It drags me out of the story so much.

Intimacy-only aside, It messes with the believability of the story. You and Carol/the gang are going through so much together so wouldn't your physical reactions towards eachother grow? Just as their relationship is meant to but no... It just doesn't. You could take the romance tag out and all romance options and just tell me this is a game where you have to survive with your friends and I would have believed it. Infact it would make it a better game because I'd be under no pretenses that there would be any romance.

It honestly baffles me how I seem to be the minority here. How does this not bother other people? Maybe it's because I was wanting and expecting romance as a primary thing whereas others weren't? It's just so jarring. That's not to say there's no good moments which inspire romance, there are. It's just so sparse and doesn't evolve past a bit of dialogue that it basically doesn't exist. The LI's are just good friends that you fuck.

Conclusion:
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I'll wrap this up because I don't want to ramble. I could say so much more on this though. I powered through from the school all the way to the Marshand house to see if the game gets better once MC is settled in, but it doesn't. I didn't gain attachment to any LI due to previously stated info and it just annoyed me more that I should be attached to them, because the story is decent, dev just fumbled it with the natural feeling of relationships and how couples act with eachother. Especially new couples.

Models and "graphics" are dated (This doesn't help but isn't the route of the problem)

Music is fine, some nice atmospheric backing tracks but nothing mindblowing.

Animations are a bit jank at the start, but get better as the game goes on and the tit physics have always been good

If you want a decent survival story with LIGHT relationships set in a post pandemic apocalyptic world then this aint bad.

IF however, you wanted something deeper where you can form an attachment to the LI's whilst surviving in this world, skip this one. Maybe It's my jaded brain again, but there's no "falling in love with a character" here and playing this story together. A real shame, I wish I could enjoy the story on it's own but once I expected it and saw it wasn't there, it rubbed me the wrong way.

It is a well written story with great characters. Even though the model looks good the animation can be a little little boring specially when you have the option to change the angle of view most of the time it's just a really random and weird view that you get, it was really disappointing in that regard. Nevertheless, because of the great story the game had a really good time playing it.

I played this months ago and still care about it enough to write a review about it.

Now and Then has some very nice highs interrupted by its lows, which become abundant after halfway. The pacing is not as tight anymore.

I am not convinced by any of the girls that they would want to stay with Jack in his harem. Carol. 100%. Naomi. 80%. Believable since she loves Carol as a sister and she is a teenage virgin girl after all. Alice. 5% chance. After knowing that her daughter is having sex with the same man, the chances of her continuing to pursue a relationship with Jack is miniscule, unless she is fucked in her mind. You can't just justify it by saying "well, the world is not the same anymore. No. No. And No. The feelings of a parent towards their child are primal and don't change just because there are no more good men available. If your daughter is having a relationship with the guy you are interested in, you drop him out of your options. Period. Sydney. Kind of. But no way would Carol be okay with it. Which teenage girl would just be willing to share her dearly loved boyfriend to a random stranger woman? It's ridiculous. And Carol is shown to be fiercely protective anyway, being the leader of the harem, so to speak. I get what the dev was going for. A nice filling of roles with Carol being queen, Alice being caregiver, Naomi being the fun woman of the harem, and Sydney being the misfit, all making sacrifices of their time by sharing their man, in return for being loved by the strong wise kind man being Jack, but to get there, it requires so much suspension of disbelief, that I can't enjoy the result. .

The main problem with this game is that it is too long. In the later part of the game, there are just too many events and characters which I don't care enough to warrant them being in the game.

But the first part of the game is so well done, with the natural conversation between Jack and Carol and the atmosphere of the zombie world (Clearly the author has put a lot of thought into crafting the world) , that I would still give a 3.5/5.

This was really good. I rate 4 stars because I didn't like the part you were force to have a relationship and even have sex with his daughter even though only she is just adopted daughter. I know this is porn but I would really like a decision myself on who to pursue and not too. But overall though story is great and I really like the idea of surviving an apocalyptic events scenarios.

Fantastic VN that checks so many good game boxes. It`s have balanced drama, stunning various characters, interesting twists, somehow plausible plot.

Fairly old graphics didn`t spoils fun and arousal, cause characters so lovable. I think, that variety of kinks are somehow shallow and maybe wanted for more happy ending for some girls. But storywise i think this game is 11 out of 10. Trully recomended.