VN - Ren'Py - Our Home [v2.20.0] [Old Hiccup]

Well, I played yesterday for the whole evening and honestly, I want my wasted time back)

From the good things, there is only music, nicely working with the setting, and that's all.

The game have a lot of issues, some of them I have never seen before.

• Sandbox here is absolutely rudimentary mechanic; no exploring, repeatable lewd stuff, or even overly simplified quests like "Take item here, talk there." World absolutely static; there are no characters in locations, only some hidden lewd pics. Roaming through the world here is nothing more than changing the background pic after pushing the location button. All a player has to do is check hints and choose the location at the right time and day to start the event.

• Difference in quality between overview description/renders and what the game really presents by itself. Writing is bad from the beginning and gets even worse with time. Weird dialogs, illogical behavior, and filler text every 3-4 sentences, like repeating the same info for numeral times in the same scene. Female skin in renders sometimes looks horrible, especially when it's visible in sunlight. Some girls look like mutants with young faces and bodies with skin of 60 yo grandmas; I'm not even exaggerating. Some characters look straight ugly, like Norah with her cartoonish evil witch nose.

• The UI is nice, but a lot of features are absolutely unnecessary or were used once or twice. Inventory is unused; it just exists, money for the most part too. Constant screen effect with particles is annoying and distracting.

• A miserable amount of sex scenes for 3.5+ years of development; most of a big cast of characters don't have even one lewd scene. In the gallery there are like 11 scenes, but half of them are not even about actual sex, just some nudity or groping. MC has sex twice with the same girl, the second scene is not even animated, 3 blowjobs and 1 fingering. The quality of scenes is bad too; almost non-existent dirty talk, weird animation movements, screen blur, and lack of intimacy. On top of all that, there are some cock-blocking scenes where something lewd could happen, but the devs thought it would be too much or too fast, or I don't know. So MC, instead of some possible BJ in the locker room, gets punched in the face, lol)

• The story is very unrealistic and most of all, boring. Due to bad writing, I don't care about characters, their stories, and family drama.

• MC is goody two shoes, the most innocent and naive poor little thing in the whole world. There is a big difference between a good man and a naive pushover, and MC falls into second category without a doubt.

In conclusion, the game could be better if the sandbox actually was used as it should be, with a lot of activities, events, unique repeatable lewd stuff, hidden quests etc. If writing was at least a little more friendly to common sense and had less filler text to stretch a boring story, and if devs hired someone to help them make way more and better quality sex/lewd scenes, because smut here is really weak and catastrophically sparse. Oh, and it would be a great thing if MC were less of a naive moron and more self-caring. In the first place, thinking about himself and his life and not just going helping around any strangers just like that without even negotiating about personal gains. It's an adult game, guys, not a cartoon for kids with absolutely saint characters who live in a fairyland and defeat obvious villains by the power of friendship) Well, the last one and a few other things are more of a personal taste, but for me those aspects were too childish.

English:............6/10
User Interface:.....8/10
User Experience:....5/10
Art:................7/10
Dialogue:...........3/10
Story:..............1/10
Opinion:............3/10................
Avg:.............4.71/10 [2.35/5]

To my knowledge, I don't think I've played this before. Bits and bobs SEEM familiar, but at the very start, I can't say. Starting up the game, you get a presplash that doesn't use the image size appropriately, a splash screen for language and internet connectivity (which I semi-appreciate), and a UI that feels like it's not responsive solely based on how the hover transforms are setup for the buttons. A button going back to its default state when your mouse is over it tells the players' brains "Huh this button doesn't think I'm hovering it anymore." Which is not good. Then there's the fact the preferences are segmented to so many different screens just for two buttons each? Why? This means you have to SIFT through menus to set up the game. I can understand the language and the dumb patreon avoidance relations page being separate. But The preferences opens to a blank screen, AGAIN making the user think that it's not working. More bad design. And NOW that we finally get to starting tot he game, in VN mode, because no one with self respect should play an empty linear sandbox, it opens to a video that shows paintstrokes over images of characters in the game, followed by "Chapter 0. Some Time Later." NOT ONLY did nothing happen in the video, but SOME TIME LATER FROM WHAT? I let it play, twice, to see if I missed something. You only see "This mission is being reworked" in the top right, but what mission? The one we're about to do or one that a VN player will never see? And the one line on screen "VN Mode is Enable" is already bad grammar in this almost FOUR YEAR OLD game. Whenever a game puts so much into presentation and peacocking, only for little things like UX and simple grammar to be odd or even bad it feels like they wanted to make it hard for you to notice their shortcomings, but it only highlights them.


I tried. I really did. The short of it is there's so much dialogue and none of it matters. More than a couple times you're given the same information, but none of the information aids the story in any way. MC never starts to look for his dad. Coincidence is how every interaction happens. The VN mode is paced poorly and I can only imagine the grinding you have to do in the sandbox mode. That is no doubt completely linear. Every sex scene just happens, and most of them are blowjobs, from what I was able to get through. And if anyone says "I can't review something because I didn't finish it" I guarantee that I've said and critiqued more about this farce of an AVN than anyone else. I could not get through it, I'm sorry. The English is not good, even with the translation stuff in there, it's not great. There's hard coded UI stuff that is still in poor English. It's completely distracting in something that you read. The UI looks great. However, there's too many menus and the buttons act weird, but it's cohesive and decently designed, good job. The UX is brought down by the 50 external links plastered everywhere, the self-advertisements, the UI interactions feel weird, and the game style changes at least three times during VN mode alone. And that's just scratching the surface. The art is okay. The skin texturing, arguably the MOST IMPORTANT PART looks disgusting. They look like they're made of wet, calloused clay. All of them are gross. And the animations are grainy and boring. The environments are stale and kinda funny looking. Like the long section where MC was cutting Emily's lawn? Look at the grass and tell me it doesn't look hilarious. The Dialogue and Story, as I've pointed out, ad infinitum, is nothing. There's no story, it all feels like they're stalling to try to figure out what to make it about. But we all know it's just corrupt businesses and Mafia types don't want people to have their money. And somehow MC will either be related to someone important or someone important wants to give it to him because of sex. I'm over it. This one is so offensively boring I don't recommend anyone try it. If this fabled "rework" does happen they need to overhaul the entire story not just minigames or whatever. If boredom, contradictory characters, overused tropes, the same shota insert innocent MC story arch, and models that look like wax dummies get your motor running, by all means. But If any of that bother you, this will probably drive you insane.

V2.2

i see the banner and preview images and one girl looks like she has old body and young head. some serious weirdness going on with the art.
it does well enough i suppose but nothing like the overview promise.

the opening was a double take of 'er....what?'.
twice it shows the message 'some time later' with a single image in between that tells nothing at all. made absolutely no sense.
possibly it was because i chose the VN mode that is not a VN at all and it bypassed something in the intro that is pre to the pre? fuck knows. your guess is as good as mine.

then we have the writing and it really falls apart here. the best bit of writing is the overview on this site as what you read in game is several levels of intelligence lower. conversations are so unnatural and clunky like a bad porno from the 80's.

couple this with the VN tag despite this being a point and click game, NOT a VN, the design is not a highlight either.
whole thing seems clunky and rushed with little to no preplanning and it shows.

some may like this for their spank bank but it delivers nothing as advertised for me. even has a dust mote effect......nope, no idea why

The game's ok but it's rough. Helluva rough. In needs pampering at all levels before it can move forward.

That's not to say it's no playable but I feel the small issues are hindering it.

The English is bad in places. There's something in place to aid in this but really it should be done before release. You can't rely on your player base to fix the translation issues. It feels cheap.

The game's a sandbox, and it's a bad sandbox. I wonder how much of that is part of the age of the game (2021 is very old in the grand scheme of things) but really you shouldn't need the players to click the thing at the right place at the right time of day to let them play. Especially when 99% of the entire map seems to be empty. When you start you're given the option of VN or Free roam and how free roam "allows you to indulge in the unique events our free roam has to offer" but if there are it's not worth it. It's a waste of dev time. I appreciate some devs love sandboxes but there's no benefit to this game for having one.

VERSION: 2.19.2
SUMMARY: Decent with good ideas that just goes nowhere.

PROS:

1. Great visuals, characters are well designed and look good.
2. Story seems decent and has a lot of slice of life elements combined with some mystery and intrigue, however this seems to also be a CON (see below)
3. Written well, dialogue is not bad, grammar and structure are all reasonably solid, but (see Cons)

CONS:

1. I hate sandbox so VN mode was my choice, though things just happen to the MC, yet none seem to really go anywhere, its just living life. Which makes me feel this game was really designed more for sandbox than a VN, because the VN should have a flow of events. It almost feels like the VN just threw the sandbox together in seemingly random ways together to create the VN. The result is confusing.
2. Often I find dialogue in different language which is a bit annoying, doesn't happen often but does happen.
3. Some interface buttons dont work e.g., notifications on people can't be dismissed so a red dot stays there constantly, the help button now doesnt work, I cant change the colour of the dialogue on the picker the game throws an error. So yeah some work is needed here...
4. Since saving a lot is needed I would prefer having more pages to do so, currently there is only one page and saving on the cloud, but honestly I am not a fan of "online" experience and I am fairly certain many others wont be either.
5. This game has also been out a while now and still there are no scenes with what I believe could be the primary love interest of the MC, his crush from childhood. This is actually very disappointing and could be a focal point to drive the romance angle, wasted opportunity IMO.

The game feels halfbaked because the developer seems to have done the thing where it's got freeroam mode or VN mode.

Unfortunately, the story part feels halfbaked in VN mode because there's no connection or structure because the scenes seem to have been written for the freeroam. There's no sense of where they're going.

Freeroam games feel like random gamey encounters so playing this option feels better because the scenes fit this 'gameplay mode' more. But the freeroam part feels like your standard freeroam and overall, there doesn't seem to be much content for the game after 3 years in development. Devs seem to have acknowledged that, so maybe this will improve.

The renders start out rough but get better over time. The UI is good, albeit a bit over the top and busy looking. There's nice music. Sex animations remain stiff and awkward looking.

I recommend the developers to severely cut down on scope, the number of love interests for their own good because there's very little chance of this game completing at this pace. Also, don't include sex animations if you can't do them well.

3.5/5

The characters and renders look quite amazing at times, and the animations are quite good as well, but there were many things that annoyed me. There is only a small amount of content, the pointless sandbox mode, the unskippable intro, the fact that i have to select the language every time i start the game, etc. The game honestly feels overproduced, from the intros to the menus and some of the story presentations. Has a lot of potential but i feel like it needs less fluff and more content
In the end its worth a try, and im looking forward to see more.

In my opinion:
Gameplay : ✭✭✭✭✭ (sandbox or not, i don't really care :v)
Story : ✭✭✭✭✭ (Not much, but i can wait)
Potential : ✭✭✭✭✭
Graphic : ✭✭✭✭✭
Creativity :✭✭✭✭✭
Overall : ✭✭✭✭✭
Note: Can't wait to the next update !

Story is somewhat ok but it does have holes here and there which can be very annoying, dialogs and narration is very childish and can be very cringy and when you add the extreem focus on big tit fetish its very close to being unplayable for people who dosent have that fetish, personaly i hate big tits i find them ugly as fuck but it comes down to personal taste, if its a fetish of yours you will proberly enjoy it alot more then i did.

Personaly i am just tierd of big tit fetish where game is constantly zooming in on big tits, i mean give people the option to peek instend of forcing it on them, i dont care to look at em what so ever, not everyone loves big tits.....also following people that arent MC just to force people to watch some bimbo go to the showers to show big saggy tits is again just not fun when you hate the girl, also girls big tits popping out for all to see just make no sense other then in a pure porn game, so it ends out just being one turn-off after the other.

It dosent help that game constantly pushes girls on you and you on to girls, like maid kissing MC while hes sleeping to wake him up...why? i want nothing to do with the bitch, game feels like its a full harem game but its not supposed to be right?

It also makes MC to childish when he cant stop looking and giving him the mindset of a 12 year old dosent help it either, some times it might be ment to be funny when hes mind goes blank just looking at a girl but it adds to him feeling like a kid, also a bit idiotic if you as the player got 0 interrest in the girl.
At one point your forced to shower with the maid, then your forced to help her wash her self???? when done MC is thinking about him touching her and wonder if they are dating now??? hes not just a child but also feels brainless.

Sandbox is a bit annoying but its sandbox so thats to be expected.
But there so much WIP that you keep running into right from the start, quest might say work at 7am then you go visit find your boss at the pool and click it and it shows WIP? its a bit annoying.

Also not sure why it has a money system when you can only work when quest allows you to, kinda feels weird in a sandbox that you dont have any freedom to work when you want, or do what you want, like you get a recipe for some pills but clicking store/mall it just says WIP, so its all one big kinetic story where you have to follow a set order of questlines making sandbox pointless, so you cant work to earn money on days with no quest all you do is skip time to skip days between quests.

MC dosent sleep much either not sure why but you dont have a sleep option and he only sleeps fom 3 to 6 so you do alot alot of clicking skip time since you cant sleep or skip a full day ....

Hint guide isent the best, once your in a quest it wont tell you anything, and you have to click to much, when main quest is stuck and you need to follow side quests to advance main you have to click phone, persons, and then click pictures to find one with a sidequest to then click the hint on that...so much clicking....

As for the LIs/Girls i got to say i barely found a single one hot, 95% is huge tits or milfs and even the younger ones like Sabrina has the skin of a granny in some renders just looks really bad and that goes for pretty much any girl.

As for content there really isent much compared to it being 2½ years old by now, i wish i could give it more stars but its just in my taste, just to much focus on big tits and a lack of choices to avoid looking at topless bimbos.
If there had been less focus on a single fetish and more body types like normal and small tits, it could have been a much better game.

Dev seems great though and is very active on forums so thats really nice.

Review for Our Home v2.19.2 (Visual Novel Mode):

Overall: 3/5 - The preview renders look good and the overview seems really interesting. Unfortunately, the game doesn't quite live up to the hype in the overview.

Story: 2/5 - It seems OK, but there are a lot of holes and a lot of weirdness. The author is trying to put elements of mystery into the story, but he isn't doing a good job of pulling the reader in, which is mostly a problem with writing, but also a problem with the structure. There are also a lot of cliches.

Writing: 2/5 - The dialogue and narration feel like they were written by a very inexperienced writer. The thoughts of both the MC and other characters are frequently cringy. The translation into English is frequently awkward. The humor is almost completely lost. The developer knows the translations are bad because they have an in-game feature to report translation issues. Unfortunately, that will cause other problems: first, there are translations that can't be reported, like the names of locations on the map (e.g. "You Money" instead of "Your Money"), but there are many others; second, if different parts are translated by different people, the writing just won't be coherent.

Renders: 4/5 - There renders generally look good and the models are beautiful and unique, which is really good. The MC was ugly-looking in the beginning, but his transformation is supposed to be part of the story. The MC also looked really weird as a child, he looked like a shrunken adult with a big head.

Animations: 3.5/5 - The animations range from good to impressive, but they all have distracting issues.

Sound: 3/5 - The music is better than average and most of the sound effects are good.

Content: 2/5 - There's not really enough content for the amount of time the game has been in development, but the quality of the lewd content is better than average.

Gameplay: 2/5 - I didn't like the sandbox mode the first time around, so I chose the VN mode for my second playthough. It still wasn't great. There are still a bunch of sandbox elements players have to use, and some things really need to be disabled like the notification about the inventory and the story progress with each character. The user interface for those things is really bad and they are unnecessary. I imagine the user interface in sandbox mode would 10x worse.

The renders are not as good as I thought. Might not be boring but they certainly aren't immersive, jumpy, not well paced. This game isn't Rance, stop glorifying the "gameplay". But it's still not the biggest disappointment yet. No, it's the writing. The writing is so cringy i can feel my balls shrinking with each passing minute. I don't know, maybe dev's English skill is just subpar. Overall, the game feels unfocused, wasted effort.

I'd like to say that I'm extremely dubious about this game.
As much as it manages to have a magnificent interface, pretty menus and a character description system with the new information you learn really well done.
A sandbox that's pretty well done and well thought out for dividing up the main story and character evolution, and a mod without sandbox that I personally prefer.
The game's story is good overall, but very clumsy in the way it's told.
But above all, what struck me the most was how empty of content it is for a game from mid-2021, and you notice this very quickly with the famous sandbox mod, where you spend days trying to launch events.
It's for this reason that we see in the comments and reviews that the sandbox is useless (at the moment), because this game is empty.
And finally, but this is just my personal opinion, even after the makeover, I still want to hit the MC.

Anyway, despite everything, I recommend this game, but not as a sandbox, but as an alternative.
If only for the graphics and the effort it required, it's worth a good 5/5.
But I wouldn't go beyond 3/5 for the content and story.

I hope this game won't be abandoned, even if at the speed at which the majors are going, there's every chance that the developer will tire of it.

The renders are really nice, the models gorgeous and the plot is okay-ish but the sandbox mechanics ruined the whole experience for me; it's tedious and tiresome to play (the hint system isn't helpful at all)

Simply amazing, original soundtrack, high quality assets, most of them original, brings an incredible immersion to the game. The story itself is still in the beginning, but has great potential for development, so we will wait for the next updates for the unfolding of this plot.

I think I played this game in very early stage. In general, it is very good game, and hopefully more support for the developers. The story is good but the dialog can be better. Lookin forward future updates.

Great game: visually well done, quite colorful characters, the main character does not cause annoyance or rejection, rather good error reporting function, support for quite an impressive amount
languages, the soundtrack is pleasant. But there are a few minuses: the first is the small font and icons in the game (I speak only for the android version) the interface is also not clear, I still don’t understand how to get to the save menu, I have to use autosave. In general and that's it, the game definitely deserves attention, if the author does not abandon the project, as is often the case, then I'm sure he will succeed.

I played this game for the first time may 2022 (ver2.1.5) and it looked pretty good. You can see the amount of work in really nice graphics, animations and sandbox.

But it's January 23 (ver 2.2.2) and to be honest I don't see any progress in plot - we have maybe 2 new scenes and info that it's the end of the version.

At the moment, there is absolutely no need for a sandbox here!!! Plot is purely linear so far.
And the sandbox introduces unnecessary confusion in jumping around the exact times and places for something to happen. A waste of time with so little story content.

In other words, nothing is happening here at the moment.

So now I looked at the screenshots and there are probably all the scenes from the current phase of the game

In my opinion:
Graphics 10/10
Story (beginning) 8/10 - no progress
Sandbox 1/10 - because it's unnecessary

Although the story is only at the beginning, it already draws a lot of attention, especially the mysteries that are formed throughout the game. The renders, animations, menu, soundtrack and characters are very well done, beautiful and original. The characters are charismatic, funny, and each has their own personality. The Sandbox is simple, just read the dialogues and don't play skipping everything. I'm excited to see what this game has in store for us in the future.

First time I opened this game I was surprised by how beautiful its entire gui is, menus, animations with the presentation of characters, very well done transitions, etc. In addition, he brings a good selection of songs that appear to be original from the dev himself and he manages to bring a very good professionalism in his mechanics, especially in terms of the cell phone that was very well implemented in this version, the strong personality of each character is very present, some are comedians and the dev brings the highlight to that, others are kind of motherfuckers really lol. Dev manages to bring humor and pain, tragedy and happiness, let's say very well, you can feel the game with good laughs and many times with tears. Very well done and the trend is only to improve.

I've been a supporter of this game since the first version, and the evolution of the game since its first release is remarkable.

STORY:
It seems interesting and different, some points of mystery caught my attention, but I hope to be understood.

SOUND:
The soundtrack is original, I loved it. I'll add some to my playlist.

CHARACTERS:
The characters are simply beautiful, you can see a very well done job here, with really unique appearances. I hate to find the same characters in several different games. Emily is my favorite, her eyes look smiling, but Lorena is a hot brunette.

RENDERINGS:
The renderings are beautiful and well done, realizing a great care with the small details that sometimes make a big difference.

GUI:
The GUI still needs some polishing to not leave players of a sandbox game so lost, especially those who don't read the texts carefully, but a back button won't hurt either. I believe that entering more information about the quests can help, but if you really pay attention you should have no problem finding the quests, it's all in the dialogues.

GRAMMAR:
Writing has gained a very good function, it is now possible to report errors in dialogue and translations within the game, and that is simply amazing. When choosing to complain about grammar mistakes, do something useful and report it.
I used this feature and hope the dev puts this option in all text in the game.


I've come to the conclusion after almost a year of supporting that this game has potential and that the dev really has something on their hands that I want to pay to see where it goes.

I wish luck, and resilience