VN - Ren'Py - Our Home [v3.02.00] [Old Hiccup]

Alright, gotta say i came for the good renders, but stayed for potential.
The Avn version should been more free, i got to still click and work it some to keep advancing the plot. The telenovela feels, musashi esque path is nice.
I dont think we need to have flairs to know where the story is.
I mean getting robbed in a bus, i know RJ feels, and then a gas station, is this Carga pesada. You got my patreon sub, good luck polishing the game foward.

This game feels realistic - which, at times, is both good and bad. Good because it's immersive and so you get a sense of authenticity.

But then it goes too far... hundreds of renders just to communicate mundane things, like a tour of the gym, or a job interview. In its current state it belongs in a "slice of life" genre, if there was one. Some people like that type of content: staring melancholically at the moon, going to the store and buying new clothes, doing the dishes, etc. But for my dopamine-addled brain, it's not enough to maintain my interest after several thousand renders.

I do appreciate that the renders themselves were somewhat varied in angles and actions, because I've noticed that in a lot of other games, the only thing that changes is the character's expression, or one part of their body.

The renders themselves are very beautiful. I like the use of the animated whisps of dusts overlaying the scene, which surprisingly, makes everything feel a lot more alive, even during the static renders. There's a few rough renders here and there that pulled me out of immersion for a moment, but generally it's consistent.

It's clear the game has a lot of passion put into it. The UI is pretty and smooth, which makes it feel like it's a AAA-style game, and less of a typical clunky Ren'py interface.

As I said to the developer, you can tell there's a lot of thought--primarily world-building--put into the story. But there's just not much variation from what I've seen before.

Like a lot of developers here, I don't think the dev knows how to tell a proper story. We get occasional references to a deeper drama, but I don't trust that the dev actually has a plan for how that story. EDIT: The developer has shown me a massive mindmap, which shows me that he does indeed have a plan for the story. Personally, I think it's still a problem that I don't feel like there's a plan, but on the basis of me thinking there's no plan, I admit I stand corrected.

As far as the events go, almost everything was predictable, from leaving the orphanage to the maid getting fired. The story needs to get some real creativity injected into it.

Well, at least Norah and Emily are hot. Emily is cute all around, but my god Norah, shave that bush, this isn't the 80's.

Alright, let me start by saying this: the game is actually good. I genuinely don’t understand how some people are rating it 1/5 — that feels way too harsh.

I really enjoyed the beginning. The way the developer shows how the mc grows up before leaving is handled beautifully. But then... it starts to lose its momentum. Not that it becomes bad, but things begin to feel off. The story starts strong and intriguing, but over time it turns into this odd mix of unrelated events happening mostly outside the MC’s perspective.

For example, there’s an entire police sequence, and several scenes focus on other characters far more than the MC. And when we do follow him, his scenes feel sluggish. A good example is the gym subplot — the MC talks about trying to better himself, but we never actually see him use the gym for example.

And while we’re on that topic, the MC’s appearance just feels... weird. He’s supposed to be average, which is fine — I’m not expecting some juiced-up alpha male — but he comes across more like a frail stickbug.

Now, all those little frustrations aside — this game is stunning. The developer clearly knows what they’re doing on the technical side. The UI is gorgeous, the renders are top-tier, and most of the characters are well-designed and interesting. Unfortunately, the MC feels like the weakest link among them.

The story flow is hit or miss. Some scenes are solid, others dragged on. I actually found myself zoning out at times, not really wanting to pay attention. There’s one scene (without spoiling too much) where you reunite with an girl friend from the orphanage. I expected something emotional or impactful — but instead it felt flat, like:
“Oh… hi, you're here.”
“Oh yeah, hi.”
That’s it.

Now... let’s talk about the sandbox. I absolutely hate it. Thankfully, there's a VN mode, but even that still forces you to click around more than necessary. It's tedious, and I had to make a conscious effort not to quit the game entirely.

All that said — this game is okay. It definitely needs some polish, especially in pacing and story cohesion. But calling it bad would be unfair. The story is in progress, and right now, it's a little messy — but we're still mid-journey. I’m curious to see where the developer takes it.

Good luck and good work, Dev. You're clearly talented — I just hope the narrative catches up to the presentation.

I am not someone who often comments on games, but I do not hesitate to comment on games that I really like. The rendering quality, the story, the gameplay are really well done, you can tell how much effort was put into each image. Although the game is made based on sandbox, the developer has added an option to play VN and Sandbox, you can change it not only at the beginning of the game, but whenever you want, which is a good thing. Just because the game was designed and developed based on sandbox, when played in VN mode, the section or stage transitions can sometimes become meaningless. But since the Sandbox parts are understandable and simple, they are not difficult and they add meaning to the game, and I can say that they do this well.

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.

Saw a message on the forum where dev wanted us to retry the game so i did and ended up dropping it to 1 star insted of 2, its simple not for me since im not into old womans and game barely has anything but that and theres still shit forced on you like a BJ from some weird bimbo....kinda like the red head which had somewhat normal tits but having 1 out of a ton of LIs can be ok but when your constantly seeing the bimbo milfs topless and shit, it just isent worth playing for a single girl and ofc i hate nothing more then forced sex scenes so its just not my taste in any way.

Review for Our Home v3.02.00 (Visual Novel Mode):

Overall: 3.5/5 - The renders look good, and the overview seems really interesting. There's way more story than adult content, but it's improving.

Story: 3/5 - It's better than average, but the author is trying a little too hard to add intrigue and hide details from the player, just spoon-feeding the player like a cheap television series.

Writing: 3.5/5 - Dialogue and narration are vastly improved from a couple of updates ago. It's still a little too formal and lacks a consistent style, but it's not awkward or cringy like it was previously.

Renders: 4/5 - There renders generally look good and the models are beautiful and unique, which is really good. The close-up renders of skin are frequently a bit of a turn-off. The skin has too much texture and it makes even young women look old and wrinkly.

Animations: 4/5 - The animations are generally smooth and very good.

Sound: 3.5/5 - The music is better than average and most of the sound effects are good.

Content: 3/5 - There's a decent amount of content, but the amount of lewd content is lacking. There's way too much teasing and a lot of it isn't even really very sexy. The quality of the lewd content that exists is pretty good, though.

Gameplay: 3/5 - I played the VN mode, but it still forces the player to use free-roams and the phone and the inventory for really no reason. The achievements are pointless. Rollback is disabled at specific points for no reason, and this was really annoying when I wanted to just go back and look at a scene more carefully. The UI has a nice modern look and feel, but players playing in VN mode shouldn't really see most of it, even though they do.


Other:
- The head-to-toe vertical panning to look at various girls is overused to the point that it's annoying. Most of those images aren't even sexy.
- In the scene where Juliana is giving MC a tour of the gym, the whole scene is trying hard to convince the player that it's funny, but there's no humor to be found. Something must've been lost in the translation.
- The scene where MC sees Ayla for the first time in the gym is cringy.

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.