Ren'Py - Photo Hunt [v0.17.1 Extra] [Moochie]

Great game!
A lot of content. Each update consists of 200-400 (and sometimes more) good renders and good animations. The game has its own, unique visual style.
Interesting storyline. Most of the storylines are coming together as a whole.
The grind is present, yes, but the game tries by all means to reduce it.
The sound is very unobtrusive, a couple of nice tunes.

Decent renders (but far from spectacular in any sense).

Story rubbed me the wrong way (for e.g. selling photos of your alcoholic and vulnerable mom, without batting an eye).

Mostly though, the fucking grind is atrocious, even with cheats and wt-mod, and content per hour (even while skipping 90% of the dialogue) is extremely low.

IMHO, extremely overrated game.

I don't pay close attention to this game because I only like a few characters but I remember around the time when this first came out. I think it's come a long way since then.

• Renders look better
• The MC looks for like someone's weasel-y sidekick than a MC but he lives in a bitchin' house so it's all good.
• I really like the setting. I have no idea where that could be based off of but all the places look amazing.
• The story's mostly coherent and interesting enough to be engaging.
• There's A LOT of content
• Grammar and spelling have improved
• Really liked the latest Grace update. Wish it could've gone longer but I also think it ended in a good place at least.

Sometimes I feel like there are multiple people writing this because the grammar/spelling as well as the different slang used can be all over the place at certain points. Though that might be just because it's a sandbox and I have no way of telling which specific scenes might have been worked on at a later point in development or it's still something from earlier updates.
There are some good and bad but no real complaints. It's just that I'd personally prefer more Grace and Melanie content. Also some of the characters look great while others like Fiona for example are just ... oof.
I get that I'd be skipping a lot of content if I just chose to "stay friends" with some those characters but the main thing that keeps me from really paying attention to this game really is the mountain of scenes for those characters while the ones I like are few and far between.
It's just a meaningless gripe because I'm just one person and it's subjective but that's mostly the reason why I'm giving it a 4 and why I can't be bothered to pay more attention to this.

Version: [0.41.1]

I played 'Photo Hunt' for the first time around 2 years ago, it was a pretty solid experience and i'd rate it a 4/5, probably.
In the last couple of days I played it again, and now I'm debating between a 2 and a 3.

First of all - lets talk about the good stuff.
The renders and animations are very solid, the cast of VN is wide and diverse, sex is done well, a bit short most of the time though.

Now, let me ask you a question.
WHY IS IT A SANDBOX?
I have no freaking clue and it pisses me off.
Most (all?) LI's progression is simply locked behind progression with other LI's (which is awful, by the way) so it's not about choice.
The whole 'go to point X at 12PM' is, as always, awful and serves no purpose other than inflating 'play'-time, and DEAR GOD it gets worse and worse as you progress.
At some point at least 60% of the things you need to do can only happen at weekends afternoon, so 2 'time blocks' every week. now, some of the characters (like Lina) plotlines takes 20+ weekend afternoon events. so yah, that's a whole bunch of weeks of skipping to progress.
It's not like you can just do it whenever when doing other things, because as I said earlier PROGRESSION IS LOCKED BEHIND OTHER LI'S PROGRESSION.
So yah, have fun waiting for freaking Lina to have some time over the weekend for 7 weeks to be able to progress, it's so awful it taints the whole experience.

There's pretty much no story, some uninteresting plotlines with mostly cardboard characters, mom has troubles at work, sister loves-hates you, the girl that comes from money is cold and bitchy but warms up to you, etc.
If you've played any AVN at all, you've probably seen it all already.
The dialogues are fine, but are often endless conversations about nothing important which gets pretty boring while you grind meaningless events to progress.
Writing-wise 'Photo Hunt' is serviceable, nothing more, nothing less. if you like a good story, or amazingly written characters - look elsewhere.

The cast of LI's is too wide, especially in context of how grindy and inflated this VN is.
Let's take grace for example - she just got a huge update (and they don't come too often), she gets probably 1.5-2 hours of screen time, of grinding 'help sort out documents' at the hospital, etc... the payoff? sleeping rapey-fondling, and some grinding action.
That's it???? oh well, guess i'll come back in 2 years for the next time she'll get some meaningful content.
'Photo Hunt' does that a lot by the way, a huge build up just to stick you with 'come back later for more content ' just before the payoff. it pisses me off more than it makes me want to come back in the future.

Menus are not great , and the in-game walkthrough might as well not exist with how often you need to use it and how clunky it is to get to it. thank god there's a great walkthrough mod out there.


Overall there's some good stuff in here, unfortunately its locked behind awful grind, terrible sandbox execution, a bunch of meaningless dialogue and events, the developer baiting with 'lost'-level cliffhangers, and in the grand scheme of things - just isn't wort it in my honest opinion.
It really did leave me with a sour taste, and it's truly disappointing to see this is the direction this VN took, since I thought it had a lot of potential.

One of the beast incest themed i have played. This game compelled me to write my first review ever on this site since i joined (almost 4 years ago), that alone should give the reader some idea of how amazing it is. The family storyline is the best out there but other parts are also strong. Evelyn paths (all of them) grabbed me literally for days even weeks and that feat i can give only to one mother character from a famous game which is currently abandoned. I know that the game is not completed but it still has a ton of content and hence the well deserved rating. Keep it up Dev and give us more. We want more!!!

High quality renders. A lot of content to play.
Main story is weak and cliche but girls relevant are well written.
And its easy to play with a well-made walkthrough but sometimes with version upgrade I encountered some bugs.
Overall a very good fap game.

Photo Hunt is a difficult game to rate... i am not a fan of sandbox and that is probably why it got 3 stars instead of higher... i will summarise what i like and dont like below:

PROS
* Nice looking characters, all different
* Good animations
* Decent enough premise
* Lots of content

CONS
* Sandbox style means that sometimes there is literally nothing to do and you have to skip time or grind on something useless to continue
* Grindy - have to do things at a certain time, in a certain place, in a certain order... easy to miss things if you are not using a mod

Summary...
I have definately played worse, but for me the sandbox element and grind required bring the score down.

The game is absolutely fantastic. The renders are gorgeous and the plot is actually engaging. It's actually the title that inspired me to attempt creating my own game. All girls' stories are compelling and believable, and although the MC is a bit of a dick-ish character I am not the biggest fan of, I can glance past that because this game deserves recognition.

The day is 207. I've yet to have sex with mother. Her love is 197, my photo skills are 400, yet that sweet rank alcoholic cooter eludes me. I have hunted, days I have wasted jogging, lying in bed with her after a drunken stupor, yet she chooses to ignore me. I've corrupted my sister into a slave as I have with every other woman in town, yet my own mother keeps teasing me with her lewd body every chance she gets, yet always recoils as I near her labia. I know not if she is playing a cruel ploy on me, driving me slowly to insanity or if she is simply too oblivious too understand that this game is destroying my mental health. I've lost all interest in other women, they are simply tools to be used for gaining more lewd scenes of my mother's toned body as she is all that matters to me. Seeing her naked pale skin in the morning brings me back to life from death, but it does not sate my hunger. I will only be satisfied once me and her love each other as no son and mother should.

Also this game is quite good, though not really a fan of incest personally because Im a cuckold

I have a hard time explaining how I feel about this novel. The renders are great, the story is great and I like the characters-- all would warrant a 5 star rating . This is a grind but doesn't really feel like a grind most of the time. The buildup to the "pay-off" scene is full of great smaller scenes and plenty of variety. Where this novel falls completely flat for me is the "pay-off" scenes themselves. Some of the main pay-off scenes are lackluster and that's being polite. Nothing was ever to a point I was ready to throw it in the recycle bin like so many other novels.-- so I give it 4 stars.

3 Stars, there are mainly 2 reasons why I knocked it down, the creepness and something with the mom:

The game has pretty nice models, even through on _some_ pictures they look like cartoonish heads attached to realistic body, for the most part it looks great and works well enough, the mom looks the nicest to me which is one of the reasons I knocked it down... I'll get to that later on [Story section], and for a long time, the sister actually looks hot, she's cute and just is balanced right unlike most games to me

The dialogue, I mean it seems like a lot of people really don't like it but personally I found it pretty enjoyable and, it's one of those rare games that I don't start skipping mid-game, it's gets a bit cheesy but the spirit is there, it might have lead to some horrible textorn ratio but it wasn't bad, except the creepy part. Speaking of...

The MC, I didn't like his look that much but he's way better than what I've seen from other games so I'll take it, but here's the thing, he's a fucking creep when it comes to the girls, like legit I just want to check on the mom but he fucking goes straight to the bathroom trying to take a pic... to sell... which is maybe something I don't want to do at all, but he gets creepy and lovely and it's just a weird mix, best to describe it would be he's just a fucking horny teen. Would've made the game way better if he didn't do it as often.

The renders, I can't lie to you, this game has amazing renders and at worst medicore, I haven't seen any bad or immersion-breaking renders, sometimes they are top notch like when you make dinner & stay with your mom at night. If not top notch they are great, you really won't be disappointed with this game renders if you like the style.

The story, oh boy, the story itself is great, the way they talk is great (not a native speaker but while reading it felt nice and read pretty great), the way they handled the pacing is not fucking great which I'll get to in a moment, I like what they did with the dad, it really is something different than all other games where the dad is on a "business trip" or dead, and he has actually a good character as much as it's a bit of weird he is, like really, a bit flat when it comes to "I can seduce any girl" but he has some nice lines, well, back to the bad part, the pacing, I made it the last paragraph so you can skip to the next section if you don't want spoilers of major events with the mom.
The creepiness, yeah as I've mentioned before it was pretty weird, no, it was very fucking weird, you just got back from like a 12 year seperation to you mom and sister and the first thing you start thinking about is taking hot pictures of them... not even for personal use, it's to sell. like come the fuck on, I just wish it was a choice and not something that the MC suggests throughout the whole game whenever an opportunity arises even on the most fucked situations.

Overall all if you don't mind the last two points (or you can ignore it) the game is really great and polished, I'd definitely recommned you to play, it's on my top 5 that's for sure, and for the mom she looks fucking good, most models do so just give it a shot, also the game is actually almost Free, you can chase whoever you want without need to do event number 35 from X person. Great.

I'll have to revise the review later to make a bit more polished (and compressing text), but I had to write it down for now. v0.13.4 at the time of writing.

Came across this game randomly, but I got pulled in immediately. The art and character models are top of the line, and the get better with each update. It takes a while, but once to get to actual scenes with animations the CG model physics have a level of detail I've never seen in other AVNs.

The progression is more open than some on-the-rails AVNs, but it can feel a bit grindy as you try to figure out how to continue the story with certain character. This is the way most adult games used to be structured though, so I don't mind it.

*Update* playing this again after the 0.14 update. The Grace content was great and the overall art and renders are getting even better. The grind of timed events is making it somewhat harder to want to keep going with the game. So much progress is dependent on weekend afternoon events. After you run out of week day activities it just turns into a lot of skipping to get to the next weekend and do another brief event on repeat. Most of these afternoon activities could also be available in the morning or evening too and allow that way we're not just skipping every morning, evening, and week day.

Good stories of wonderful models sometimes express amazing emotions on her face. But he is satisfied. The work is not very exciting. The event search engine spoils the whole picture. The posts are short, unexpected and most importantly I lost my logic. So it led me to despair. This can ruin the whole thing. There is no continuity in what mc does. Several incidents of nudity and advanced touch are passed over from the main story in which even a girl has difficulty communicating with me. When it comes to working on it, the work of 5 stars is clear. There is no regular period of connections. So the gameplay is search and repeat. Sad. The big advantage is the long story and its possibilities. He wants to set it up to be even more exciting in some places. I can not help anymore, this is my impression.

I had a good chuckle off this one, I couldn't believe how badly written this was. From being caught up in countless blackmail angles to being an obsessive voyeur camera man I'm don't know what I was suppose get out of this. But I'm going to break down why this game left me scratching my head.

Story:

The main character to sum it up is a pathetic loser, immature, doesn't think about his actions and how they affect others, he's a joke. The women in this game as just as bad because there's really no redeeming qualities when it comes to any of them other than being fuck buddies. Romance is doesn't exist here, it's a sham, a farce, it's fake. There's nothing romantic at all about these storylines, if anything it's a game of corruption. Your sister is a call girl/prostitute. Your mom is a drunk, you spend your whole time trying to get into her pants, only to coerce your drunk mother into becoming a pornstar lol. That's his ultimate goal? Not rehab? Exposing her to everyone at anyplace, like what? Class mates are classmates, they really didn't matter because it was all the same to me.

Renders:

Hit or miss. You either like it or you don't, I found some models for the most part cute and others ugly.

Characters:

As someone said, the ladies are either sluts or prostitutes or both or all of the above, idk.

Animation.

The one highlight of the game.


Overall. Romance doesn't exist here, if you're looking for a love story, keep looking. If you want to slut out everyone, including your mom and sister.. this is the place.

The game looks great with an interesting art style that booth look cartoony and realistic.
The story is decent with some of the girls stories being better than others and plenty of NSFW scenes that pletvise make sense.

Unfortunately it is very linear and you cant really skip scenarios that you aren't interested in, if you want to progress the story (like if you aren't into dating your mom)

Looking forward to see the game complete

Version Played: 0.13.4
Time Played: 15+ hours. Seen most content, missing some scenes here and there. Nothing that would make me change my opinion.

Now this is the stuff. As evidenced by the plethora of positive reviews, this one sildes down the ol' shaft real easy. While it certainly doesn't win points for originality in terms of setting, kinks or character archetypes, what's here is done so well and the graphics including camera angles, posing and fashion are absolutely top tier that it's a delight to play. There is basically a character for everyone from personality to design. The fact that there are also characters who haven't really even begun to be explored also bodes very well. I genuinely like all of the characters so far, and while not perfect, there is a three dimensionality to them you don't often see in games where eye candy and (contrived) sexual escapades are the main focus. To be sure, there's a lot of both of the latter and this isn't going to be winning any prizes for writing, but there's more than enough characterization, story and memorable moments to elevate it beyond the sum of its parts.

That said, all is not perfect; in spite of what those 15 hours might belie, there actually isn't as much sexual content as you might think, particularly penetrative. The English is also off, so some of the lines, particularly when swearing, end up being more silly than impactful. I also have to say that sometimes your options for the MC are only to play him as a creep, which I don't really like.

Positives
+ Beautiful girls with varying body design and defined personalities
+ Gorgeous visuals including some great animations and visually pleasing scene composition
+ Different paths to take certain LIs down that allow for a variety of outcomes
+ Character design has a slight modern 3D animation look to it with features being ever so slightly exaggerated (I dig, but YMMV)
+ Bush!

Negatives
- English needs work
- Sexual content to gameplay ratio is not good
- A bit on the grindy side, but not nearly as egregious as others
- Some choices only seem to allow for creepy behavior

Overall, even with its minor issues, I still think this is one of the best games on the site and now sits among my favorites.
There are awesome plot threads still remaining to be explored as well as ladies who have barely only received an introduction teasing some great times ahead.
This is a total must play in my book.

Note to Devs: Thank you very much for the incredible experience! I can't wait to see what happens next. I'm really looking forward to Evelyn's PS route content (I dig sharing) and it would be awesome to see some more content with MC's "adopted" father.

Overall a solid good game., and I'd give it a 4.5/5 if I could. Art is nice, story is fine, plenty of content, for a sandbox game it's got its grind, but it's not a terrible grind and content is paced pretty well despite the repeated scenes.
But what knocks it down for me is not a big incest fan, and a vast majority of the content is mother and sister focused despite a large stable of women. Too much feet stuff, don't hate it, but also feels like its either the dev's personal thing, or his patreons really push for it and it feels a bit dominant.
Finally, the art. The art is nice, but the characters look a bit too much like XXX versions of dreamwork characters or something. The sex scenes lack orgasm. That's not to say there's no jism, but every scene I've seen it's "shot, shot, shot, post-orgasm". No visual build up, and its absence is noticeable since every scene is this way. It's not bad, and its consistent, but just annoys me enough that I can't say it's great. Again, a 4.5/5.

i enjoyed playing this game. this is one of those sandbox visual novel that i really didn't mind... until they locked you out for skipping class. oh well it was fun ride but i'm gonna stop playing this for two reason.
1. i will forgot again that skipping class will lock you out for the rest of the story.
2. i'm too busy irl and i'm bound to repeat the same mistake.

Man, this game is lit! It has some hot girls, it has a plot, it has some really good rendering/animating skills and it has style. I like those "cartoon'ish" looking characters. Awesome job, keep it up!