Ren'Py - Pill King [v0.29] [Effx Games]

In my opinion, the best combination of elements that a pornographic game should have to capture my attention is to mix unique art, beautiful women, and an interesting story. This game has a lot of potential. The unique art and AI of well-known celebrities was a bold move by Effx Games, and I applaud them for it: if you don't take risks, you don't get far.
I'm not a fan of sandbox games, but this one is better than most. Easy to move around and move forward once you read the journal.

The plot is interesting, but I think that the story should have a little more humor IMO.

4 stars for unique art and for taking risks plus great dialogue.

Not really the best of games, highly repetitive and counterintuitive gameplay (go to work or grind skills, which you need cash for which you gain from work).

This review is from day 40 on v.0.12 and besides not being able to optimize the time, the game progression is also highly linear, although obfuscated behind "do this saturday 14.00 and do that at sunday 20.00" etc. Meaning that the skip time and sleep til next day buttons will quickly become your favorites.
As for the models, I think almost eveyone can name the actors whom they're based off, and maybe its just my dislike of having Bruce Willis as a dad and The Rock as security guard, but it comes off as comical and nonsensical.
That said this game can become better, by simply allowing the MC to manage his time a bit better and not paying peanuts for work, which simply protracts the gameplay and makes you feel like the MC is a 1-braincell chemically enhanced voyeur-stereotype.

That being said, its still early in this games development, but unless some basic gameplay mechanics are optimized this one will not become enjoyable - unless your kink is models resembling more or less famous actors.

After playing through everything I can say this came out of the oven a little early.

Let's start with the good.
Now for the not so good.
Some things to work on.
Lastly, the story.
tl;dr great looking AI ENHANCED ART, kinda empty atm though

First time trying this title.
Good looking characters but they lack any facial expressions and its a bit unnerving. I actually almost gave up on this early in just due to that.

Story line needs a revamp/rethink, its weak and nonsensical... take a horny young man and what make him slightly hornier?.

I can see potential here though.

The Dev has made some improvements from the initial release from what i understand, and hopefully they keep improving. The lack of facial expressions definitely needs to be fixed as a priority.

Will probably give it another go after a few more releases to see if there is hope for this one.

Good luck Dev.

Recommended.
While the facial expressions are a bit lifeless, the scenes overall look amazing and I love all the actresses that were "deepfaked".
Def gonna be one of my favourites, few other games let you fuck the shit out of Hermione, Effie and Daenerys.
Looking forward to watching it be perfected and expanded, hoping it wont get abandoned and/or get filled with bitches that noone cares about just so you can postpone the main cast's sex scenes. (Photo Hunt is a good example of this.)
I don't give a shit about the music of dialogue, one is muted the other skipped, so I can't make a statement on the quality of eighter.

Pros :
The dev tried something different in terms of looks.

The grammar has Improved.

Cons:

Different isn't not necessarily always a good thing. I for one just wasn't impressed by the models if you can even call them that. I don't know much about the whole ai scene and what supposed to look what way or the other. My question is are they supposed to look this dull? From the images I've seen of ai there are mostly these crystal clear images but this looked noisy in a lot of ways. Overall, it just was off putting to me.

Taking a bunch of random celebrities and putting them through ai isn't next level to me, it's lazy.

Story wise, it's generic. Bitchy housewife, neglectful husband and you're supposed to take her side because she's "Hot" when in all honesty she seems like the problem. Your father, another celebrity, is actually a pretty reasonable guy.

The simp of a mc just randomly volunteers to be a test monkey which may or may not kill him and now he's peeking, lusting, and voyeuring nonstop. That's about sums up everything.

If given the choice to buy or sell I'm selling . Nothing to woo me unfortunately.

I like it so far. The renders are very well done, the base mechanics, the look and music are a good start. Not much content yet though.
I like the real actor faces.
What bothers me is that the characters always have this blank, emotionless expression on their faces.

If the story develops positively and the faces start to show some actual emotions, then this game could be pretty good.

For a 0.1 release this is pretty impressive. The framework for a good game down the line is clearly in place, and the renders are pretty decent. But what really kept me interested was the story framework. This may be one of the best narrative hooks I've seen that justify why these sandbox games play the way they do.

By the end of 0.1, you have an in-universe explanation of why you're so horny, why doing the horny things you'll be doing are a good thing, and why you spend so much time in one house, only meeting new women slowly over time.

The current scenes are not that great and they're all dream sequences which I really don't care for, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt until 0.2 or 0.3, at which point I think I'll do a new review.

Okay since each update is 0.01 increments, 0.16 is close enough, time for the re-review. It's not great. The characters look totally different, which was the main draw initially. Having nothing to do besides specific objectives at specific times hasn't gotten any better with the addition of new content, you basically need to open the in-game guide to progress. And it seems both inaccurate and out of order. The music is ridiculous at times, that creepy jack-in-the-box song is so over the top it's unbearable. And the dialogue is really lacking, no character has any depth or... character.

The story is okay but kinda generic, could go either way in the future, maybe a superhit or a shit stain. The renders are good but the AI heads look very bad and weird, the concept is nice but it still needs a ton of work to look decent, normal daz faces would look better imo... also the animations are not good, would recommend straight up removing them until they get better... however the dialogue and the English is the real kicker... the dialogue is extremely bad, the dev needs to hire a writer/proofreader or something...