Ren'Py - Pill King [v0.31] [Effx Games]

You are the Pill King, with you cunning mind and usage of pills you steer you future... no you are the Pill Slave thanks to poor writing and the complete lack of common sense.

The good:
- nice body renders
- some good to great animations
- tools to auto-skip time and even to the next event

The rest...:
- a useless sandbox it's only there to have a sandbox
- annoying and broken minigames
- the most uncanny of uncanny faces for your enjoyment
- headless renders (neck down) or just here is the back of that character
- a pill and money mechanic that only exists to slow you down
- relationships feel empty and jumpy
- your relationship bar falls over time so you can click more
- and worst of all medical jargon thrown around without sense or a google search


On your first day as a testsubject you are injected with some unknown formula thanks to a “women moment”, because she can't stand for five minutes and needs to lean on a console.
Now you are the Pill King, like Spiderman, but you shoot various pills out of your hands. ./sarcasm off
No you are now a Pill Slave blessed with a stability meter. If said meter falls below 20% you will get sick. This is the one medical topic I can easily suspend my disbelieve.

--- This part goes over the medical complications related to the testosterone and temperature mechanics. It is optional for people that feel the touch of the tism like me from time to time or if you enjoy broadening your horizon of knowledge.

Disclaimer: These are AI answers, they may not be 100% correct but are good enough to write or judge a porn game.

The next meter is testosterone, you loose 10% or 20% for every sexual interaction, ignoring the amount of times you cum. If it is to low no sexy time for you.
Now for a quick Google AI search:
Question: “What complications can arise from strongly fluctuating testosterone levels?”
Answer (shortened): Mood Instability, Cognitive Impaiment, Mental Health Vulnerability, Variable Libido, Sexual Dysfunction, Fertility Issues, Energy “Crashes”, Cardiovascular Risks, Metabolic & Skin Changes and Sleep Disturbance.
Whelp no problem for MC, only consequence for him is “pipi hard or pipi not hard”.

The other one is temperature, at some point you unlock a temperature LOWERING pill, it works as follows: normal 36°C/96,8°F you take a pill and your temperature is now 31°C/87,8°F and the next one LOWERS your temperature to 41°C/105,8°F.
For starters 36°C/96,8°F is already a slightly lower core temperature, average is 37°C/98,6°F.
Back to Google AI:
Question: “What happens if a bodys core temperature reaches 31°C?”
Answer (shortened): Cessation of Shivering, Decreased Consciousness, Physical Impairment, Vital Sign Slowdown, Cardiac Vulnerability
And to hammer the point home the last answer not shortened:
Gentle Handling: Victims must be moved very carefully, as sudden or rough movement can trigger fatal heart rhythms.

Question: “What happens if a bodys core temperature reaches 41°C?”
Answer (shortened): Neurological Distress, Physical Strain, Respiratory & Cardiac Impact, Protein Denaturation, Organ Malfunction, Severe Seizures
And last but not least, answer not shortened:
Death: If the temperature is not lowered quickly, it can lead to coma, multi-organ failure, and death.

--- End of the optional part, have fun with the rest.

Testosterone has no big impact on the gameplay, you can either start an event or not and the remedy is to take a pill that ups it bei 20%.

Temperature is linked, at time of writing, to two events that can be summarized as:
Event “frozen fishstick”:
You turn up the temperature in her room and go in like, “I have a sexual proposal for you, your bun is hot and my fishstick is cold lets fuck”.
With the knowledge from above: MC cold + rapid movement = dead MC

Event “hot dog”:
You lower the temperature in her room and go in like “Yo your bun frozen me have hot dog lets fuck”.
Again with the knowledge from above: MC hot + rapid movement = dead MC

Thanks for listening to my TED talk, now to the non science parts of the game.

The sandbox is useless, every event is detailed in multiple submenus: location, day and time.
Only the days have some reach meaning weekdays or weekend the other factors are more rigid.
So no real sense in having a sandbox at all. But you get a auto-skip tool that skips time, day and places you at the location.

The minigames are annoying, one is:
Lady is doing the laundry in the bathroom while only wearing her panties, since the bathroom has no lock you are now tasked to listen for footsteps and warn her. I did not her anything only her posture changed that is when I clicked.
But at least no one need to stand guard when she showers, because in this great sandbox you can't peek...

The events are structured as main story, money (earn it), pills (buy them) and each love interest.
Meaning you can plow through your chosen LI until you hit a MS block, but there are few.
That results in little to no connection between MS and LI events.
There is not enough buildup with the Lis, one event:
You see two of the women near the hot tub in the evening, one suggests to jump in nude and the other is hesitant, ergo one nude one not. You join them, as you do, no shyness on the part of the nude one. She suggests a “I say you do or you loose” game. Moments later you all are nude. Next one is “hey kiss MC on the lips for ten seconds” ok easy. But then “ok I had to kiss him, now you stick his dick in your pussy and sit on it for two minutes”...
Sure I will try that as an Icebreaker on my next party, I'm sure it will go swimmingly. ./sarcasm off

I mean ok the nude part I can rationalize, as most of the women in the household run around only partially closed or in see through closing, but casual penetration for a game between acquaintances is wild.

To gain relationship progress you need to do a specific event to raise the bar bei up to 25%, the bar is a gatekeeper for some events. It is easy to do this event and it is repeatable but the bar falls a litte from day to day, so you can click the same event some more times.

The faces seem to have been touched up by an AI filter, they look uncanny as hell.
That results in a lot of body shots neck down, or you see their backside. It feels strange and made me avoid looking at the faces.
And that then results in the only kissing while having sex scene being as amazing as reading it in a book. All you get is "No don't kiss me while we fuck!" while having a neck down animation play. Just WOW...



So all in all one star for render of the bodys and some animations and one star for nico and her animations. Yes that is my logic and I stand by it.



At the end, if you read this bulk of text, heads up to you SIR or MADAM. I know this is a complaint about a porn game, but I enjoiy this genre of games and from time to time one just tickes me off to the point that I need to get it off my chest.


And if you are a game DEV please just do a bit of research, a lack of it or of common sense can ruin peoples enjoyment of your game.


But at the end of the day I'm but a dumb MFer, have fun. ./wave

Animations and rendering are very good. For the moment there is no much content, but hopefully more is coming.
All small animations in the scenes where the girls are just standing is a nice touch.
It's basically a linear story with little sandbox - hopefully it will change in the future updates.
3-star for now, with potential to become a 5-star

v0.30

Review Summary:
On F95, 3 stars = "Average", 4 stars = "Good". This game is a bit of a conundrum to me because I consider it above average but below good. In summary, I think it's serviceable today, but probably only once or maybe twice. I'm all for some gameplay/grind if the payout is worth it - this one is just barely not worth it to me. However, I can tell the dev is trying to go beyond the typical Ren'Py experience with features like good renders and music. It's difficult to weigh all these things. I think I'd call it a 3.5 stars, but I'm going to round down instead of up because the payout is most important to me in an H game.

Much of below is going to assume you're using the incset patch.


Finally, I don't really have anywhere to put this, but I wanted to say that the AI-generated music is... interesting. A song with the chorus of "Coffee my coffee" when you meet the barista lol, uhm... It's definitely a choice. It works sometimes, feels off at other times. I did at least like to see the dev trying things, trying to improve on the genre. I'm just not sure if this particular effort will lead to actual improvement.

This is a beautifully rendered game.
and the animations are well done.

The animated no event scenes where the girl is present at a location with no new event is particularly nice.

Additionally the story is engaging.

That said..
Game play is clunky and grindy.
and it's basicly a liniar story with little point to the sandbox nature.

Giving this a 3 star.. I may revise that later when there is more content.
This game has the potential to be a 5-star

Lazy poor sandbox, plot is borderline stupid

Dev redid game and broke all saves on a grindy sandbox that has no walkthrough, cheats require a code

I have no desire to go through this again just because the dev touched up the game clearly using AI not even their own work.

Can't give more than 1 star should be 0. before it was like 1.5 stars

The main thing that makes this game distinct is the AI filtering. The author has used AI particularly to make the faces of the original 3d models look more photorealistic. This can be interesting, and sometimes looks good, though often lands things square in the Uncanny Valley.

The big problem with this strategy is they didn't commit to it. It must be very resource-intensive to do the face replacement, because the author cut corners and hides character faces in like 75% of the renders. Characters are cut off at the neck, or facing away.

Once you notice it, it starts to become really creepy. Scanning through different rooms of the house, sometimes a room will have 2-4 characters in it and they're all facing away. Makes it seem like they've got something to hide. Something sinister.

I like sandbox games more often than not, but the sandbox in this game is pretty stupid. There is nothing to do in the sandbox other than find the place to trigger the next scene. The game gives you a tool to time/place jump to the next available scene if there is one. There is no reason not to use this tool, because the only other thing you can do in the sandbox is hop between locations and see the different outfits on all the characters that are often facing away and won't talk to you.

The story of the game is also crap, yet another protagonist who happens to live with a bunch of young babes and has some bizarre medical condition.

The whole endeavor feels like it was written by AI, or maybe aliens who don't understand human behavior or sexuality.

Brilliant game mate! I was not thinking about playing it for hours in one sit but here I am... Keep the updates and this game will take it's place on the top. Only more interactions in the free roaming is necessary.

The visuals are nice, but holey moley does this game fail at common sense.
Everyone constantly in a state of undress? Check.
Approaching sex and relationships like taking a pill? Check.
Derogatory implications towards women? Check.
The lookalikes were what drew me in, but the sandbox, poor story, and overall tone of the game had me quitting within the first hour. Normally I don't like leaving such negative reviews and try and offer help to improve it, but you would have to rewrite a large chunk of the scenes I've experienced so far. Try consulting a trusted female influence in your life on how women generally behave. Even in a porn game, people should have standards. 2/5, only up 1 point because of the lookalikes.

This might just be the most braindead porn game I have played in a while. The story makes little to no sense, there is absolutely zero build up to sex scenes, mc acts cowardly & hesitant during h-scenes. I am not sure, if corruption tag even applies to this game, as there's little to none of that. Honestly a video on hub would have better build up and story than whatever this game tries to present. This game has been an absolute waste of my time.

Pros:

Very polished art. Nice animations. It's a good looking game.

There is a survival factor. You need to take pills regularly to survive and keep your stats up. This is unusual in adult games and gives it a sense of time.

Cons:

Grammar is a problem in places.

Interactions with the love interests are very weird and sudden. The game tells you that you have to raise reputation before trying anything with the them, and it looks like it's setting up for sandbox interactions, but then that just goes away.

For example you have the younger roommate. You have to raise her relationship to 100% before making a move. But that only means you have to click the "talk to her" button four times. Then the next time you talk to her the mc says something like, "I need to teach you how sex works," so she says yes and suddenly they're fucking. There's no buildup and no explanation.

{This VN doesn't deserve 5 stars but There is a reason I gave 5*}

Now the VN is all over the place.
The story is very engaging at the beginning if you play with incest patch. This reminded me one of my most favorite games "Milfs Villa". Vey similar vibe at the beginning but loses it's way after some. I was really disappointed. The sandbox mode doesn't help either, some events feels like random and out of place. It just like many of them out there, pretty average story and mechanics with lots of screw up.
..
Now lets get to what I liked........ ... ...
The realistic looking MODELS...
This is where it captured my heart and I deeply believe is the future of VN industry,.
The models have realistic face. The renders at the beginning were simply superb. Even some animation from earlier were superb. I don't know what changed, the quality dropped later. But not as bad as some reviewers described below. Some animations are good and some animations have awkard motion as expected from AI. But I really liked some fluid movement of body parts which is a great challenge even for a seasoned animator. Even the top games have bad fluid motion.
Overall I gave it 5* to present my solid support for this kind of renders. The realistic render is the future.
..
I hope the dev gives it a little more try.. He should make batch of them and chose the best one from them. I believe this is what he was doing initially but later became lazy.
Overall not a 5 star overall but just for the render style and for the push of trying extra hard in the future just as he did in the past.

A beautiful combination of Daz3d and AI models seems promising at the start of this game. Ladies look fabulous because of this feature. Although they are one dimensional and flat despite their top tier looks, but different from each other whatsoever. So simply they are much like the real world: Hot but nothing to show inside!

Story is nothing to ride home about; only a framework to keep the porn going. But no complains in this matter because minimum expectations are met. And I like the fact that it doesn’t try to prolong play time by pointless dialogues and walls of text.

Gameplay feels grindy at first but after exploiting the “Purple Pill” mechanics to print money you have nothing to worry about anymore. After that you can maximize all your stats and buy everything you need for the rest of the game in a single in-game day, so you can solely focus on the story and LIs. And you’ll get used to the gameplay really fast because everything is simple and the built-in walkthrough is one of the best you’ll ever see in any game. Also having the freedom to choose the time of the week and the day saves a lot of headaches and really helps the flow.

There’s something fishy about the sex animations: in most of them you can’t see the girl’s face. I don’t know about the technicalities but it might stem from the difficulties in combining pre-rendered models and AI faces during the animations. But aside from that animations look fresh instead of using pre-built animations and place holders that you repeatedly see in a lot of other Daz3d porn games. Although they need a bit of polish, specially in boobs physics section.

You can clearly see it doesn’t try to be a hardcore top tier porn game. It’s like a fast food – simple, fun, comparatively short and doesn’t take itself seriously. It knows its limits and tries its best to be good at that anyway it can. And that’s why I like this game.

A technically well put together harem incest game.
There is a good amount of management and repeating tasks for stats, which i personally don't mind but if you are looking for a straight VN then this is not something you will probably enjoy.
There is, however, a detailed walkthrough section that tells you what events are available for each character and what you need to unlock them if they aren't. It also allows you to jump right to the event if it's available. This is a great feature that negates the "waiting for x day" stuff a lot of these games run into and lets the game play a bit more like a VN.
The narrative and characterizations are middle of the road for a porn game, which means comparing them to regular media like TV or movies isn't going to be favorable. They do the job though as far as holding the game together and presenting a framework for the sex.
The visuals are very nice and the models look great for the most part but they are fairly expressionless. This is a problem particularly in sex scenes, where the writing is decent enough for porn but the expressions are often very flat.
overall a game i'd recommend to anyone who likes incest games and doesn't mind sandboxes and management of stats

Animation is pretty cool not very good but good, Designs are one of the best very hot and all, story is fine the only problem is that incest here is like without any reaction wow... lizy wanting to have sex without problems even if im her brother so like nothing happened... the mom is the best and most natural but the rest are wtf... we were growing up with them together and we are sick ones by experiments but all of these family female are more pervert, ecchi and incest than us XD for some stupid game will lose their virginity taking our cock inside their pussy for 2 minutes like nothing happened or touch them or do blowjob wow...

Nice CG, story is is not much but sex scenes are nicely made and feels good
Each sex scenes are easily accessible from gallery
There will be lot of grind to get game essential and money which makes it very boring during that time
Due to this start may feel bit off or grindy but believe me all those sex scenes are worth it
Sarah in this game looks hella good

Short summary:-
Cons:
- too much grind
- story not much impactful
-takes a lot of time to reach a certain level to start sex scenes

Pros:
+ Awesome CG especially sarah,kira
+ Sex scenes are genuinely good
+ Gallery features

Good Points
+ Sex scenes are animated and animation physics are not bad.

Bad Points
- Grammar is not the strongest suit of the developer it seems, because there are lots of grammar issues in the game, and they are making the story even weaker than it is. Proofreading and better translation are needed for sure.
- Dialogues are not really well-written.
The story is kind of boring.
- The placement of textbox and text looks weird and kind of makes hard to read.
- Thanks to the developer trying to imitate characters faces with certain people they look emotionless and robotic, and that alone makes all sexual content the game boring and unattractive.
- It's a sandbox with no handholding at all.
- MC is not really likable.
- The game is quite grindy.

For The End
The game tries to do a kind of unique thing, but it fails quite harshly.

I would say they was potential, but the face of personage are so "conditioned" to be like known person you Have no real expression.
Also the story is quite flat and the "explanation of his job is just ridiculous".
Finally the sandbox is horrible where you literally have to "work" to play, I play to pass time I already have a real work thanks

[v0.23]

It has potential. But right now its a nice looking candy that tastes like paper. There are just a few sex scenes that are heavily conditioned to trigger.

Most of the time you will have to read the walktrough, grind for money and buy coffee for everyone. This kind of "gameplay" is boring and unnecessary, its only purpose is to waste a few hours of your life before you get to the sex scenes.

Pros:

+ Models are great! Best faces and hottest girls I've seen in a video game.

+ Simple short dialogs, easy to read through any scene.

Cons:

- Every action should be checked in walkthough. There are no hints in dialogs, what you should do next. You have to follow the walkthough or keep walking randomly without any progress.

- More vouyerism than sex. Dev made a ton of opportunities to stealthily watch some girl doing anything around the house, but the same girl has just 1 condition to have sex with her once a week.

- Jerking off in a shower. Another disappointing game mechanic. Instead of having actual sex, MC is imagining he has sex with someone. Thank god, there are no images of MC playing with his dick.

- MC is a toy of his boss. He's not in control of what happens to him. Personally I hate this kind of plot. I wanted to break her neck when she starts manipulating MC. I dont care how hot she is, if she is practically killing MC with her mistakes and manipulations.

I love this game. Because of the updates, I 'had' to play it for the third time - and I'm really in love with the girls! Sarah and the other girls are sooo pretty! I don't think I've ever seen such enchanting actresses in a game. I really want to sit down at the table with them to eat, talk and laugh. Unbelievable. But now comes the 'but': the animations of a blowjob, for example, are very sobering. I was looking forward to the physical contact between the protagonist and Sarah, but this degenerated into a strange-looking exercise. Here the game lacks the credibility and magic that the characters convey when no sexual acts or movements are shown. One exception is the scene of Sarah with David: Wow, just wow. Here the tingling eroticism is created by Sarah's hot (in this case very large) breasts and pretty face - not by the couple's crazy positions. The girls with small or 'normal' breasts all look great - all dream women - as long as they don't move.

im not sure what the "game is too grindy" reviews are about. im just going to assume the game used to be way grindier and was updated. you can easily max all of your skills in a couple minutes if you wanted to by just going to work, skipping a day then repeating.

the pacing is good, the scenes solid, the models are pretty good albeit a little odd looking at times, and theres a good amount of small chested girls which is nice.

my only complaint would be that the graphics are a bit grainy