Ren'Py - Onhold - Private Lives [v0.35] [Petardo]

The game began as an ambitious project where you take on the role of a male MC, although a female option has since been added. In this role, you interview various characters about their sex lives and eventually become personally involved in some of the interactions.

One of the main challenges with this approach is finding the right balance between being too involved and too detached. Additionally, the content is now divided between two protagonists, which dilutes dev time, and I wonder if it was ever needed. As a result, if you choose to play as only one character, you might feel that something is either missing or too short between updates. Triggering scenes that involve the MCs can also be quite difficult and often frustrating. Many scenes are easily missable because they require very specific actions or conditions, even with the provided walkthrough. Furthermore, the guide does not detail how to unlock secret scenes. The in-game tips range from somewhat helpful to completely useless, making navigation within the 'sandbox' environment cumbersome and potentially wasting hours of your playtime. The UI, navigation and hint system either need a serious overhaul, and/or the requirements for triggering the MC scenes should be made less strict. An alternative could be to completely remove the 'sandbox' and shift to a traditional visual novel.

As a consolation prize, you can unlock Lady Moonshine to access any scenes that you may have missed. However, it is important to note that she only unlocks the scenes themselves and does not provide any context for them, offering only a brief explanation of what may have occurred based on certain actions you did not take. While this feature is helpful, it may not feel as rewarding as it seems. Overall, good premise, flawed execution.

review for v0.25

a fuckin mess.
interesting idea and concept, shit execution.
meh renders, some are terrible, some be good.
animations are nice.
writing is ass tho, and that's where the game falls apart.
still good luck to the dev, and respect for tryin smth different.

This game has really become one of my favorites. The writing style and format takes some adjustment, but there are tons of variations built into the writing. Having the game focus on other stories plus the mc’s interactions really allows for some varied adult scenes and interactions. Just go in knowing you aren’t going to get the same mc you are used too.

I personally like the art, I find it unique, plus all the styles and body art stand out from the norm. The animations are fluid and well done.

The dev is responsive to feedback, but still sticks to his vision which I appreciate. I really hope he sticks with it to a finished story.

Truly misunderstood game. The dev is very honest and committed to his vision and I respect him for that. First off so many people are put off by the fact MC doesn't do alot of the sex in the game. But the MC is the one learning about sexual encounters from the many unique characters spread around the town. I find this interesting, and unique personally.

I did find some issues at first with gameplay as I am a bit of completionist with these games, finding all content etc. but the dev has sorted that out with many new features. The language barrier does make some of it confusing but I can overlook that by the sheer uniqueness and sexiness of all the characters, asell the interesting take on a VN. I hope for more, and can't wait to see more of this game.

I think people should try this one again, now that you can select to be male or female MC.

Basically english could use some work. other then that, interesting story. Unique characters, interesting style of gameplay. great sex scenes. UI is not complicated and with the addition of the fortune teller character the game only has gotten better.

The game is a mess. You almost have no choices there. You can click some options but if you don't reach the result that the developer wants the game doesn't progress ("You failed to ..." do it again until you puke.).

One of the worst games I played here, so you need to grind on a bad sandbox to see others have sex not the mc, so any gratification to endure this grind sandbox comes as voyeurism only, mc is a little beta without experience since he can't write the book with his own experience or try to have new experience to gather info for his book so he just hear/see others having sex while he is sexless.

Characters some are pretty but majority is ugly, renders are average at best, animation average, plot is really bad.

Sandbox is bad, too grindy.

This is just a miscellaneous of other people sex story's and "mc" is only a narrator to all that.

If what you like in a vn is atlest a decent "mc" a Nice story, focus on mc or good LI this game is probably not for you but if what you like is random story's of other people, whatch other people have fun while you are in your little corner then this game may be for you, bad mc, no decent LI or then you might enjoy. But overall would give a 0 if it was a option.