Ren'Py - Ring of Lust [v0.5.4a] [Votan]

I cant really enjoy this game, since i'm more busy to find out how it works and how to progress.
It's messed up, that you obviously need a WT to play this game. 1.5 Star ratings from my site, since the images look like from 2012 , but the animations are ok. I stop playing now, because it is really annoying and not a "must play" and nothing you have missed.

The below average graphics could have been offset by a better gameplay but sadly it's not the case. The game is a huge grindfest, you click mindlessly hoping to blindly trigger events. Events have to be repeated multiple times to trigger the next ones, yet there is no indication.

Low quality renders, average animations and a horrible sandbox and progression, what's not to love?
On a positive note it is impressive someone who must have severe cognitive impairment can create a game at all.

Con:
- Graphics are poor
- Writing is really bad, the characters are stereotypical to non-existent
- boring, cliché dialogues
- Almost no story
- So much grind

Pro:
- at least this is sort of a game, not just a VN

[v0.5.0b]

The writing is around 4/10. Not totally bad, but worse than mediocre.

The sandbox mechanisms/UI are bad -- you can literally spend ingame days not understanding what/how to advance. For example -- in other reviews I *now* read that you can press alarm clock near your bed for some effect. WTF. You must go pixelhunting in a VN? This is excarbated by fact that you have to press on alarm clock at the time when there is dialogue choice ("go to bed") on screen. WTF? Why not make it a dialogue choice too?

At least the laptop (in your bedroom) was introduced as something to interact with. But you can only click on it at specific times (despite there being no dialogue to do it, just have to know to click on it). At others it is blocked. And somehow the webcam you installed in sister's laptop is never on. And there are no hints whatsoever what you are doing wrong or what's the path.

The renders are mediocre for 2023. Not horrible, but not particularly interesting. For my taste also, grotesquely huge boobs. Same about MC's dick, there should be a tag for games "stupidly-big-unrealistic-dick", but considering that'd be 70-80% of games here, probably just doesn't make sense. At least the dick is sometimes not erect, or we'd think MC is suffering priapism.

+1 pt for premise. Still sorta more kinetic novel than VN, but there could be something nice coming out of it, if only.

Hey! The game is very funny, it is not clear where the low ratings come from. One minus noticed is some scenes are not playable. Peeping Beth and a few scenes in the library. Everything else is cool! Sorry for my English, I'm Russian) good luck bro!

The game's renders and the general story are good for what it tries to be -- especially as you get further. Renders improve a lot.

But the sandbox can be really tough to figure out, even with the walkthrough.

For the first time since 2020, I came back to this game. And, oddly enough, I enjoyed it. Yes, it has a lot of flaws. The most important one is the lack of hints about the game's progression, no quest system, and finally, not very high quality renders. Also, to be honest, I'm not a fan of BBW. Nevertheless, I must point out the main merit - this is a GAME, not a visual novel. Some of the story lines (stepmother, her sister, stepsisters) I got through on my own, the rest of the story with the walkthrough, which is far from perfect and not always able to give clear directions on how to play next (especially the library story arc). My final score for the game is 3.5 out of 5. It would have been more, I think 4 out of 5, if it weren't for the flaws mentioned above.

I don't know why this game is rated so low. It's pretty good and yeah there are a few grindy parts but it's still manageable with the walkthrough. I especially enjoyed the scenes with Cleo and Susan and would love to see more scenes with them

TL: DR
This is a very twisted game to review properly. Let's say you may try it and, if you pass 2-3 hours of gameplay without an urge to vomit, you may enjoy this. If not - bring something voluminous to collect you dinner beforehand, just in case...

I admit, it's been a long time since I played this game, but one look at the reviews and in the thread show that nothing has changed, but keep it in mind my impressions are dated (even though they completely align with the other bad reviews).

The only draw I can see for this game is that you can be quite the dick in it towards your not-family, if you are into that.

But it is a sandbox game, it has a lot of grind, many events depend on quite random triggers, and you will spend a lot of time being frustrated with that and the grind as it is.
There are absolutely annoying minigames in it, which at the time I played it, you needed to do to progress the story of specific girls.

The writing is, I guess you could call it serviceable, as are the renders.
The whole thing wasn't fresh when it started, now roundabout 5 years later, games have definitely developed quite a bit and this is still the same old, same old.

This review is mostly here, because I want people which are interested in the game to be rightfully warned, of a mediocre story, with mediocre renders, an absolutely annoying and grindy and nonsensical sandbox and a lot of frustration.

I gave it 3 stars because the renders are perfectly my taste. That part at least is subjective. You may disagree. They may not be YOUR type.... But they are mine. The story itself needs a walkthrough or something. There's no hint that this or that can trigger a so-called "secret" or "hidden" event..... there's a helluva lot of repeat and grind because the game tends to lack any real logic and flow in my opinion. It has promise, don't get me wrong. There's a potentially great game in here, honestly. Dude gets powers, can make women horny.... let's do the sex warp agaaaaaiiiinnn! but what's the endgame here? I just don't know. 3 stars for potential. But we need to knock the house down and rebuild it from scratch. Same characters, different game mechanics and some logic or a walkthrough.... do that and you may have a 5 star game, my friend.

( Story, Originality, Renders, Sound, Playability, Performance, Bugs, Animations, Voice Acting, Grammar, Amount of content )

The Story and content are good, though the grammar is a little rough in places.
The biggest reason I haven't scored it higher is that the gameplay is extremely grindy...
There are little to no hints for where to go next, how to unlock scenes, or even how close you are to doing so... and the one option that is available for receiving help (in-game) just essentially boils down to "just do the thing, idk"

Ring Of Lust v0-4-5a

This Game is a good example of what you can do all wrong with a Sandbox game. This Game is such a convoluted mess that leaves you confused on when you can trigger the next scenes at what time of day.
A lot of Scenes just repeat themselves like the Gloryhole Scenes where it´s just the same women being surprised again and again when they see the same dick.
You don´t even see sometimes if there is a person in the room when you are home, like the living room, so you have to randomly click through the rooms to find someone and hopefully unlock a new scene.
For some reason walking through 3 Rooms takes a Day for the MC.
There is no sound to speak of and the animations/Render/Models look aged.
The story is bland and the writing is pretty bad.
I even tried the Cheat Mod which still didn´t help except unlocking the gallery so I could stop wasting my time playing this game.

Ring of Lust is really a mess of a game.
Its sandbox mechanics require you to follow closely the walkthrough. Without the latter you'd have no clue at all how to progress, because some progression steps require a certain day, a certain time of the day and even progression with other characters, before a new scene can be unlocked.
Even the walkthrough is pretty much a convoluted mess as well. It's no fun playing, because nothing is intuitive, you'll have to check the walkthrough constantly.

Apart from that, the daz3d character models seem to look quite outdated to me. I like milfs very much, big natural tits, too and curvy bodies to some degree, but proportions in this game are too unnatural for my taste. Also some facial expressions are very much exaggerated and don't look natural to me. Partly daz3d is to blame for it, but also the dev for not taking a better look at more natural expression sets of daz3d.

Furthermore the story is stereotypical. You've got a magical ring, which enables you to make women horny, manipulate their thoughts, lets you become invisible and even manipulate tech. Simply put, a jack of all trades.

The family is totally stereotypical, you've got the mom, who is resistant and needs some convincing in the beginning, then there is an older sister, who treats the mc badly (in the beginning) and there is the younger sister, who adores the mc and on top of that there is the horny aunt, who doesn't need much convincing to show her slutty nature to the mc. At least there are some side characters as well, but it doesn't feel like any of the characters have got a unique and distinctive personality, other than stereotypical genre tropes.

Ring of Lust needs some fundamential rework of its game mechanics, especially the event/scene triggers and a way more structured walkthrough.
An in-game task list/progression tracker is really missing in this game. Most sandbox games offer some kind of in-game help, like hints for the next progression step for each npc, this game doesn't.
The models could use some rework as well in my opinion. Personally I lost all motivation playing this mess after having started from scratch somewhere just before I reached almost half of the available content for the time being (v0.4.4.a).

Ultimately I can only give 2 stars for RoL.

This game requires a lot of work for me to give it a chance again. The graphics aren't bad, especially the female characters, but the story, development process and gameplay leaves a lot to be desired. Hopefully the developer can work on a foundation that is still positive and give the game new life. It will probably require a complete re-engineering, but it may be worth it.

When it started I loved this game. Specially Cleo and Lilly but with the time it gets more and more confusing. But nevertheless I look allways foreward for new updates. I even started a new game to have the early experience with all the characters.

The concepts and artwork on this game are phenomenal. That being said, perhaps the developers should hire a native English speaker to re-write the dialogue. It is to the point of distraction. Also, the gameplay is horrendous. Without the guide, it would be impossible. Which is not how a game should be. Event triggers need to be much more clear, and perhaps the introduction of a hint system (not a total reliance on one).

the graphic is good, mom/aunt/step mom is very hot and curvy. if there is a list of quest or what to do list, it will very good, i sometimes didnt know what to do to advance in the game. not to much grind. i like the game

v0.4.3 - Although I think I only got up to ~v0.2 content.

This game is a mess - I promise you, you will end up enabling skip text, you will end up enabling skip after choices, and you will end up randomly clicking different locations at different times of the day desperately trying to trigger a new event. This game is just random clicking around until something works, and there are a TON of places to click at a TON of different times.

It doesn't really do anything new with the sex tropes - You have the mother who is head over heels for you for no real reason, the promiscuous aunt who will fuck anything with a pulse, the elder sister who vocally hates you (who the fuck does that?), and the younger sister who doesn't know what sex is. It's fine in many games (one of my favs actually), except the characters here are written particularly flat - they are literally the archetypes with NO personality added. They are tits with vaginas representing those personas. Snore.

The writing is fairly bad (typos, weird dialog choices) and the story is same old same old (again, a setting I typically enjoy - just not when it is written poorly). The stills and animated scenes are implanted poorly; A still image will be on screen while the text is spelling out a sex scene, and then a few messages into this sex FINALLY a new image will be shown with the characters undressed and mid-sex. Eventually a quite slow, average-tier animated render occurs. Sometimes you get a couple of them.

There is absolutely no sound, and no real way to understand what to do next (there is a guide but imo it's a miserable experience following it). What's even worse is I think the characters are interlinked with each other despite the game dialog giving no hints that they are. Ie, I think you have to trigger unrelated events for character A to get unrelated events for character B... It's a suspicion that I don't have the patience to verify. There is also no scene gallery, but I can forgive this since most scenes are fairly easy to replicate. All in all, it's a poor game. 4.8GB of wasted disk space, imo. 1.5 stars.