Ren'Py - Completed - Roommates [v1.5] [ititnenon]

The mixed reviews made me curious.

tldr: nah. lot of time for little reward

The girls were pretty enough.

The sex was slow to come but once it did you are drowning in it.

Plot wise... its pretty boring. A few repeating dialogues that don't matter.
The game is more about repeating a scene until you can get to the next repeating scene, which is a step sexier, and so on.

What this game is really missing is good writing to make you care about the characters. As is, they're all entirely forgettable.

A lot of Beautiful women in this game. A bit grindy at first but not it's not that bad. You can fuck all the gorgeous Asian women in so many ways and you can do it at your own pace. The developer keeps adding new characters and new content to the already developed characters, so every update is pretty existing., and even when the game is already completed it still has potential to be even better.

There are multiple girls. Each has a different Location, Story, and Score System, so it's hard to miss anything.

4 Rate - Short Story Line, Repeat Scenes, Trigger Location Not Clear.

Suggestion: Extend the Storyline / Different Sex Scene (Random Every Time) / Dirty Talks was Fine But Nothing Gained.

Just another simple sandbox game that is very well made and got negative interests from idiots.
- Grinding isn't exactly grinding, you take like 10 -20 mins and then you get a stable incomes forever.
- Events in game doesn't have time limit bullsh*t, they can't be miss. Choices are simple, 1 our of two - make the right act and girl's path is open, that's it.
- English is ONLY a little confusing since they made by a chinese, if that's bothering you then you should really get out more.
All sex scenes are repeatables, models are fabulous but they are all chineses, sex scene are well done ....
The real rating for this game would be 4/5 at minimum.

Version Played: 1.4
Time Played: 5 hours+, saw nearly all content save one girl's whose conditions I couldn't get to trigger and probably a few smaller time/location-dependent scenes here and there
Gallery mode/Scene replay: No, but most sex scenes are repeatable once you get to the highest affection levels

It's pertinent to address the 大象 in the room here, which is that this game was not originally in English and suffers from a very poor translation. As we'll see over the course of the review, I don't think that would necessarily have improved my evaluation by much, but it's worth noting the dialog could hit differently in its native language. It's also worth nothing that while I am giving this a pretty low score, I got enough enjoyment out of it to play it as long as a I did.

So, Roommates. As the name implies, you have a trio of the titular roommates who, in the course of your interactions with them and other locations, will unlock scenes and other LIs over the limited map. The setup here is very minimal and you're off to the sandbox races in short order. In typical sandbox fashion, you will grind out money, physique and affection points and receive scenes as a reward for thresholds met....and that's about it. While each LI has a (somewhat) defined personality, there are repeating dialog options you will grind and most ladies are willing to spread in relatively short order.

Positives
+ Beautiful LIs of Asian descent. I love the look of the LIs and the creator gets max usage out of most of the Asian DAZ3D models
+ Decent in-game progress hint system (though if you miss one of the hint triggers or chose a clearly "bad end" choice for a particular character, you might get locked out of content or stuck)
+ Complete, though there are no "endings" to speak of
+ Bush!

Negatives
- Grindy
- Lack of personality and stories for the LIs. This is where I'm hesitant to blame the game's shortcomings on the translation; assuming the English here is a direct translation of the original, it seems that crude sex jokes (and a good physique) and persistence are all one needs to pull puss in the Middle Kingdom.

At the end of the day, this is about as vanilla as you could get from a Renpy sandbox game and does not reinvent the adult game wheel. It's executed at an extremely bare-bones level, and that, with the lack of meaningful characterizations and non-sex focused interactions make it a very tough sell. The huge asterisk here is how much you appreciate Asian LIs; as someone who likes them very much, I found enough here to keep me clicking, but that's pretty much the only thing the game has going for it.

It's also worth noting the developer has another game based on a classic of Chinese literature. 99% of this review could be copied verbatim for that game. (As someone familiar with the source material, it's actually a perfect novel to adapt. Ancient China was horny.)

Note to devs: Thank you for this (and your other) foray into the world of adult games. I hope you continue to make games and try a little harder with giving the LIs stories and arcs. It will go a long way towards getting the player invested.

in this game out of 0 to 100 i will say 100 point for renders model 30 point for gameplay,yeah best asian chinese renders model on games that i had ever play..but i think instead making the new project,u should focusing ur latest project with more long stories line concept to make interesting gameplay with good ending of ur project..hope u keep ur good work on ur project dude

Well, the game did get better, so I'm raising my review:

Roommate 1.5 [Completed]
New Review

Having Roommates can be fun or really annoying, depending on who you meet. Edison Chen is in luck, because while strict, his new roommates are all women with needs. And if he plays his card right, he might become what they need. Even though he has to go through heaps of grind to get it.

STORY
The story is simple - Edison Chen has a change of life and needs a new place to rest. He responds to a ad for a room and finds out the house is rented out by three women - Zhao Ling, Li Xin and Liu Qian. If he respects their rules, he is welcome to stay with them if he behaves. Soon, the behaving part dissolves as Li Xin and Liu Quan slowly corrupt Edison, opening him up for romances with other women. The story is quite light and in typical VN fashion is told through texts and choices, which make some of the characters seem a bit underwhelming.

Roommates does give you a good sense of variety - roommates, co-workers, gym friends and a few outliers are available to Edison. He’ll need to grind through the gym, massages, appeasing the women in order to land a chance at being intimate with them. Being intimate is fun, but the text in these scenes isn’t - it turns into some kind of overly descriptive sex telling while you can see what’s happening in front of you. A missed chance, because the characters could in fact interact with each other and create more story.

Later in the game, the story does pick up considerably - leading to intricate combinations, a few kinks and even a bit of cuckolding. It’s all done in moderation to give it a sense of realism, but it’s a long way from where the game starts off. Don’t go in expecting a moving story and you will be pleased at what you find.


PRESENTATION
While Asian women are criminally underrepresented in gaming, Roommates features some of the prettiest natural Chinese women. There are toned and built women like Chen Ke, but also more reserved ones like Sun Li and Zhou Ling. All of them look like actual Chinese women, complete with landing strips here and there. A few more outfits would have been great, but overall the game looks beautiful and believable.

Locations are plenty - from the house to work, the gym, restaurants, friend’s houses, the park and the hospital - you’ll encounter a lot of people in different situations and get to enjoy it if you play your cards right. While some of the locations can look a bit standard, most of the time you’re too invested into a character to notice. Several locations have multiple rooms as well, such as the house, work, gym and friend’s houses. There’s a lot to see and unpack which adds to the realism of the character’s lives.

With the newer updates, Ititnenon added more variety and poses to the game - giving each woman a more balanced feel in terms of positions. They also added a gallery mode so you can rewatch old scenes - which is a very welcome addition to the game. We can’t close presentation off without the one thing that hampers the game - user interface.

While the user interface works for most basic tasks, the descriptions/hints of the many women are abysmal to the point where you should really use a guide to play the game. Not to mention that the new gallery mode overlaps the hint text - it’s just a bad design to begin with. The bubbles up top work nicely, as does the clock and the date - so most of the frustration comes from figuring out what you need to do and how you need to do it. Check the bottom of this review for my guide.


GAMEPLAY
Roommates is a time-based sandbox game where every hour matters. That gives it long days and extreme complexity when it comes to time placement. You will have to map out a schedule in order to figure out what character is where at what time so you can find the right time to approach a character. This is a fun gameplay mechanic as no hour is exactly the same. There’s a difference between weekdays and weekend days as well - so enough variation to do a lot of different events scattered throughout the women’s lives.

In order to appeal to the women, you will have to grind points hard - meaning you will be kept in a loop to get your fitness up, ejaculate to get your lust up and speak with women repeatedly having the same conversation to score enough points to advance. For some that might be an appeal, but for me it nearly turned me off the entire game. Which would be sad, because the women are so well designed and so are the systems.

The sandbox is designed well, but does still offer error messages from time to time that need to be ironed out. It’s not perfect, but I managed to play through the game reasonably fine.

OVERALL
Do you love Asian / Chinese women? If so, you should play this. But don’t play this if you don’t like to grind or the game will wear you out. It’s not perfect by far, but it does have it’s charm and the developer has made efforts to make the game more complete for all characters. We need more realistic Asian women in AVN’s, period. This game is a grind and if you can enjoy it, you’ll have some good fun with a lot of cute, appealing characters.

Verdict: 6/10
Developer: Ititnenon

i really like it. there is grinding but not too much there is story but not too heavy and the progression goes at a nice speed. reminds me of old games like Man of the House but with shittier renderings honestly. kinda Glassix 1 lvl id say

Not the worst sandbox ever, but it can get annoying at times due to the poor English and lack of a walkthrough.

However, the models and animations are top notch. So it is totally worth the struggle just for that. It's also absolutely worth a playthrough if you are a fan of / into Asian women. Me personally, I definitely have the yellow fever, and as such, this was a delightful romp.

I guess my only other gripe would be the lack of a cohesive "ending" to the game. You basically reach the end of each girl's path and that's it. It pretty much then becomes a "free play mode" where you continue to repeat scenes.

The game is interesting, but also confusing in some areas. Like for example, the MC is supposed to talk to someone at midnight, but when midnight comes around, the person you're supposed to talk to at that time isn't there... but forward time by just one hour and you get the scene that should have happened at midnight. Also, a lot of the dialog, especially during most if not all lewd scenes, are copy and paste dialog. It's also grindy in a lot of other areas. I didn't completely hate the game as it does have interesting characters and some stories, and the renders/artstyle are quite nice, but certainly not flawless. I managed to complete the game (up to version 1.4) in about a day, so if you're really just looking for lewds without the hassle, this isn't really for you as you do have to put in some work and kinda luck into the next scene for each of the characters.

Noice, one of the rarer versions of art available. We need more of games like this. ie. asian art style in 3d and not the usual anime 2d looking ones. This also has a unique storyline sandbox style instead of just a lengthy visual novel

Good game imho!
The graphics and animations are really good, a lot of attention to details (look out for reflections in mirrors or windows)
I'm not into asian women but those are cute and sexy and their choice of clothes is great (maybe it is only my kink but I love the stockings/pantyhose/yoga pants stuff )
Yes, it is a bit grindy but like in real life: no work no fun.
Until now it has no real ending(s) but maybe in the future...I will definitely follow this game and the developer

it is a decent sandbox game with relatively straightforward game play, the trouble is there's an element of grinding that really doesn't have much of a place in an adult game...I mean what is the point after seeing the scene already, then repeating just to get to the next scene? The game is also incomplete since some of the girls of interest doesn't have lewd scenes.

Review done at 22/Feb/2024
Game ver. 1.2

The game tends to cause bugs that freeze events and I had to resort to (online save editor) to move forward.

To be honest this game is not worth playing, since the scenes are always the same bodies with camera position changes, only the haircut and facial features change, also the characters that require more time have simple scenes which is very disappointing (it really frustrated me when I unlocked everything).
I don't know if I should give it a single star because I've seen much worse things.


As I always say, my criticism is in comparison to the games that are uploaded here.

It's a strange sandbox. On the one hand, all the necessary attributes are in place, but you have to go through the game almost blindly. Graphics - neither this nor that, with a stretch I will estimate it in 3 points from 5.

Immersiveness - 1/5.

Character development -1/5.

For me, as a fan of sandboxes, the game was a big disappointment. It's unlikely that fans of pure porn, who don't pay attention to the plot and characters, will be satisfied.

Honestly, I just don't know what audience I can recommend this game to. Probably none.

My score is 2 out of 5.

The language and the grammar in this game is bad and does not make sense at certain points. The game is also too grindy and unclear at times what to do in order to progress with a character. The graphics are not the best but it does not bother me too much.

So extremely grindy, the MC is a complete douche and the gameplay is utterly soul destroying. Which is all a shame considering the fact that the potential love interests are actually attractive, even if they have no personality to speak of ("You're so funny!" is the most conversation you will get out of them. All in all, extremely lazy and by no means a complete or tested game.

I've completed 100% in 1.0 few months ago.

Story is nothing, game play is just a normal sandbox
the attractive point is good looking Asian character and nothing more.

It's so disappointed to see the update.
The new render is so bad, all characters have a horrible face.

Just leave the game ended at 1.0. No more update needed.

Renders are ok , everything else is garbage. Like wtf the whole text is almost comepletly fucked up. Can't understand shit from it. If you want anyone to understand hire someone for translatolion or something it's absolutely ridiculous.