VN - Ren'Py - Ruin Me [v0.61.1] [Phanes]

5/10

+ Excellent writing

- Barely any art, and the low amount of art that does exist is mediocre. There is honestly so little art that this should arguably be tagged as a text based game because like 90% of what's going on in scenes is left up to your imagination. Very disappointing; if this game gets major art reworks/updates I could see it becoming a 9/10

The words "good writing" get thrown around f95zone way too often, when usually the "good writing" is some generic fantasy crap, or a real porn game where the translation from original russian to english is not completely broken. This game genuinely has good writing.
Good characters, creativity, interesting mysteries and a wide variety of scenes and variations that set up a real creepy mood. Narratively, it's a bit more reminiscent of Fallen London than Lovecraft, with the random short scenes of creepy and mysterious events, as well as the nightmares. Which is a good thing.
There are some cons to this game, as many have mentioned I am not partial to the artstyle and the h scenes need some illustration as well. I think some of the h encounters could be a bit "kinkier" with their description, even though they are well written and have good variety. Not all characters feel as well developed, but that may just amount to personal preference.
To summarize:
Pros:
- Story (one of the best in the whole site)
- Characters
- H scene variety
-H scenes description
Cons:
- Yes, the artstyle
- Almost no scene cgs

Overall, I'd say this is a 4.5 or maybe a 4.0. I'm just rounding it up to 5 because I think the writing stands out so much from the mediocre crap that we usually get in adult games that it deserves to compensate for the flaws.

I will say the most obvious, and worst problem first, the art is terrible.

The story and dialogues are also rather meh, but the concept is okay.

The sex scenes not really good.

The gameplay very simple and nothing more.

The game also has a lot of pronouns options, and characters and stuff like that, I like the though behind all that but I don´t think it is implamented good, but I can still appreciate it, I also like that you can chose if your "slave" is male or female, even if it doesn´t change that much.


Wouldn´t recommend it, but I like the thoughts and intentions behind the game.

Art style is awful but the writing is good. The story is interesting and reads like a HP Lovecraft inspired erotic horror novel. There are times when its hard to figure out what to do next but some simple exploration will fix it. Overall the sex scenes escalate to the perverse quickly and if you dont like trans stuff or monster sex you wont like this game.

interesting premise but the game annoys me in its design choices. i dont even mind the art i just hate the wierdass pronoun bullshit, which might not have been as bad if it was to explain futa characters but those aint a thing as far as i saw, and the game is giving me serious vibes of "corrupt this character so every hobo in a 3 mile radius can use them as a toilet" which killed any interest in overlooking the first problem.

id rate it higher if the story telling atleast was top notch but its lacking in logic.

all in all not the worst game i have seen but definately not for me.

Really good writing and masterfully constructed themes. Good worldbuilding too. The only complaint I can voice is the lack of illustration and sound to help build immersion, but I really like sound. Despite that, the writing and individual stories that build up the greater plot are so good that I don't really care; it would just be icing on the cake. Excellent work.

Ruin Me [v0.51.1]

Pros:
nothing

Cons:

Art style: The art style is truly horrendous and no one looks slightly attractive in this game, and looks kinda disgusting.
It´s probably the worst drawings i´ve seen in a game.

Story/writing:
It tries to be an artsy lovecraft novel, but feels uninteresting and not immersive at all.
The constant gender and woke political talk feels really obnoxious, mildly racist, and just makes you cringe and roll your eyes all the time.
The dialogues are bland and uninteresting.
Non of the characters are interesting, and it´s really hard to give a shit about them.
The game feels more like a grindy sandbox game that punishes you by not unlocking new stuff like quests if you are not at the right place at the right time.

Sex Scenes:
If you looked at the tags and think this could be a good porn game, then you are at the wrong place. It´s just incredibly boring and uncreative.

Conclusion:
I really can´t tell you anything positive about this game.

I came for the excellent trainer/corruption sim, got absolutely hooked on the delightful prose and mystery. This stands out as as a great h-game and as a great visual novel experience more generally. It's top-notch at handling player sex and gender preferences, and includes lots of great queer content. I find myself wanting to recommend this to friends with even the most passing of interests in smut.

The story is pretty mediocre. It plays a very large part in the game, being mandatory for progressing on training your girl (raise two stats, then go investigate mysteries), but it was never engaging enough for the amount of text you have to sit through. It's meant to be vague and mysterious, meaning to establish atmosphere, but with how little you're involved it just feels more like you're a disembodied observer than a character. I mean, you only speak in short bursts through dialogue choices, and those are pretty few. Which could be done with better characters but most conversations here just end up being an old guy rambling about his past, and then options for you to leave or ask for more. I don't want to explore the mysteries of this town because of how often this happens.
The old-timey english theme is definitely original, I enjoyed it, but I don't feel it's enough to save from the above issues.
The art is, well you can see it in the game's previews. It's not exactly a masterpiece visually, but you can turn off the character's sprites in the settings at least. I vaguely recall a mention to it not being finished, so maybe the developer will commission a professional in the future.

Edit: Forgot to mention the amount of gender identity shit this game has, there's a lot of it. Certainly wasn't my cup of tea, perhaps the opposite of it, but maybe that's a plus for you. Obese Indian "gender-nonconforming person" with a vagina incoming.

This Is my first review.

So first I am talking about pros

+Good transitions.

+Story is good

+trainer,this is my personal opinion but I really like these kind of games.

+BDSM is amazing.

Cons-

-not satisfying graphics.

-Not feels like a VN


That's my personal opinion. I gave it 5 star because of dev efforts and BDSM part also. this game need some work in terms of its quality but beside it everything is great.

The art is terrible, the plot is Lovecraftian if written by someone who never read anything by HP Lovecraft, the general gameplay is very grindy and lackluster, and the character interactions sway between bland and uninteresting to mildly upsetting.

The idea is one that sounds nifty, but the overall execution falls flat in all regards.

I attempted to play it on two separate occasions, but both left me unimpressed and wanting to play something else.

If you're a fan of at least 2 out of Umineko no Naku Kori ni, Lovecraft, or "trainer" porn games, you will love this. Some truly high quality writing from a high quality mind shines through a couple of foibles.

Why am I mentioning Umineko? Because the art is about on par with the original Umineko VN, both the characters and the blurred real-life photo backgrounds. I found it overwhelmingly charming because it reminded me of Umineko. Your mileage is highly likely to vary. If getting visually turned on is a must, you won't fully enjoy it.

However, it is exceptionally well written, totally compensating for the rudimentary non-sexy art. Seriously, you are not going to find better writing in a porn game. It goes for a modern day, less impenetrable version of the Lovecraft style, which is to say, still rather baroque and high-falutin'. Porn writing attempting to do that ought to be an utter cringefest, but they totally pull it off.

Also needs to be mentioned: there are some pockets of heavy-duty wokeness. Asian harbormaster, Indian maid, black bookstore owner, non-binary pharmacist, all in an early 1900s tiny isolated New England coastal village. At least one character so far ranting unprompted about "white colonizers" or whatever. A little annoying, but not pervasive, so you should be able to just ignore it.

There's too much focus on horror here. You spend too much time pushing a railroaded story and then the mc suffers for it with no real choices. If you were a big fan of lis with the same two endings no matter what you'll love this game.

TL DR: Intriguing, but flawed.

Even though not entirely novel, the concept of mixing cthulhu and adult entertainment is pretty rare, making the game immediately stand out a bit.
A few things, RuinMe does exceptionally well.

For example, I really liked the writing in general - having never read Lovecraft myself, I still could recognize the theme very well.
It's "in character", often using "vintage" terminologies, depicting social classes, the sexes or different ethnics in ways that are now a thing of the past. The mixing and/or use of otherworldly presences for adult entertainment is generally very well done and "believable".
Generally a, maybe THE, strong suit of the game.

The trainer aspect of the game (considering the title, it shouldn't be much of a spoiler to reveal it's mostly centered around bdsm) also is very well done, in my opinion. Not always perfect, but close enough, the escalation of "challenges" is reasonable and most of the individual scenarios are ... inspiring, provided you are open to the respective kink even a little bit.
There are usually choices to make the scenario play out less or more harsh, depending on your preferences.
Maybe the heroine is a little bit too forthcoming, but again, given the title, that should probably not be a surprise.
Another strong suit of the game.

Unfortunately, I think that's about it for the net positives.
So-so are the backgrounds, which are filtered photos which fit the scenes quite well most of the time, but (with a few exceptions) don't do a good job of supporting / enhancing the storytelling.
Also the grind, which is there, but extremely mild. Basically, there's only a single option you might want to use a couple of times, and even that can be avoided if you just skip days, as the game isn't really on a timer.

Which brings us to the negatives.
Most prominently, that's the ms paint level character portraits. As bad as they are, 90% of the time, the game choses to not depict things at all. The writing manages to get the point across, like I explained above, but is it still a "visual" novel if almost nothing is actually depicted? I was definitely disappointed.
Next is the open world. It's quite well realized, I don't think I ran into a single coding error and sometimes the game makes "clever" use of it, but in the bottom line, I really have to question it's purpose.
Sometimes you will have several quests at once which you can choose to pursue, but either they are not really side quests at all but connected to the main plot or they are totally nonconsequential, serving just as a vessel to depict a certain idea/scenario the author had in mind. There's not nearly enough of those to make "navigating" the world interesting or even intriguing, it's usually crystal clear where you have to go next in a quest, and once you "cleared" a location it usually becomes pointless to ever visit it again. Thus, in the bottom line, the purpose of the open world is to annoy the player by having him perform a series of pointless clicks.
Finally, I have to mention the characters. Some have are at least a little bit defined, but not a single one feels fleshed out, not even the player character of female protagonist. Like the graphics, the characters also have a ms paint level quality to them, if you catch my drift.

To sum things up, I didn't regret my time with the game, but in order to be a good game, it needs massive improvements, imo. More things depicted - even if it's in ms paint, preferably the graphics should be a tad better, though.
There should be meaningful choices. Do I play as a male or a female? How do I deal / get along with the characters in the world? Was I a harsh master or mistress or was I benevolent in my training? Did I fight the incursion or did I succumbt to it willingly? Decisions such as these should offer the game replayability, and they currently do not.
There should be more to the world in general (more events, more quests) and, combined to the effects of choices mentioned before, this would give the open world a purpose and raise the game to a whole other level.

As it stands, though, the game's a novelty. Worth playing especially for the in-character writing if you care at all about Lovecraft-style worldbuilding, but pretty forgettable otherwise. Also, not really "fappable", which might have relevance on this site.

Loving this one so far. Great setting with a really original use of the Cthulhu Mythos. One thing I love in particular in about this game is that Theresa in an eager participant in and instigator of her corruption, rather than a victim, There are too few games like that here. And the writing and plotting is top notch, which more than makresw up for the somewhat basic art style. It sits on the line between porn with plot and plot with porn.

I much prefer a game with top notch writing to one with gorgeous art and a plot so stupid it makes to groan.

Honestly, I love this one. Its mostly text based with some images but the writing is pretty off the walls and really embodies the bizarre and fantastical nature of the source material. Its not going to be for everyone but if you're into creepy, dark, and twisted things definitely check it out. Its pretty unique in a world where every other game is incest and NTR.

Probably one of the most well-written games on this site. The stress of consent, warnings for content, and agency given to the player are all very much appreciated and rare in a BDSM game. Excited to see more.

This game is quite debatable as for its quality. I do know quite well the lovecraft universe and this game is a great adaptation. As an adult game, it lacks of nice drawings. The average graphic is very low in this game and the fetish are quite brutal.

3 Stars is quite an honest review .

Probably the best writing in a game on this site - both literate and steaming hot. And the range of kinks and ability to navigate through to the ones you're into is top notch. This would be a great cosmic horror game without the kinky sex, and a great kinky sex game without the cosmic horror. The combination is perfect.
And don't worry about the art in the banner here. It grows on you, and it works fie in context.

Dropped about 4 hours into the game.

+ Easy to read, aesthetically pleasing prose and dialogue.
- Shallow characters that are written like a video game rather than a novel, after 4 hours did not feel like I know any of these characters.
- Not a proper VN, has time-wasting commutes and boring 'must be at the right place at the right time' to trigger events style navigation. Go there at the wrong time? Well you just wasted the last 20 seconds, congrats! And stats grind.
- Amateur art that's serviceable but barely.
+ By the low standards of video games the story and plot development is good.
+ Development of the main female is engaging and better than other trainers.
- Low quality sidequests that seems to serve mostly as checkboxes for specific fetishes. Storytelling and sex are low quality as said.

Personal gripes that didn't affect my score:
- Mildly racist depictions of minorities
- Oversaturation of "not so secret horror" in VNs since that one DDLC that became popular that's just boring at this point.