Unity - School, Love & Friends [v2.12] [Walkius]

Mixed bag here;

The Bad:

Right off the bat I was annoyed that I couldn't name my own character, that's a big pet peeve of mine while playing VNs, this one especially, because the game summary had no mention of the MC having a preset name. *sigh*

I have shit internet, so it majorly bummed me out to have to wait for the game to download only to discover that fact.

Unless the MC's name is important to the plot, I don't see the benefit of not letting the player choose their own name? I don't wanna play someone else's life story.

Got hit with a bug while doing the "introduce yourself to each student" quest that locked me out of furthering the route, so I had to restart.

The Meh:

The UI is fine enough, a bit clunky and a tad outdated looking, but okay enough.

The writing is decent, despite all of the reviews mentioning bad grammar. I was honestly so relieved. But nothing notable enough for it to be considered "good", imo.

Edit: Found more grammar issues as the game went on, sadly.

The character models aren't the best, honestly. They're okay. Pretty grainy. Some girls are cute enough, but nothing mind blowing.


The Good:

The game does a good job of guiding you around the map so you'll never truly get lost.

As mentioned, the proofreader has clearly done a great job of fixing grammar issues. Noice work.

Plus points for a built in money cheat to skip the grind. Shows the dev values player enjoyment over padding game time with mini games and shit.

One thing the VN does very well is giving the player the ability to navigate the school map and explore things, talk to characters, etc. It felt like an actual sandbox-type game.

Overall:

I can't really call it "good", I guess it'd be "average", normally, but I just didn't have much fun. 2*

Version: 2.4
At the time of this review, 2.5 is out, but I have not patched it yet.
Big game, big review. Has very big positives but also very big negatives.

[Story]- Another game where the MC is a made man. Story is non-linear, and almost every character has a plot branch(or will). A lot of these characters' interactions will border believable, and you learn everything through a 1st person perspective. The MC trains a lot of chicks. Some of the plot branches are weaved together and intertwine very well.

[Gameplay]-This is the weakest part of this game. It does a really good job of making you feel like you're going to school(good or bad depending on if you want that, I didn't). The beginning of the game has you bumbling around with nothing to do and feeling lost and alone. You basically follow prompts from the questlog to know exactly what to do next, and you need it, because otherwise you will be exploring places repeatedly with nothing to show for it. It serves as a way to guide you along the story without forcing you into it, however, it is really shallow as there is nothing you can do outside of following anyway, despite being able to "free roam". There just isn't anything you can do outside of quest events.

Some events are hidden, as in you have to randomly go to a place by yourself or with a group to start that questline. You can find it eventually, but it's not fun. When all your questlines start progressing, it is really rewarding, but the rest of the time, it is very stale.

But even more annoying are the school lessons. You have to do math, literature, and biology problems, which aren't extremely hard, but I certainly do not like taking knowledge tests on a game. There are also lessons where you can get better rewards if you have the appropriate stat, but you don't even know which stat you will need ahead of time, and the lesson will not repeat, so you lose the chance to see it.

I find the way to earn cash in the game not very well done. It is possible to earn cash only by working to complete the game, but unless you work a lot instead of progressing your questlines, you will not meet some of the requirements for above mentioned one time events. There's an included way to gain massive cash, but it's basically a cheat, and that does not make for good gameplay.

The save slots are pretty horrible, as in you have no idea which save is what except which day and hour it is on. I pretty much saved randomly to slots and can not remember what I need to load from if I needed to go back.

[Scenes]- The models are generally AMAZING. However, the chicks are aliens in disguise, and sometimes they will reveal to you their freaky aliens eyes or rigid hair made of plastic. The scenes can be excellent, but dev likes to not show their head in 40% of the scenes because they have alien eyes I guess. I do not like banging headless chicks, but the other 60% are great.

There is a scene replay feature in the main menu, which is not too difficult to get to. However, it does not have all available scenes. A lot of the activity scenes are omitted, and you can only review questline scenes.

[Bugs]- Hailey was bugged at the park, and I had to search the thread to find the hotfix for it. After doing so, the game would lose music for portions of the questlines until I got close to the end.

If you can overlook the simple and poorly written sentence structure then this is a really great game. There are even times when the characters say the exact opposite of what they mean due to the poorly written text.

It desperately needs a proof read.

With that said, the game is otherwise fantastic if you find young high school girls attractive. It is refreshing to have such young and sexy girls in a game. They actually look like real people.

I prefer sandbox to visual novel, and "School, Love & Friends" nails the sandbox format with a slow building, realistic, build up to actual sex encounters.

Yes, you have to actually play the game (what is commonly referred to as grind), and that is the whole point of sandbox. Using scene progression, time, and player agency the game designer can create sexual tension and sexual build up that increases the payoff when the sex scenes are finally earned. It is well done here, and it works really well with the high school setting.

I also like the fact that there is no perfect ending. A lot of scenes have all sorts of different options and endings. I do save a lot so I can go back and try them all out. I don't find this distracting as the other options are generally interesting. You can replay these scenes in game, or once you have unlocked the scenes you can replay them from the scene selector.

There is no animation tag in the description, but there are actual animations in the game. They aren't technically that amazing, but they work perfectly.

The characters are well constructed both visually and with regards to their behavior. There are a variety of different character types. This is also true of the male characters that the main character interacts with.

Overall, I think this is one of the better sandbox games I have played. The execution and pacing are spot on.

Unity works well for me as a game engine. I have no issues with it. I never encountered any real bugs or problems.

It would be even better with some proof reading. Much of the dialog needs to be re-written, but nevertheless I am giving this 5 stars as it really delivers a high quality, titillating, adult game set in a high school environment with models/characters that are appropriate for that high school setting.

Two enthusiastic thumbs up.

The new style of this game is great Walkius made a lot of things better. I always liked his initial game design since it fit well with the gameplay and story. Now he made it a bit better and playing the story while unlocking all the stuff makes a lot of fun. I think this is how a sandbox game is supposed to be. Nice game flow and the story is interesting.

This Review is more based on 1.1 than 2.4 but that's in light of the game 2.4 will eventually become hopefully.
Yes this does take a very long time to play and may be accused of being a grind. However there is a lot to do and the game does keep fresh for a long time. Now I'm in January & there's new (in game) content but even in December things were happening and I'm discovering things I missed.

PROs
Lots of girls.
If you like harem games this is for you, not only individually but groups of girls. There's also variety and an absence of huge breasts which is a plus for me. Too many games seem to have characters who are double F at least. In fact often that's the norm.
Lots of Events
You'd expect this given the nature of the game but there are so many options that even given limited paths within those options there is much to explore. Hallowe'en is a joy but there definitely could have been more. Xmas was OK although choices don't seem to matter nor seem to have any consequences (again 1.1 was abandoned) and the New Year Party was a let down.
Navigation
This has improved in 2.4 but honestly wasn't an issue for me in 1.1. I found it pretty easy. Also on 2.4 there's an indication of who has something to say to the MC which alleviates some of the grind, although it should not be hard to work out who the MC should be talking to in order to move events along.
Dialogue
It's not epic and there are some shortcomings but at least it is usually fairly short and to the point. Often with the Visual Novels the speech goes on for ages while actually not conveying too much story. Fair enough if you like that thing but you want be wasting any time on that here.
CONS
A bit buggy
Noticed this on 1.1 and 2.4. There seem to be problems with Ako on both. In 1.1 the evening event goes to a white screen & hangs the game. In 2.4 Ako is slow at loading and if I'm impatient I get crashes. However 1.1 is abandoned (sadly) & 2.4 isn't complete so maybe that could be resolved. Also on 1.1 it hangs with the eye icon if there is nothing to do in the gym.
Lessons
Actually I like the lessons because they often serve to start quests but I wish after the written lessons there was at least more random content that could be cycled. I think the developer could have spread the important lessons out a bit over the term so there was a bit more of a surprise.
Consequences
I suppose being a harem game it is not surprising that it does not want to close off paths - except for the cheerleader choice - but perhaps this causes a lack of jeopardy and replayability. However with the vastness of the content I guess replayability isn't the first priority and of course there are often a few paths to play within events.

OVERALL
This is game for which school and school life is the main setting, just an 18 year old mainly chasing after 18 year old girls and a few 20+s as well. The MC doesn't have many cares of baggage and just wants a good time. There's a lot of content and so much to do but skipping is easy as well. Looking forward to how 2.4 develops. I gave it 5 stars because I like it but it is obviously not on the level of the very best games so probably really a 4.5.

A standard sandbox game requires time to complete the story. I guess the author may be afraid that the content developed by unity will be too large and the computer with average performance will be stuck, so the quality of the character model is reduced. This is indeed a shortcoming of unity games. , But sure there are several stuck scene bugs. NTR is limited to a few screens and can be excluded, which is an advantage. However, waiting for the event repeatedly is really exhausting for the player. There is neither a skip button nor a repeating event. Can't you skip those class scenes after you have gone through it? According to the current length of the story, no less than 190 days, non-rollback and multiple save records, it is really unacceptable. Fortunately, there are more sex scenes, otherwise no one wants to stick to this game, because just watching the repeated scenes is desperate.

Version: v2.4

Review:
School setting is one of my favorite themes and this game comes close to having a good setting, but that unfortunately everything ends up getting boring. I like sandbox but this one was not very pleasant to enjoy. Of course the game has a mix of BB and other sandbox games, but honestly, I found the interactions very boring.

PROS:
- Incest between aunt and cousins
- Sandbox with a school setting and home
- Many characters to interact

CONS:
- MC uses your tongue more to fuck a girl than your dick
- Very weak character interactions
- Bad story without much perversity
- Interactions that go nowhere
- Poor graphics and modeling
- Poor sexual content

History:
Could be better, like I said, you don't feel any perversity from the MC. He's living with his aunt and her two cousins, but the worst thing is that the MC sleeps with his younger cousin, which resembles BB. I don't think that's bad, but there are things in the game that could be better, as the story and plot is quite uninteresting.
Gameplay:
Sandbox with interactions with characters without a relationship building but events. Talk to the character only if the event is triggered and with that continue doing tasks with those characters. It's not so bad, but, what exactly is the computer for? half of the items will undoubtedly not be used and improve communication? the attribution point system is misused, you increase the points of communication, spying, massage, yoga, but it won't get you anywhere, then you just assign up to 5 points and you're done. Honestly, the gameplay isn't that bad but I found it tedius to play.
Graphics & Sexual Content:
The graphics aren't the best, it's not a bad thing to look at, as are the model renderings. We can say, acceptable, it will depend on your taste. The sexual content although there are many, at one point it was just MC cunniling pussy. MC takes the girl to a corner, there he goes cunniling the girl's pussy, no making the girl suck your cock or fuck her pussy or her ass. What about perversity? why peeping girls in the bathroom or sleeping? waste of time.

Why I did gave 1 star?
Very simple, the game was released in 2017 and is still in this state. So it's been 4 years and its development stopped in time. You won't find anything interesting or some point of interest in the game. The tag says "dating sim'' and "blackmail", honestly, I thought this quite weak because it's a dating sim, it's true, but it's only on the first date with Emily that you can notice it, otherwise everything turns out to be poor to see. About blackmail, it's the same thing, it's something so weak and it's actually not the MC who is blackmailing. I didn't say that the game has several scenes, you can look in the images folder and you can confirm this yourself, but during the game, it's remarkable that you will at some point get bored and then close the game like I did, because for me the game has weak content and so it's not worth my wasted time. There are very few interactions, MC is just a boy who is living his world like everyone else, there is no perversity, no sexual harassment, where you can grope some girl, there's no sleepsex, so what's the point of spying on your cousin or aunt taking a shower or sleeping? I know there are people who don't like this kind of content, stronger and heavier content, but why put these functions in the peeping like BB game? Anyway, if you don't like sandbox games, I don't recommend playing. But if you like, there are other better games.

I can only say about this that it is an average game. It doesnt have anything that you havent seen already in 3000 games.

Execution is, well, just there, nothing impressive. There is little or no character development, cause its a sandbox and events are isolated from the plot and plot is nothing more than chains of events that evolve, but in the parts that are common to all the characters, the events are not reflected.

The formulas to stall progress are still cringy, like atempting penetration, the girls gets scared or insecure (this happens 2 or 3 times that i now), but the selconscious thing happens with almost every girl, and the payoff is not enough, cause scenes are not that good.
When you are at the photostudio with Hailey, Dan, who doesnt know about her and photography, enters the studio to interrupt with some pretext that doesnt add up.

Or when the mother interrupts something at a time she is never home. I hate this stupid menchanisms.

Another stupid ting is that talking to Bill is a requriement maany times to advance school route, which for instance blocks Alice route. So, in order for you to advance with Alice you need validation from Bill first. How stupid is that? Those evens most of the time ar not even related to her. Seeking from advice from a guy that the most he does is peeping? C'mon!

Overall its a gallery unlocker with the usual mechanisms, since the plot doesnt give any cohesion, it is how it feels like.

I thought that this game shared some similarities with another one, when i saw Lisa and Olivia i couldnt help smiling, and when i had to go throught the same sequence to reach sex with them, well, that did it for me. Im done

The actual rating is 4.5

The remade version is vastly improved from the previous version (rating 3 at best) which was a grind-fest. It's so good to have a game without ridiculous dairy cow boobs and horse sized cocks . It's like a breath of fresh air.

The game is not without some faults however.
The choice of Unity and no roll back is odd but not a deal breaker
There is still a bit of grind especially towards the end of the current version when little is happening except at night yet you have to go through all the steps of going to school only to complete that task and be told to come back same time tomorrow

The hint system is vastly improved and the complexity of navigation is significantly simplified

The models are cute and it's refreshing to have a simple story lacking mind control or superpowers for once.

I had actually put this game on hold for updates after v1.9 as it was just too grindy. I'm glad I gave it another go.
I look forward to future updates

I like the Invitation menu, you feel like you have a lot of freedom in this game, the girls are beautiful, and overall the progression steps are well made.

The Quest menu is well made as well, you can`t really find something to complain about the game, it is pretty much one of the best out there.

I find this game incredibly arousing for some reason, but I've had an insane amount of bugs (Mac version) even with the last update (2.2). I can't save on any version, the older versions just simply stop advancing after certain events (tragic lol) and on the new version I can't sleep, meaning I can only get through about a day before it all dies on me. Would love to play this from the beginning but can't in the current state.

Hello/Bonjour
please count this as a review, as i still dont know where to post one (when a moderator will be bored with, maybe he will show me)
so first good news, SLF is my best absolute favorite game, and i am far to have finished it i guess
i am still happy to have spend/wasted so much time in IRL on it, gametime 90 DAYS, irl i can't count
i play slf 2.2? with i patch, i guess or maybe none
i love my MC, my sweet girlfriend Emily, yes i fall in love with her at first sight, thank you, btw i had 8/10 on our first date, has anybody done better?
ok, to make it quick i love everything especialy the graphics, girls, mc, map, hints, anal (wait sorry, there's not, as many i would have wished there was)
ok back to say i love everything
my only complain is, i still dont know which game we are commenting here, is it SLF 2.2, SLCousins, another one? i am lost
and which game should i play?
keep doing what you like (i will put a bill/money for your future game)
so tell me witch game are we talking about? (is it about time to create a different threat, is it already done, am i drunk, are you here)
ok, i will play SLF 2.2 again, i will play your next game, just keep doing what you like
bisous

Version Reviewed: 2.2

I last played the game back in the version 1.10 days, and have just finished the 2.2 version. In that time, the game went through a full reboot, starting over from the start. The dev made quite a few quality of life changes to the game, but also changed the story and some characters.

For anyone who has NOT played the old version, you would likely enjoy this game if you like straight forward high school harem romps. The characters are basic, and the graphics are a little dated not, but for the most part it's fun and inoffensive. If you like this kind of game you'll have fun with it. (Don't stress the people complaining about NTR, it's pretty much non-existent and avoidable.)

For people who has played the old version, the comparison is inevitable. So let's start off with the good points, a lot of the grind has been minimized, and navigating the school is much easier now. The bad points though is the loss of progression, as this is a full remake your old saves don't work, and you must start from scratch. The story has changed in small ways but the overall premise and most characters are the same, so if you've recently played v1 you might not enjoy having to go through old ground again.

Nice game! I hope the continuation this game is wonderful !!
When will there be another update? The family route I am bored with having dinner with the family, because Maria does not have a dialogue available .

This game is one of the best in terms of the content you get. It takes a lot of time to get through the whole game, while not having to wait too long to get till the first sexy scenes.

In my opinion it would be GOAT tier if the renders were better. The renders are okay, but nothing speical. If they were kinda like Echoes of Lust renders it would probably be my favorite game on this website.

Besides that, maybe a bit more content on the classes instead of just some easy tests and such.

I do LOVE the fact that it's highschool based and that there is an emphasis on the different groups in school, trying to befriend all of them. Might be cool if there was some sort of dynamic that if you befriend one group the other group dislikes you more.

But as long as you keep adding good content to this game this game will stay great

This story/game started out ok, but it has since been gutted of any imagination.
It's almost a copy of Big Brother, but there are differences.

Graphics 4/10 could certainly be better
Animations 3/10 pretty cheap on any interesting animations, rather amateur.
Story 3/10 Not original or imaginative
Writing 3/10 Spelling errors and lack of anything interesting.

Very limited Save space and not delete option.
Extremely grindy flow of the game.

This same plot and story line has been done over and over in other games it's nothing original.

The latest build has been gutted of a number of the actions that added a little bit of interest, shameful.

What may have proven interesting when it began, is now just plain boring and a waste of time.

Review of V2.0 + Tips if Walkius wants to on ntr.

(English is not my native language)


I really liked the new story, although some characters are gone, I didn't miss it, Alice and Emily carry the story, the things that happen at school are great, I want more. I also like the classes and the consequences.

Renders:

The animations had a blue screen, so I missed a lot of the scene and only managed to see the static images. I am not fond of small breasts with small halves and neither shaved, but the beauty of the characters makes me tolerate this. I am fond of large halos and pubic hair (if you want to put it in other characters).

Suggestions:

I really like ntr and sharing, I play a lot of these games and I know what to do and what not to do, so I would like to give you some suggestions if you like to read reviews and suggestions.

I really liked the smooth ntr you put in the game (Alice on the beach / Emily and MC's friend at the party / Emily and the teacher.

I would like you to continue with the tease, only more and more blatantly, to play with people's imaginations without something actually happening (but something should happen in future updates).

Sharing: I suggest you wait until something happens in the ntr, if you launch a couple swap now, it will ruin all the ntr climate you did and it will turn into sex without a history (it sucks for those who appreciate ntr).

Focus on Alice and Emily, the others are not as important in the game as they are.

Review of v2.0


Plot:

I´ve played this game for a long time now. I liked the game as it was before, but there were some things that needed to be changed, and I think this rework did really well.

Now it´s not like before, where everyone liked MC (popular boys, cheerleaders, nerds…) now we have to choose a side, and most of the popular boys, cheerleaders, and the added jocks hate us at the beginning of the game.

I really liked how events advance slower and deeps more on how the relationships and potential problems are developing.



Renders and animations:

I think at least some renders had their quality upgraded but the very best thing is that the thing that most annoyed me before was that some events (mainly sex ones) were too short some of just 2 or 3 renders but now we have these fixed and even animations too!

I was really impressed that dev included blood effect on virgin characters and visible cum on the body that I think is new too.


Characters:

Some characters changed a lot
There´s a lot of characters that didn´t have any content right now or not even appear compared to the last version, but I really expect they will come back soon.

I felt more close to the characters and their feelings, thoughts... in this new version.


Gameplay:

I liked the calendar method. It gave a reason for a lot of events like Halloween, Christmas, new year´s eve, school semesters… that I don´t know if will take place in the new version. Because now it´s only about how advanced we are on a route and (only sometimes) which day of the week is so in this way Christmas could take place at day 40 or 56 or 108. I don´t know how the dev will make this work.

Something weird that was not changed is that game doesn´t remember what happened on other routes or sometimes in the same route.
Dev says he wanted the story to be more fluid and avoid grinding, but the new system doesn´t work for school. Since the five exams, we had along the first period now take place in two or three weeks (not three months as before), we have to go to school and attend classes without any reason because we finished the exams and we only have to spend some days to find a character to advance on the different routes (because dev says now we have free access to everyone every day, but characters like Lily and Twins are only available to talk two days (one if we need to speak in a certain place). Maybe if the dev put back the phone, we can text meet at the place the day we need.

Conclusion:

I really liked the game before and now it´s even better. Dev fixed the most annoying things and added a lot of cool stuff.
Definitely looking for the next update and watch how everything adapts to the newly made characters. I know it may be for summer or even later but at least if the dev keeps this way it can be worth it.

PD: I saw some people

A really good game.
I follow the dev since almost the beginning and I must say that this game is really better than the beginning.
The characters are really cute, realistic and well written. The gameplay is nice, but a little too much grinding (which the dev promises to reduce in the next update).
I look forward to see the future update.

The game is good if you have stress and want to accomplish something because you have to work your ass off to get the woman

The ntr is amazing here it gives you vibe also the relation between the twins are thrilling sharing Alice was amazing

there are many girls you need to conquer that's amazing

the cons are you cant rollback, you cant save and you cant skip it takes a lot of playtime to accomplish something its a bit grinding but its kinky and exciting I like it hope the author decide to continue this amazinh story