Ren'Py - Abandoned - Sewell Plaza [v0.05.3] [Lovebound Games]

If I were rating potential, it would be a 4.

Excellent hand-drawn models, varied characters (even if they are all similar body types), an MC that isn't awful, and some nice build up. This could have been a great game if the dev had continued and reduced the grind by about 3 notches. Unfortunately it is abandoned and what content there is is locked behind a VERY long and tedious grind.

Story 2/10

The game starts out info dumping paragraphs and paragraphs of irrelevant world backstory with basic cave drawing art.

It doesn't get much better from there. It quickly devolves into boring pointless dialogue delivered by stereotypical characters, that doesn't make sense if you stop to think about any of it. The dialogue line, delivered by one of the female character's "This conversation is tired of me." sums it up nicely. You'll start clicking through, not caring about any of it.

The story is a slice of life sci-fi, that fails at both slice of life and sci-fi. Every aspect, from the world, to the dialogue, to the characters feels rushed and undercooked.

Why make it a sci-fi robot and human future, if there are no cool robots being shown, and not a single piece of futuristic technology shown in the world? And why make it slice of life, if the character's are going to be cardboard cut outs with no soul?

It's a porn game, you don't need deep characters, or a well thought out back story, I can hear you saying. Ok, I agree with you but it utterly fails at being a porn game. The story and the scenes are not erotic or sexual in any way. They're boring.

Your first mission is telling all the characters it's dinner time, and your next mission is figuring out who broke the VCR. Who cares? There's futuristic robots running around outside (supposable), why are they even using VCRs? Like every fetch quest I managed to get through before rage quitting, this devolves into talking to a bunch of characters and asking them the same questions. Every line they respond with feels rushed, and not well thought out.

Art 2/10

The screen shots may look enticing, but those are the most charming pieces. The art feels like a cross between wikihow art and Ai slop. You'll be staring at the same image for lines and lines of drawn out, fluffed up, dialogue. Like that dinner table image. Prepare to look at that endlessly. There are no variations of it, that I managed to see.

Gameplay 2/10

Boring fetch quests with no emotional stakes. He's a detective in the future, why isn't he investigating infidelity or murder?

Overall

The Dev abandoned this because it wasn't making as much as he wanted on patreon. There were three Devs, so if he's paying two other dev's a game like this is going to cost him more than it earns.

There wasn't anything that was particularly well done. It feels like the dev was rushing to create content but didn't care about any of it. It does have good English, so at least there's that.

I feel bad for writing all this. But I saw the images, and I was like, this looks alright, why did this game fail? Then I downloaded it, and I was like, ok... I understand.

fetch quests where the only rewards are more fetch quests. the plot revolves around AI and humans living in a singular state of equality but that doesn't really matter other than to explain why you and your five sister and mother still live together in a confined apartment. The very few and far between erotic scenes are brief and just plain and tame for being drawn. This is very much a wait and see game because in its current state its a dull pointless idle clicker with extra steps.

Review for v0.04.5

Sewell Plaza is a very mediocre game at the end of the day. Nothing about it is particularly awful to me, but at the same time there wasn't really any element of the game I felt was good. Comparing it to other popular art-based sandbox games, I'd want to look for something here that makes it stand out from the rest. There really isn't anything accomplishing that.

The gameplay loop is essentially repeating very mundane tasks that the girls assign you in order to progress and get a lewd event. Repeat and repeat again. Dialogue is subpar, characters actually aren't horrible but don't really stick with you either. Has fuckfest style pacing which is not my thing (example: we help one of the sisters cook and suddenly she's giving us a blowjob). It's just not a very satisfying game to play. Even the art, which is a subjective thing, I'm not that into.

For the people that might be here for the incest, it's effectively meaningless here. Yes most of the love interests so far are the family, but that sort of taboo element has had zero relevance on any of the lewd events. Feels like it was slapped in more or less. I will say I do like that we have six sisters instead of the usual two. A neat little change up from the normal, but doesn't mean much when they don't really feel like sisters in the first place.

TLDR - It lost my interest pretty quickly. Just doesn't do anything well enough to make me stick around or differentiate itself from the standard.

Yet another "visual novel with extra steps". You are playing for an errand boy in some kind of women dormitory. So you are gonna do one hundred meaningless quests in order to see some poor porn somewhere in between running around your house and to your room to skip time.
Gameplay-wise its a walking simulator. Sometimes you click on things, but most of the time you just gonna read dialogs in predisigned order. There are some stats, of course, but they are purely cosmetic, no real roleplay is intended. And extra dumb point goes for idea to let player skip time only in MC room - thats just makes everything more tedious.
Main plot is some kind of detective "quest", so porn part part is an addition, but for me main quest felt boring.
Graphics and a whole design is mediocre. Would be acceptable, if where would be anything interesting about the "game", but there is nothing.
One star for no bugs. One star is for not being another shitty DAZ3d gallery. But what's about it

A game with great potential. Outstanding art and interesting premise. Love the characters designs.
I'll love to see the detective aspect of the game expand a little bit more, encounters and activities during the day instead of just "taking naps" and using the skip button will make the gameplay feel more interesting.

The game style is amazing, and the gameplay is really nice.

The story seems good with all those characters. it seems promising for sure
Hope to see more scenes in the next update.

And still in love with the art style.

It was ok to pretty good for a first version with a lot of potential. While I'm not sure I'd recommend .01 just yet overall, it is grindy and too filler quest happy, some of which didn't have the best hints, the dev has already posted and said that's going to get reduced (bonus points for a dev that listens), so I'd recommend trying the next version to come out soon.
The artwork is great, unique, sexy, I actually do wish at least one of the girls had bigger boobs than any of them have (just one, doesn't need to be all of them), same with maybe one with a distinctly phat'er ass or DSL's, who knows who gets added later. The plot is kind of fun and the theme, light fun detective porn game, is cool. Look forward to trying it again in a release or two, assuming the grind IS cut back next time it's a good four stars for now and there's potential here for a great game. We'll see.

Personally, I love the 2D artwork. I will keep an eye on this project as it develops. Not a lot of content as it stands, but I like what I see so far. The housemates all look unique and the "landlady" is not overproportioned like most of these type of games are.

The art is okay, as is the 1 single animation. I didn't encounter any bugs.

The rest is just a grindy chore of clicking to make 0.0001% of progress. Arbitrary "Do this specific thing on this specific day at this specific time at this specific place" game.
The characters are generic stereotypes that aid in your "detective work".

This should be abandoned. There was an attempt, but the grind and repetition is just not worth it. It is certainly not fun.

EDIT for v0.02:
I vehemently stand by my previous statements. This will never be anything but a grind for scraps. You'll wear out your mouse switches with clicks before finishing this game.