Review as of Episode 9 Chapter 2
How Long To Beat: 10+ hours
A chapter takes anywhere from 30-90 minutes, depending on choices, reading speed, and how long you enjoy the erotic scenes.
This is one of the most sleek and smooth Ren'Py games on the site. It is incredibly easy to start up and play and get to the next lewd scene with reasonable pacing.
The story, for those who care, is a standard mind-control plot, although it doesn't lean heavily on that plot device. The main character lives with his mother and sister. His father has passed away under mysterious circumstances. The family is now financially unstable. An old acquaintance of your father, the beautiful Emma, offers you a lucrative job continuing your father's last project through experimental procedures. The MC has to take pills and lay down in a machine, which accesses his father's memory through some Assassin's Creed-esque technology. The pills have a side-effect where people who reach an emotionally volatile moment (ie, an argument, an attack, getting incredibly annoyed) become susceptable to mind-altering influence through the pheromones of the user. There's several plot-threads that interweave: the story of reclaiming memories through the experiment (Plot 1); the MC's exploits with family and friends under the influence of the mind-altering pills, which is the majority of the game (Plot 2); and a conspiracy involving a crime syndicate (Plot 3).
I don't actually care about plots 1 and 3.
Plot 1 is covered infrequently, despite having the most emphasis in the early game. It's a nice framework for the larger story. I think Emma is very sexy. Unfortunately, the intrigue loses momentum once you're past the earlier chapters. The issue isn't in the writing or dialogue, but more in the plotting and pacing of ideas. I still don't really know anything about the MC's father's research and there are no greater implications or stakes for it to be revealed. Thankfully these scenes are short and avoid redundancies. I'm not convinced that the author(s) have this entire plot sketched out, and that made me less engaged with this part of the story.
However, Plot 2 is incredibly satisfying so far. The MC's mom and sister are both attractive and defined. The taboo themes one expects from an incest game are present and attended. There's reluctance, lust, and a push-and-pull movement with the character's dynamics. It's not a simple example of "you're mind controlled once and now we're forever intwined". There's a sense of escalation against the character's reservations, which creates a best of both worlds scenario: there are stakes between the characters where they maintain a sense of gravity about sexual dynamics between them, but it also avoids being a slow-burn without the lewd scenes we're working towards.
There are branching paths, which can lead to missing out on a lot of content.
At the begining of the game, you have to choose between showing an interest to Megan, the MC's mom, or Sarah , the MC's sister. While you will get scenes with both, this will determine how many scenes and how the plot progresses in certain ways. There is a handy
walkthrough with flow-charts that I used to have a better idea of my decisions. However, some choices still remained unclear, which will come up shortly.
For this playthrough, I chose to concentrate on Megan (the mom), because she intrigued me initially. (I expected Sarah to be more of a tsundere, which actually wasn't the case.) So for most of my choices between the two, I went with Megan. I also chose to corrupt Megan, I colluded with her about seducing Sarah into a threesome, I went solo-route on Faith, I started a relationship with Emma, and I chose to help Angelina, MC's cousin, but not tell her about the pills, and I fucked the MC's aunt, Ann.
The corruption route in this is great. Megan becomes incredibly horny and sex-positive. There's no guilt, she's fully consenting, and she's adventurous. You get to have a lot of lewd scenes with her, and there's no underlying negativity to the choice. It's more like you remove her inhibitions instead of breaking her mind. The scenes with her slowly convincing Sarah to make the situation into a three-way relationship is sexy and fun.
My main regret with my play-through is how I approached Faith, who is the mother of Jake, the MC's "friend" (friend is in quotes because Jake sucks as a person). Faith's route goes "Sharing" or "Don't Share". Now, when the game presents the idea of "Sharing" with Jake, I assumed that meant more than sharing his mother. I was totally into the idea of DP'ing Faith, but I didn't want Jake hooking up with Megan and/or Sarah. So I went Solo on that, which is the one decision I regret. Faith is pretty one-dimensional, making her the least dynamic and interesting character in the game. She is attractive and the lewd scenes with her look very nice, but there's not a lot of substance when you're just hooking up with her alone.
(And hey, any Dev's that are reading this: if you design a game with multiple routes with exclusive content, once someone completes your game on a playthrough, just automatically unlock all scenes in the gallery. I understand you designed your games to make choices matter and for replayability, but if your writing is actually good, the player will want to replay the game with different choices
for the writing. I played your game once, I could possibly have paid for it; if anything, letting me see the lewd scenes I missed would encourage me to play through the game to see their context better. "Oh you can just replay it and skip everything until you get to the choices." Do you think that actually sounds like a fun, productive use of your player-base's time? It's not.)
The character designs are sexy and varied. Some body builds are athletic and tight, some are curvier; some tits are perky, some tits are busty; none of them are ridiculously exaggerated (although Megan comes close with her giant tits). There are nice physics in the animations that allow the tits to move naturally. The costuming is great, especially the lingerie. The scenes are well-framed and everything looks polished. They did great work.
The lewd scenes are top-tier in presentation and animation. Every lewd scene is fully animated with several adjustable speeds. Each scene is varied and lengthy but never rote, redundant or boring. For example, there is a scene, soon after corrupting Megan, where she and the MC's stay up all night fucking in the backyard. There are dozens of position changes. The scene just kept going and going. This isn't a complaint. It was awesome and sexy as hell. I'm so used to Ren'Py games that make you re-watch a sex scene multiple times to unlock a new one or to progress gameplay. While the player is going to fuck these characters multiple times, there's always a costume change, a new position, or a change in environment or context to keep things fresh.
The interface, the menus, and the gallery are all well-designed.
Overall, this game deserves it's reputation as one of the best on the sites, even if it currently sits unfinished. I'm wary of the final destination. We're already at a 10+ hour game and none of the plots seem anywhere close to wrapping up. I don't see the pace being maintained for another 9 chapters, either. There's still room for new relationship dynamics, which makes me optimistic for the finished product, but we will have to wait and see.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
No idea what the title is referring to at any point. Never once did the characters shut up
or dance, let alone do them in conjuction. There's mutliple scenes where the characters play a card game that says Shut Up And Dance, but it's like a lewd truth-or-dare game that's impertinent to the plot, and never once did it reequire them to shut up or dance. I don't know if this card game is canonically called Shut Up and Dance, or if it's just labeled as an out-of-context meta-reference to the game we're currently playing, like how mid-generation Sonic games have SEGA logos everywhere.
