Ren'Py - Straitened Times [v0.52.2] [HRelease]

I really like this game. It has a lot of possibilities to interact with a lot of hot ladys. Some nice renders and it feels quite open. Way more fun than this standard VNs. Also nice footjobs. I like the dynamic wih mom and his sister. The breaking locks mechanic to spy on the girls is also a nice addition.

I really like this VN, the sandbox isn't over done and is pretty simple, it could use some more dialogue when interacting with characters, maybe special events such as dates and hang out sessions that are more varied, I liked most of the characters but it could use more romance to instead of the gain points then randomly ask a Li to be your gf, the main story is interesting and building up slowly so thats fine

The reason I gave 4 stars is because the older sister is kinda a slut in my opinion and it just reminded me of fasders VN Life which pissed me off, you get to the point in life where you finally sleep with the sister and after she goes into a monologue of how she was a frustrated slut, in this one it's a little different but the same in Principle, the mc and older sister have sex for the first time and it's a surprise, the second time they have sex the older sister comes home drunk wanting the mc and goes straight to anal claiming she knows how to work a dick and this other crap, it just gets overused in incest games where the older sister is like this

Would I still recommend it? Yes but that kind of content if prevalent in the future will more than likely make me unsub, it's really annoying having to grind to then find out that stuff

Edit- turns out it got worse with the interacting with older sister, apparently she got around with her friend but she's never worshipped a dick like she does her brother, just makes with think she was a cum dumpster before moving to the motel and getting with the MC

Most of the other Li's- slut or slutty, like really Dev you don't need to go so far into detail about how someones a professional cocksucker or how she got around fucking before worshipping the MC, I'm Tryna get involved in a harem builder not a slut trainer

Anyway even with these things there's still no ntr or sharing and the mc is the obvious focus with everything so I'll stay subbed but seriously tone down how slutty the girls were in the past, just a suggestion not telling you what to do

Good dialogue, interactions and models. Might be confusing at start, since the game is a bit complex. But once you get into it, its not so bad and a lot to discover. The game has a bit of grind which can be skipped a bit with cheating, mostly the money situation. But as most games be careful not to trigger events that will break the game.

I played this game a long trime ago and really enjoyed it. However, I came back a while ago (twice) and tried to play with save games but the changes meant I was all over the place with not really knowing what was going so I gave up. I was too lazy to start again.
Yesterday, I started from the beginning and I am even more impressed than I was the first time I played. The aunt and the SM are possibly two of my favourite chars in any game.
The renders are very good, storyline is acceptable and the grind isn´t over the top. It can be a bit annoying not knowing how to do certain things and relying on searching through threads isn´t great. (A good walkthrough would really help), but it doesn´t really ruin the experience.
There are perhaps a few too many roads to traverse that mean you have to choose which one you go down and have to ignore others for a while, but overall I think this is one of the best games Ive played in a while.

Version 0.25.0

Straitened times is a game that could have been great but alas it self-cuts his wings for some bad gameplay choices that extend surely the playtime but not the fun.

It’s a sandbox game that gets grindy immediately, but not because you need lots of money or items, but because you’ll need to see an event at least 5 times in a row to get to the next scene, and you are clueless in this world.
The hints are cryptic, you don‘t have any lead what to do next, you will experiment any stuff, trying to get a sex scene only to find a blue balls mirage.

My ctrl button is probably broken by now, I had it pressed more than half the time, wandering from the school to the hotel, from the hotel to the school, from the school to work, all of this trying to balance the energy bar.

The game surrounds you with beautiful girls and great sex scenes only to make you those unreachable.
You’ll play a dumb mini game to guess the interests of a character while they look at you, straight at your soul, pondering on the next step till you get some Enlightening thought to try some other stuff and then repeat the cycle.
When you finally get to a sex scene, you’ll be the happiest individual around, all the work is fulfilled for a great sex scene… But was it worth it?
Hell no.

I like slow burning plots, but this one, with an annoying gameplay just tires you out.
Characters and writing are decent, but most of the time I ignored all the sexy girls the game threw at me, because I was trying focusing on one and doing multiple girls at once, requires you a strategy that could scare even a chess player.

Overall I don’t recommend it, my time felt not as wasted as other games since I saw some progress at the horizon even if it was minimum.
If you wanna play it, make sure to have a lot of time to waste, or a walkthrough, because even with that the game will feel still as grindy.

I like Straitened Times game, I really like it
the story is really good
nice animation
The depth of character is great
I'm really looking forward to the latest update
Good job Dev
I will wait for the latest update again
I love Straitened Times game.

Nice game!! ;D And thanks for the dev(s) for putting in the effort.. I'd say well worth it to give it a shot. A bit tricky to find all the content, but quite a bit of content available easy, though in a sandbox where you have to work a bit to get to the lewd scenes.

I normally skip games when I find it a too much of a puzzle to advance. I don't want to invest into learning adult games. I mainly just want to check the content.. But this one dragged me in as it started of simple, made visible progress and while there are quite a bit of repetitive content, for much of it you get a little further each time, keeping you coming back for more. Not too bad a way of reusing content to make the game a bit longer.

The girls are hot and I liked the story too. Graphics well done, and animations are actually animations with many frames per second, and not 4 pictures alternating as I've seen in many games elsewhere.

Still playing 0.23.0 family edition. 0.23.1 is out I see, but haven't found a patch, so will wait a while before re-downloading the whole game. No critical errors found in 0.23.0, apart from game stopping before the story is complete

Yes, there's a bit of a grind to go through the content, but I have no idea why people call it extreme. I feel it's more on-par with other such games, but easier to get into, and more visible progress.. Trouble is finding all the triggers to get to new content..

Also they say English in the game is bad all over the forum. The author probably don't have English as his first language, but I think the English is easily understandable. While he may for instance say leave when he means live, the meaning is easily understood by the context in all errors I've seen so far. (Though I must admit I've been playing with skip unseen on, so can't say I've read it all)

Some game suggestions:
- It's annoying with plenty available options for chatting that just replays the same things you've seen without anything happening. To get stuff to trigger you end up going back to the same places you've been and picking the same chat options over and over in hopes of some advancement to trigger something new. Also, sometimes when you get new options, and eventually get stuck, the solution might be to press some old option that has not done anything for ages, but that is now the way to advance after you gotten past some other state.. Would be nice if content you've already accessed, that won't trigger anything new, will be clearly marked so you see that there's no reason to go there unless to replay old content.

- It would also be great with some kind of guide/hints as to how to unlock more content when you're stuck. I have no interest in playing the game by following a walk-through with 1000 steps. I'd rather have a place to lookup details, of if I'm stuck at this task, how do I get further, or if I can't progress one of the girls at some point what should I do to move on.. I think some was well handled, as for instance how to find the sisters jobs, where you get the hints while you're doing it, and the hints aren't too vague. Some examples of stuff I think I used way too much time to figure out:


- Ability to skip day (possibly only from your room in morning if that simplifies it) without any negative consequences. Each skip, ticks of one shift worked at diner, gives attendance at school and don't shift any relations up or down. Tiresome when you get far into game to keep replaying the same bits over and over to keep people happy, while waiting to try something different next week or in 3 days to see if that makes you able to advance something.

Another example of a good game that was marred by the Dev's wrong decisions.
The renders are very good, the models are beautiful, the story has a creative idea of a second family and it takes place in a hotel.
But problems arise at the beginning:
A non-objective hint system, boring tasks, and overly grindy. The confusing tips and so many repetitive tasks soon become boring and take away the player's immersion.
With a cleaner tip system and 50%
less grindy, this would be a 5 star game.
English is not my native language.

v0.23.0

the game is pretty good overall. compared to a lot of other sandboxes i have come across, this is the one that i've enjoyed the most.
there are a lot of nice looking models in the game, and so far, there is plenty of content to explore for each of them. The story is done well, the progression of the main story is rather slow tho, but overall its pretty decent.

the biggest flaw that this game has, as well as the biggest issue that me and a lot of other players have experienced as of this version, is the progress/hint system with the characters. it's very hard to know what exactly to do to see all the content available for the characters. most of the times you'll find yourself grinding the wrong events at the wrong times in order to get a certain scene. which could make it frustrating for some players. once the developer upgrades/fixes the current progress/hint system, this game will stand at the very top!!

i'm giving this a 4 star right now because despite its flaws, the game delivers a decent amount of quality lewd content, which is why most of us are here for. once some of the know issues and bugs have been fixed, this game would easily be a 5 star.

I love it all (Except that theres are a lot of adventures and is impossible to carry all of them at the same time he he ), corruption, voyeur, different kinf of characters, all sexy and well designed and different kind of stories

For me this is a prime example of why people don't like adult sandbox games.
Super grindy, you have forced actions like going to school and the hint system is pretty confusing at times. Also there is no way to tell if you have seen all the scenes with the characters so you just have mindlessly repeat the same events a bunch of times and hopefully you will unlock something new. Also the whole bedroom thing is annoying having to constantly switch rooms with the girs in order to progress with them.
Visually the game looks good. All the girls are good looking and the animations are well done. The story is not revolutionary by any means but it's interesting enough to keep your attention. This could easily be a 5 star game if the way you progress the story was more linear and less grindy.

(For now I will use part of my comment, just to be able to rate the game. Later, if I'm not feeling lazy, I may write an actual review)

OMFG! Mommy Lisa's content hits 98% close to what I ever wanted from this kind of a game. I just wish there would be more event's/poses with her. Also, love the watching porn together, but for now those scenes seem to be a bit basic. More variety, more choices of action and them leading to sex (after it is unlocked) would've been cool.
Can't wait for new updates!

Updated review for v0.47:
I'm done with this game. Playing an update to this game is like going back to work after a long vacation. The combination of randomization and needle-in-a-haystack event discovery is just too much work for not enough reward. The dev discovered a gold mine and intentionally flooded it with water. He could easily triple his patronage by fixing a few things. A "story mode" would be a what most developers would add to give the game mass appeal, but this game was designed in a way that makes it impractical. What a waste. I feel sorry for players hoping to ease their frustrations by a decent in-game hint system or a decent 3rd party walkthrough. Neither are ever likely.

Previous review:
I started playing Straitened Times at version 0.16 and I've now played through version 0.46. I generally don't like sandbox games because they tend to be coupled with mindless or frustrating "grind" which is intentional on the part of the developers because they think it heightens the experience for players. Straitened Times is designed in a way that makes sense for a sandbox: It has many simultaneous and independent quest paths open and allows the player to choose which one(s) to pursue; however, it does also have grind and usually way too much.

Pros: The game has many hot girls and animated sex scenes. The characters/models are beautiful/sexy (mostly). The grinding necessary to progress usually have a small but noticeable progression during each event so players can actually get some feedback that they are doing the right thing.

If you're into incest, it's here: Mother, two sisters, stepmother, two half-sisters, aunt, and two grandmothers. It has the school fetish with teacher, coach, principal, and cheerleader. It has the MILF fetish with mother, aunt, stepmother, motel manager, principal, bank manager, and neighbor. It has GILF fetish with grandmothers and judge.

Cons: The main con people will point out is the grind. I don't like grindy games at all, but strangely, I didn't find this one to be very bad at first. However, my feelings have changed since I started playing at v0.16. The main con with the grind is the randomization. There is an element of randomness for some events to trigger, but the game has so many places and times, a player can be in the right place at the right time, but an event still will not trigger and sometimes the player can miss an event multiple times just being unlucky with randomization. This can be extremely frustrating. What makes this even worse is that there have been occasional coding bugs that prevent events from triggering, so players don't know whether they are encountering a bug or if they are just unlucky. Some events have been insanely grindy. One example was the XShop photoshoots that could only be done once per week, but there are two models and each model has multiple events with multiple stages of progression, so it took over 20 weeks of in-game time with only a few renders as a reward. Such a disappointment. The game mechanics are constantly being tweaked, so it's possible that new players will experience less frustration with the grind and randomizations, but going from the discussion, there are still a lot of issues. Another con is the complexity. For some events, the player needs to set up multiple things in advance to get the event to trigger. Forget one thing, and you've wasted your time, but worse, the event might not even trigger because some other random repeating event triggers and blocks the event you want to occur.

Additionally, the game has grown and now has so many characters, locations, and time slots, having grind is simply no longer necessary (if it ever was) to add play time or make gameplay more enjoyable.

Thankfully, there isn't a lot of story/plot to this game, because the writing is garbage and the English translation is poor. Normally, players can determine the meaning of the dialogue and other in-game information, but occasionally, it's very difficult to understand and I think it's one of the reasons that many players have trouble figuring out what to do next. The poor translation also kills the mood during the sex scenes.

The game has an overly complex in-game help/walkthrough system. It has the "Tasks", which tell the player about the story quests and has a calendar for things that are scheduled at a specific place and time. Then there is the "Progress" for each girl which tells the player about the progression of lewd events/scenes with the girl. This is really the game's quest/hint system. The Progress also alerts the player that there are more events that the player has not yet encountered. However, the progress descriptions are both vague and poorly translated, so players don't really know what to do next. The Progress pages also occasionally have bugs such as telling the player there is more content available even when there isn't, telling the player there is no more content available when there is, and not tracking events at all. You only need to read a few posts in the discussion thread to see that people get stuck all the time and the reason is that both the game and the hint system are really non-intuitive.

The user interface to navigate the sandbox is OK. It would be better if it was completely consistent. Backing out of an area should be easy (i.e., leave the bathroom, leave the motel room, leave the building, and open the map should all be in the same place on the screen). Same for the controls on the phone where exiting the phone is in a different place than backing out of apps. Why? Also, there are many occasions where the player can accidentally click on something, but there's no way to undo the decision because rollback is sometimes disabled [Edit: this seems to be improving over time, but is still an issue]. The icons for map and skip time aren't consistent with what players expect. It's a case of re-inventing the wheel for no reason.

The unnecessary parts of the grind are just boring. The principal calling the MC out of class 3 days/week [Edit: this was reduced to 1 day/week in v0.21], the bank manager forcing the MC to choose some sexual reward every time he launders money (why not have an option of "No reward this time."), the MC having an erection every night when sleeping with mother, the middle-of-the-night interruptions when sleeping with the mother/sisters/neighbor, the motel manager that always has a vibrator running [Edit: this was reduced to once per day in v0.25], the random events when entering a motel room, etc. These are events are automatic and become tiresome after a few times and some of them no longer make sense with the current progression of the character. They need to be disabled or have a substantially reduced frequency when they no longer serve a purpose for gameplay. There's also the management aspect with the MC needing to maintain an attendance in school, work a specific number of shifts per week in the restaurant, and keep Lisa and Anna sexually satisfied. All of these only serve to make the grind even longer and more boring. Most of us already have boring lives, we play games to escape our boring lives. The games shouldn't be boring, too.

There's a lot going on in the game and it's sometimes too much to manage, especially given that some of the tasks aren't tracked in a way the player can understand, which adds to the player's frustration. The quest/hint system is garbage and needs to be completely reworked. There are games that have mastered this type of quest/hint system, but for whatever reason, the developer chose to do his own overly-complicated thing. Again, reinventing the wheel for no reason.

Overall:
I really want to love this game, but there's just as much to dislike in the game as there is to like. Playing from one update to the next was sometimes fun, sometimes frustrating, but always boring. Most recently, updates have become so tedious that I don't even want to play them anymore. It is clear that the developer is having trouble balancing the game mechanics as well as balancing time spent on new content with time spent on fixing bugs. It's only getting harder to manage as the game becomes more complex and it's evident by the number of bugs introduced into old content while new content was being developed.

For this to be 5-star game, the game needs the following improvements:

1. Improve the "Progress" system to include hints on what the player can do next to actually make progress.
2. Improve the terrible English translation.
3. Simplify the GUI and make it consistent.
4. Eliminate all random triggers.
5. Eliminate all grinding for lewd events. Daily grind like going to school, work, etc. is fine because it has a "management" aspect, but for the lewd content, there's no need to force players to repeat the exact same things over and over.

Unfortunately, the developer has doubled down on continuing to move in the same direction, and as a result, players have expressed that they've reached their breaking point and stopped playing. I'm not far behind. Just look at the number of reviews that mention cheat mods and cheating with console commands. This game just isn't fun for most players in its out-of-the box state and the only way many players can enjoy it is to cheat.

It's an amazing game, a sandbox where you have so many things to do you feel like there's not enough hours per day to manage. The renders are very good, the characters are sexy, there are youg ladies and MILFs so everybody's happy.

It revolutionize Renpy, the interface, the UI, a lot of the game is polish and you can feel it. I hope the author of this game will continue on the same direction, this game is one of the best out there. Believe me I played a lot of games on this website, a lot of sandboxes, and I'm not the guy to leave reviews. But this game is so good I had to tell about it.

i do like this kind of game with more effort that makes more scenes not just some yes no nut more action decision, wish can keep updating more contents!!! those animation also good and nice visiting with good shape!!!

amazing game one of the best incest games what i ever played it's sad that i didnt saw this game a year ago rly good job for the author of this epic game! and ofc none blood related hahaha XDD very true

Update at v0.31.1 - Dropping to 2 stars. Picking this game up off the ground and playing through it is impossibly frustrating. The game will give you hints on how to proceed, but you take those actions and nothing happens, or the hints are cryptic and you can't figure out what they mean, or they depend on other events... Early game, the experience is closer to 4 stars these days (there's tons of content and it is fairly easy to progress in), but towards the end the experience is definitely a 1 star (content thins but character count, location count, and general world complexity is astronomical so getting to any of the sparse content is nearly impossible with how little the dev helps you find it).

The characters are really well-made and I think the story is quite interesting as well. Also, I hope that the bugs are ironed properly in the coming updates as well. Overall, best wishes to the dev, and I hope this project succeeds.

This game awesome.Great animation, very hot women etc but blind gameplay. You need to try everything to make proggress with women.

Story looking good but developer need improve story and side story and and and need to change map. New map looking very bad when i see first time "what the fuck is this"

Another grindy game where you need to do all kinds of chores. I don't know why most game developers start with a poor student who has to do all kind of boring stuff to see some nude women. Dude, this is a game , i don't want to attend class, work at the diner etc.. in the game. I want to do sex with women. when you make me grind endlesslly for getting a hug, i just stop playing

Graphics are alright but your entire day is full of boring, awful activities. go to school, work at the diner, talk to everybody, check their interests. this is not a game, this is a nightmare

Stay away