Ren'Py - Straitened Times [v0.58.1] [HRelease]

To be honest, this is a miss for me. First off, the story isn't great nor are the characters in it particularly memorable or well written. No choices that matter seem to exist beyond what actions give or take away points here and there. And it's all packed into a sandbox that feels more like a chore than a game, keeping schedules, looking for money, etc. The help tools to navigate that are good, which is nice, but sometimes are missleading with things like "talk to father about work" and when you go there there is no such conversation yet available. It is very nice though that it lists the different actions you can do and which still can earn you points and which have been depleted.

Render quality is pretty decent, but I didn't particularly like many of the character models, that's a matter of taste I guess. Sounds were mostly absent though can't say for music since I usually turn it off. And I did find some minor bugs here and there with some things not triggering or some minor renpy problems to ignore.

All in all, not the worst game but I think there are better ones out there with which you can spend your time.

Without a walkthrough, its just a chore with too much grinding.
At first its enjoyable, and then it just annoying. I just saw that there's an update, but I dont have a save and cant imagine going through all the mess again.

A majority of the scenes are NOT animated which is misleading. A lot of the biggest games have animated scenes and I think this game could be at the top with all of its scenes completely animated. I think the story and theme are good and engaging but the dialogue is horrible I don't think the developer speaks good English

Several times I tried to give this game a chance, and the last time I managed to sit down and try to understand why this game has such a high rating. And I will say that it is overrated, but because of some aspects I will leave the rating at 2 stars.

In the first place, the game from the first frames shows what to expect from it, it is a very perverse MC, like and not bad, but for the first 5 minutes he in every girl immediately sees sex, taste and color, but I do not like it, I would like at least a little realism, I wouldn't write about it, but the game positions itself as a story, but the story in the first frames is practically rolled up) In general, just run around and fuck a bunch of girls, and it's not bad, but again, why then try to cram the story here, maybe.

The second disappointment, there is no focus on the available girls who could be revealed, because of this we get the following, a huge number of girls, absolutely not interesting, empty, strange group sex, 4 people, it is generally nonsense.

On the tags of the game also nothing interesting, in this world there is only the main character and that's it, the rest of the guys they are not, even at school, MC has no friends, there is no one at all in fact.

And all this is embellished with grind, gradually corrupt and get scenes.
From the pluses, the picture is good, even different figures of the girls as well as their holes, which is rare in novellas, that's where the pluses ended)

Loved the game for sheer number of characters and events written for each of them. It's a huge amount of gameplay and I guess that's where the lack of better walkthroughs or mod hurts. That's the only reason I can think why people may not like it. Otherwise it is easily one of the best corruption game I have ever played

Amazing game. Tons of different scenes with pretty much every girl you see and they are all high quality. Thought I ran out of scenes but then i explored a bit more and well found like 6 other characters. Not sure what conflict does though because i keep it low but if that forces a ending or whatever then its a 4.9999 instead of a 5. One of the best games on the site and one that actually has content matching the 4 years its out (some other games still have like a couple hours of content at most). Props to the team/creator behind it.

Great slow corruption game with nice animation. It is very interesting to discover new ways of interacting with girls. The text is also a pleasure. There are a huge number of interesting situations in which additional characters can be included.

Nice renders and hot women. But there is a lot of grinding and the gameplay is confusing, you need to use the walkthrough. The game takes a lot of time to complete the same actions. The interface is just as confusing.

Definitly a amazing game,though I ve download --play the begning-delete for 4 times.bc the colour make me feel very anoying.
This is my 5th times to try to play it through,I have to calm myslef down,play it bit by bit and without a WT most of time,and then find out very interesting and the scene is quite good.
WORTH TO PLAY!!!and I think the hints could be more clear such like "if I need to trigger this scene,how much illure do I still need.

Not the worst, but certainly low scale when it comes to many aspects.

Story - The whole premise of the game is based on the father going to jail, and you doing the freudian thing and taking over the job. Well that doesn't really show well in any part of the story, what story there actually is which isn't much so far.
It is done quite poorly, with just statements of "i am the man of the family now" and really lacks any imagination when it comes to this.
Really lacks any emotional sparks in the story when it comes to the characters. Everything just quickly and without any real build up, comes down to trying to screw every woman in the entire family, neighbours and step family. Rather simple minded story line.

Originality - Far from Original, although the one somewhat different aspect is the three different households the MC is trying to seduce.

Grammar - Oh jeez, hire a writer and make sure he can spell properly. The grammar is quite horrible, wether or not english is devs first language i do not know , but certainly the whole writing scheme needs to gone over and in many cases redone.

Amount of content - Fair amount of content, although all of it is pretty much ninety percent grind, yes the game is a big grind fest which seriously lowers the interest of playing it.

Animations - Not an utter failure, although what animations there are and what they include are mostly repetitive and very unimaginative. Since the story is so basic and really doesn't include any realistic steps to the relationships of any of the characters. The animations do not go very far either. Most include only a few types with no respectable realism, only a few have any kissing scenes and those are simple static renders.
Animations being so very important to any of these games, most devs i guess don't notice that the better the story and the more animations as well as things like different positions and things like foreplay. Make for a much more interesting Story/game overall.
This one does not really try in that respect, its the usual one or two positions and two second then squirt your load sex scenes. Far from making it memorable.

Although it is not the worst game i have played, it is also not one that is memorable. So much could have been done better, but then redoing it so it is better would take far to much time since this one has been out for quite a few years already. Players don't have years and years to wait on such things. There are better projects with better quality to them.
The only reason for two stars instead of one star, is the fact that i think the dev did put in more effort than a lot of other devs that i have seen. So there is that.
Still it's a huge grind fest and a lot of things don't actually makes sense when it comes to the game itself. Maybe it will get better, but i think it's beyond saving really.

This deserves one star. The early renders are poor, the later ones (the better-great ones) require so much time it's not worth playing. The UI is dated, the game's buggy, the grammar is off and strange, and the corruption/plot as a whole is just as strange.

There's better games to play by far, with 1/10th the grind.

The models are very appealing, I like the mom and the younger sis, they have very sexy body without being an exaggerated stereotype.

I like how the interface is built, it gives it a feeling of managing the motel and the tablet is a good idea.

While the game isn't finished at the time of doing this review, I see where it is heading, with a story where you have to investigate what happen with your dad, who was sent to prison, while having all those relations evolving through multiple interactions.

I think the relationships are well paced, and interesting overall. Frankly an excellent game in my opinion, that I'm following for further updates.

The setting, character models and the scenes are all amazing. It's almost the perfect game for me but the main flaw is not knowing how to progress. You will need a guide often as it is easy to get stuck

Games a bit of a slow burn but the payoff is great and it felt like a pretty natural progression throughout. Never felt too grindy but you probably want to reference the walkthrough for some of the more obscure unlocks. Multiple times through the game it opens a whole new set of characters to build relationships with so there's a ton of gameplay, if you are starting fresh it's probably in the range of 30-45 hours to fully clear the content. Characters don't feel recycled. All around really good stuff.

Rare W on this forum lately, can't believe I haven't found this sooner, but on the other hand it feels nice to find it when it has so much content.

The concept is fantastic, seducing a family when they are at their lowest and most vulnerable. I like that the corruption happens gradually (at least in theory, need a lot of imagination), where at first you only provide basic closeness and warmth in these trying times and then work up to basically just an ultimate power fantasy.

So far there's plenty of characters and they all have decent amounts of content, plenty of attention to detail when it comes to different character interactions based on their corruption level and a multitude of group activities in any which combination especially in the motel.

I don't know man, I just like this idea where you basically create this isolated den of debauchery and the fact that these people hit rock bottom from the top of the mountains makes it realistic at least to some extent.

I do feel compelled to not give it 5 stars though it would probably deserve it, but of course nothing is perfect and this also has some problems. Some nit picky, some potentially bigger.

The grind is at acceptable levels especially to enhance the feeling of a slow burn (that this is sort-of lacking) and there's really good scheduling that makes it so you have plenty of options to choose at any time. But there are a few lose condition early on that force a few timeslots to be locked in. Some of these get circumvented later and you get options to fix some of the bad stats that you gain by skipping some chores and I feel like it could be fixed further by removing the time it takes for navigation.

The above mentioned "lack of slow burn" is also a nit pick, There are some really good buildup scenes early on with some of the characters, but then there are other characters that just kind of get corrupted almost immediately and even the ones with the good build-up at some point there's a very sharp rise and they go from like 45% to 90%. It's by no means as bad or abrupt as some of the honey select corruption games, and where it does end up is pretty good, but some more teasing would have been appropriate for this title.

The biggest and only real problem with the game aspect is the quest/stats tracking system, It's dreadful. It creates this problem where you don't know if you're just done with what content there is so far for a character or if you're missing something really obscure. It's not awful or in need of a rework, but the descriptions need to be a lot clearer.

It feels bad to not give this a perfect score especially since it would be closer to a 4.5 stars than a 4 in reality, but with some ironing out of the more outstanding flaws and maybe with a linear continuation of the power fantasy (get to completely control various locations like the motel, stuff like that), this is a really good experience right now and it also has a lot of potential going forward, GL!

A very good sandbox, without much idle time. Gameplay largely without minigames.
Some scenes seem to be repeated several times, although the text changes.
A few more tips for progress would be desirable.

Ok i had to redo my ridiculously high rating of three stars after playing this trainwreck of a game long enough. Turns out, it is not only insanely grindy but it does it with some of the worst mechanics in any game type. It's too bad because the women are pretty decent but they aren't worth playing through this mess to see the single angle animated scenes that you get after hours of clicking. At least vary the scenes over time or when they get more intimate, if that ever happens.

Back to those mechanics......the dev thought adding contrary values was a genius idea. On one hand the girls feel "conflict" over different things as they are getting more intimate. This includes sharing a bed even when you are having regular sex. When you initiate sexy times the girls lose respect or feeling for you but feel more lust........Things you need to do to progress with them result in increased feelings that are negative and not in your favor. So you have to switch everything up to decrease the negative feelings. It's so dumb that I didn't even understand what it was until I searched why nothing was happening. So I checked my ingame stats only to see all of them have high conflict values that I have to work to bring down. So sleeping in separate beds and not having adult channels etc is how you bring down the negative feelings. Why even bother making an adult game if your goal is to bore the shit out of the players by having to balance these stupid made up mechanics?

This brings me to the scenes themselves. Usually they are passable enough. Whatever they are though is all you will see. Like seeing the same exact scene 50 times? That's good because that is all you will see. The animation is rough, which isn't a dealbreaker really but the choice of camera angles is not that good on top of it. At least render a couple different angles as a reward for the player trying to balance the dumb mechanics.

I think if you are doing thirty years for murder this would be a good way to make at least 15 of them pass by. Honestly I think this game would have been not bad but the grinding and those ridiculous balancing acts of feelings and lust that just aren't worth working through. If you share a room or bed too long they get pissed. This results in having to stop doing anything except clicking through days and days doing literally nothing but repeating the daily events of school, work, etc. Even using cheats the game is so grindy that I played it almost a week before anything really happened and unfortunately I racked up almost max conflict stats as a result. I tried to go back but realized I had to basically go platonic to get those negative feelings down and that was enough.

Terrible mechanics, no real story, the same scenes an insane amount of times and nice models in general equals ONE star.

2.5/5 But I decided to round up because I do think there is enough here that I like that it could be and easy 3 stars or higher
I am honestly not sure where the story is at lol! The games little description here seems to not have all that much to do with going on; "Commune" "Mother Superior", "Holy Father", "Novice Sisters" - These all seem to not have anything to do with the actual story lol! I thought this was gonna be like a Religious Patriarch is removed and MC takes over and corrupts, not really my jam but I figured Id give it a go, But no It more just a well off Family of 5 is thrown into turmoil after the Father is arrested! Fairly simple premise lol and the Main Story seems to have little bearing on what happens as I basically ignored it and still got to the lewd content

+I liked the Models
+Actually liked the Freedom to just pursue whichever character I wanted to, Normally I like more of a specific path or gentle push to keep me on track but this was Good
+Good build up of tension between characters, Not a "meet&fuck"
+Thought the Animation were good! Some fairly simple, but still good
=Wish some of the Still-scenes were actually animated even just a bit but It never felt like a negative

-The Grind! It almost seems not that bad but then there's not a super clear sign as to how close your grinding is getting you to... anything!
E.g.- Cuddle Girl 4 times unlocks a variation of the cuddle, or unlocks something more intimate. Now do that 3-4 more times maybe, But also keep doing some other things as just because you unlocked a new event that doesn't mean you have enough points to unlock what comes after
-- Spelling, Grammar, Word Choice
All were fairly rough. *I am no expert but I also feel like that's a red-flag when I start noticing shit. I'd describe it as "Edited Google Translate"- Unusual/Specific words that arent used in general, Stiff structuring, But Nothing was actually that out of place in the sentences. As if someone Translated it and then tried to make it seem more genuine. Or someone needs to put down the Thesaurus and use just the regular words in common speech lol! *Though I did learn that "Straitened" can mean "characterized by poverty", As I went through most of this thinking it should be like "Strained Time" maybe(?)

I ended up downloading and using cheats to blast through some of the grind to try and experience more content before I fully gave up, Im glad I did because some of the scenes are definitely worth some grind/work but not what is currently there. Or make it more clear, and visible how close we are getting to new scenes and events!

2.5/5 If the negatives hit half as hard this would be an Easy 3.5. Room for Improvement, and I wouldn't mind getting to see that

I really like this game. Many characters, lots to do and hot scenes. But I cant give it more than 3 stars because even if using codes to cheat it's a terrible grind! All process requirements could be half and it would still be a lot. Make it more player friendly and this could be 5 stars

I love the games models, scenes, characters, dialogue, creativity, options. A lot of it's great. When you unlock a scene, even with a character you're not that attracted to, there is usually a good twist to entertain you about the scene to make the worst looking characters good looking. A must for this game is the cheat console with SHIFT + O. Normally, this would be a problem, but I'm doing it so often, it's practically a part of the game's mechanics. You still get the scene after a few seconds of changing energy levels or lust stats..... exploring the game takes too long without them, and if you didn't have that option, this'd be an unplayable game. I started over twice after found it doesn't take too long to get back to where you are if you start over and know where to go to get the scenes.

To me, there are 2 major flaws to the game....but at this point I don't know if they're flaws or designs to compel playing. Either way, I can't say it's a great game because of these to issues. The biggest is lack of direction of the main story. Side story, you can look everywhere, and pusuit anything, but the main story.... no advancement at all. Father is still in his cell, the pattern of life can go on for thousands of days, once you screw the characters you want, you can do it agian but you get to a point of.... "what next" or "what for" that is never really addressed.

The other major issue is that I don't know what's in the game. It's kinda fine because the discovery of scenes is great, but if the game is not complete and you get to a certain point of exploration of a character, you don't know if that's the end of the even chain or if you just didn't find the one element to push beyond the event chain. Under the "progress" section, all you see is "still effective" which tells you you can do something again, and it raises tension, but at the bottom of the progress screen, it says there may be more scenes in this chain..... but those are the only hints you get after already unlocking a scene...once you get to "too depraved", there's no direction on where to explore to unlock more scenes. You hit a lot of brick walls, and you don't know if it's an under development brick wall or a "you have to be at the bathroom on the second floor of this house at 2:45 in the afternoon on a Thursday under a new moon" brick wall you have to search this forum to find. This really should be something in the gallery or progress screen of what % has yet to be unlocked an option for a full list of "Not yet discovered" so you can see what and where are the missing scenes. If those 2 issues were resolved, it'd be great, but as is.... it's good.