Ren'Py - Onhold - Straitened Times [v0.67.1] [HRelease]

V 0.67.1
I tend to review games from an overall experience and gameplay perspective, rather than focusing too much on individual technical details. For me, the “whole” of a game includes everything that helps make it playable, even external stuff like forums.

Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if walkthroughs and cheats are often made or at least commissioned by the developers themselves. Playing a sandbox game this large and complex without some kind of external help would require too much time and almost superhuman effort.

Pros
- Great characters
- Lots of variety and genuinely unique characters
- Event chains often connect to each other surprisingly well
- The overall scope is huge and very complex
- The story is solid and fairly believable by this genre’s standards.
- Interesting and engaging story progression
- The game manages to keep you hooked in a weirdly unexplainable way -probably immersion
- Refreshingly hooking


Cons
- Some events are easy to miss when you’re juggling too many things at once and your working memory just can’t keep all the balls in the air
- Some characters are pretty unpleasant, but with this many characters that’s kind of inevitable
- A few bug-like situations here and there, but nothing that really hurts the overall experience - mentioning it mostly as info for new players

Without cheats or walkthroughs, grinding can get a bit tedious, but I use them without shame. I do think the task list could benefit from a more detailed hint system.

Based on what I personally value in games, I’d give this 4.5 / 5.

A rare sandbox game that has/had a great potential..

Been following this from the start.
It's rare because the dev really puts in the major effort when it comes to complexity of interactions between characters. which can and can not be a good thing.
(meaning for progress especially later on, the game has long formulas of different parameters/checkmarks (IE if x=1,y=1,z=1.....= event unlocks.. )
Good cause it adds realism but bad cause it makes it overly complicated and confusing for players to follow progression. That's why most can't play such a game without a guide and even with it they get lost.
Also that's why so many negative reviews.

Good things:
The above mentioned complexity is a good thing in my book and a rare sight nowadays. I used my head instead of the guide and the progression was mostly logical unless your brain has low ram memory lol
Good models, not a single one is a recycled asset
Good variety of Mifs and even some Gilf which is always a plus due to how it rare is in games
Solid Setting. school and family, although a very worn out theme based on cliche, it's very well done.

Bad things:
Very minimalistic sound and no music at all even in bars/club
And the main thing others complain about, it's not easy to explain is
ofc the Grind.

In a sandbox, as complex as this, grind kinda goes without saying.
and it's not an actual grind. it's the pace of progression with characters,
Which is actually very well done. unless you want a game where everyone will jump on you 1st or 2nd time they see you.
In this game every "event" gets a bit more progress ALMOST every time you do it again. In some cases you need to repeat the very same event a few times before the event changes abit. (and for that I agree with others that it should have been cut so as not to waste so much of the players time.)

Unfortunately the dev even increased the total number of points for each character from 100 to 150..
And per event you get from .. 0.8 to 4 .. so yes.. there gonna be a lot of repeated events before you get to any adult content.. which leads to the games biggest problem. Also this game is not really the one where you can just focus on a single interest and skip days cause you have weekly tasks and conflict bar that you need to keep track of or game over.

Personally I like the game and the "grind" to gradually progress with characters but..
Thing is, that after you finally reach the "adult" part the scenes are... underwhelming to say the least and some have mentioned it in their reviews without bothering to explain much.
So if you try to play the game so you do everything bit by bit and progress with characters evenly it might take more than several real life days till you get to something and then.. you get scenes that look more like something from TV1000 with very vanilla camera angles, most often only a single pose. Some scenes have 3 camera angles from which 2 you can just scrap wondering why would anyone ever think i want to see this camera.

There are also bugs that arise from doing some events before others for i believe is a result of dev being entangled into his own net of event relation complexity.

Its a pity considering the work dev put in to make this uniquely complex sandbox, the idea is very refreshing and ambitious but.. after all that "progression" the player really need to be rewarded better than with a single pose scene with poor vanila camera angles that you can today pretty much see in the movie that plays after the evening news on your local television.

Therefore I would give it 3 stars due to the ratio of time required vs very vanila scenes as reward but then again even like this its way better than 90% other games so i must add +1

I played the game, and a few things really bothered me. First, it's revealed that one of the sisters works in a sex shop and another sister in a strip club. Why these jobs? Why doesn't one work in a clothing store and the other in a bakery?

Second, why aren't the characters virgins (except for the mothers, for obvious reasons)? Why does the creator think anyone finds it exciting to sleep with someone who's already slept with who knows how many people?

The game itself has potential, plenty of characters, and several locations to explore. But these points I raised need to be fixed.

I've given this two stars because it is one of, if not the most confusing games I've ever come across.
Graphics are ok I guess though, but I've seen so little 'animations' that I can't really judge it.
What do we do? Where is the Quest list, how do we know what to talk to people about? I actually tried this later with a WT mod but that was even more confusing because of the colour coding for everything. The actual WT pdf is laughably inadequate and is not listed in a progress through the game method.
There are bugs galore in the game, mainly in that for some quests if you don't go to rooms in the motel in the right order you can never finish the quest.
Rollback if you think you made a mistake is confusing because of the pop-ups on screen that tell you places or actions you can do at a location (they are so large it just makes it not enjoyable)
All in all I'm glad this has gone 'on hold' so I never have to worry about it again.
Average graphics, terrible plot line, confusing quests and very little progress that I could see.

One of the best animated games I've played, some grinding at times to progress the story and unlock scenes, but the animations, various view angles are worth it! This game sets a high bar in terms of graphics and animation quality

Good game, the mistake is the complexity at the moment of moving throught the game or at the moment to trigger some scenes, so it could be better, but with the bad interfarce it has, i don't think so so 3 starts for this by the way it has good models.

I dont know how many hours I have put in to this game but I am enjoying it. I know a lot of people dont like the grind and slow pace but I love it. Continuly unlock new stuff. And I just realized this isnt even completed. Great stuff

Great game, great features, great characters, good art - but iffy on the story (which is not a major concern). How sandboxes should be (with perhaps a little less grind). Can't wait to see this completed, but would like to see some wardrobe/customisation mechanics.

The game is good, with great scenes and a good variety of carachters, but it is a grindy and would do wonders with a in game tracker and scene requirements. A update with these changes would take this game to another level.

The grind and game pace is fucking unbearable!
The grandma died of old age, no hints what so ever how to proceed "There are still opportunities to raise sexual tension" No there isn't because they seem to be dependant on either RNG or one single point in lust!
The models doesn't add up to these flawed game mechanics even though they are hot they have broken meshes.

Almost four days later trying to decipher the walkthrough and search the thread for hints I give up.

1/5, v0.66

v0.66 - Here is an excellent, massive sandbox with a great plot, average renders, and good animations. The game is a maze; I played for some time without a walkthrough, just following the basic hints that the in-game phone provides to help establish a daily routine to basically stalk an LI until she surrenders to the MC's advances, which is quite fun, I say, but you will reach a state where you will ask yourself: "What now?" Even with the walkthrough, the AVN is complicated; don't try to follow multiple LIs' routes at the same time. The sandbox doesn't have a time limit. So take your time, it's not a quick fap adult game, but the adult scenes are really hot. It's incredible the huge amount of content this game has, considering that it has only 3.5GB in this update.

great game alot of interessesting woman and alot of action. shame there is no kind of ingame help of what to do next. something like a walkthrough or info on your next step of the game. But apart from that there is alot of diversity and locations to visit and get to know more and more people as you progress along the game

In my opinion the best game on the site.
It's a traditional sandbox game, where you have the chance to pursue many different women with different storylines. There is some dependency on each other, but in general you should be able to pursue who you want in priority.
It has that surprise element where even if you are 3 AM Downtown, something might happen that will bring the story forward with a character, so you'll always find something.
I've replayed it at least 3 times, and I believe I'm still missing things I've never seen.

Good game, one of the best sandbox imo.

There is a lot of things to do, a lot of different characters with hot setups, they all have some kind of interactions between them, it make them a bit more alive in contrast to other sandboxs.

A bit grindy sometimes, especially when you have to up your relationship with topics (not a big fan of the mechanic).
The game definitly has to implement quest log (at least some hints?), its hard to keep track of what you still have to do.
Sex scenes are maybe a bit off sometimes, probably need some rework: longer animations, more frames, etc.

I can only recommend you to play it. Hope there will be more updates!

Rating: 3/5


I’m giving this a 3/5, mainly because of the incest mod (yeah, I know, weird). The game has a lot of potential—great art and fun dialogue, even though it’s riddled with typos. But the grind is real. The game has neat ideas, but they get buried under repetitive tasks and chores you have to do to avoid failing. It gets frustrating fast.


The amount of content is fine for an unfinished game, but there’s just way too much dialogue. The characters' stories often overlap, and it’s easy to get lost, especially when you’re not sure if you’re wasting time on the wrong path. After 20 hours, I didn’t even know there was a second or third family to interact with. So, unless you want to spend 35+ hours on this, I’d recommend just loading a save file with everything unlocked.


There’s also a lot to memorize—keeping track of all the characters and their storylines feels like homework. You’ll need a notebook to stay on top of it all. And some game mechanics, like "chatting," aren’t clearly explained.


TL;DR:

• Art: 5/5
• Dialogue: 3/5 (5/5 with mods)
• Content: 3/5 (too much dialogue, not enough clarity)
• Grind: 5/5 (lowers my score)
• Mechanics: 2/5 (needs better explanations)

P.S. Lily and the Aunt Katie or whatever her name is are the best waifus in the game. Don't @ me. lmao

A solid sandbox i enjoy. Unfortunately i had to start over because i didn't save properly. Story is okay with good scenes. Having to go to school everyday is kinda pain but wasn't too bad .Thankfully the mod helps the daily school attendance. Keep up the awesomeness . Ty!

This game is very good. It would have been nice to have some help getting to some scenes, as some are a bit hidden or not intuitive. I'm looking forward to seeing the finished game or the next previews of the game.

PROS:

• Plenty of content and characters
• Story is good enough to have kept me interested through 2 playthroughs at this point
• I've only been playing for the last handful of updates, but they do seem to come at a reasonable pace
• Most of the renders and scenes are good

CONS:

• The grind is punishing - I would never want to play this game 100% vanilla. I've used console commands to help reduce the grind significantly (even then, I'm still at nearly 400 days of in-game time to get near the end of the paths as of 0.64)
• Progression in the game quickly becomes complex and it's often completely unclear exactly what needs to be done to move forwards. Even with the guide it isn't always clear what needs to be done next
• While it is a sandbox, progressing the characters is often heavily intertwined with other characters so you may feel like you're wasting time on characters you don't care about, just to move on with one(s) you do want
• Some of the character skin colors are odd. Notably the lawyer (Victoria) and the cheerleader (Brigitte)
• The writing does suffer a little bit from typos and some "lost in translation" language choices

If you don't like grind, or if you get easily frustrated if the gameplay isn't laid out for you then you definitely won't like this game.

However, if you don't mind a bit of a challenge there's definitely rewards for your efforts with the sex scenes and harem/group choices.

It might not be the best game overall, but it's certainly the most polished and immersive sandbox experience with an incest theme. The pacing and immersion are handled exceptionally well. Some storyline feels somewhat rushed—likely a result of development time constraints, but the game is enjoyable.

One of the best game in the site.
Good story, with good graphics and excellent characters.
The game progression is well done with good mechanics.
A hard job made by the developer and we must thank him