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

It's really hard to rate this one. On one hand, the story's pretty decent. Grammar could use some work, but is acceptable. The whole "not a family" veil vanishes astonishingly quick, giving way to strong incest and corruption themes.

Now, I think the problem is NOT the grind, NOT the RNG, and NOT the unintuitive, often confusing guide ... whatever thing that was slapped there to 'help' progress. There are games with grind, or with RNG, or with a weak quest log/guide/whatever that work well nonetheless.

The problem is a combination of all three.

Say you are stuck, you don't know what you need to do because the guide doesn't tell you properly. Then by some miracle you manage to find out what (a notable one is using single bed), but the event might not fire because RNG. And if the event does fire, you need to grind it a couple times before you go back to step one.

Thankfully there are mods to circumvent this, but the base game itself gets a 3.5--rounded down.

This game was kinda hard to get into , but once I understood the sandbox systems, and rollback became available(it was a slog to "discuss interests" and keep relationships up before that), it really opens up. Hint system is enough to not warrant a separate walkthrough, but it's spread across a few lists(like tasks, progress, investigations tabs), so you need a while to get used to it.
Money is real cockblocker at the start, but once you get to Lil's workplace, plus modelling gigs, and it becomes way easier. Don't forget to ask for salary raise after every 10 days.
Once you "unlock" most of the girls, main problem becomes time management - you need to adjust for schedules, if you want to progress multiple threads at once and not just grind days waiting next time slot for specific event. If you can manage that, sandbox is pretty tolerable and doesn't feel grindy or forced - just people going about their daily lives and having work-leisure schedules.

What really sold me on this game is decent incest writing(a bit of slow burn and corruption, especially with mother), big variety of unique models and personalities/characters(and not just in game, but compared to lot of other DAZ3D games), hot (though a bit short) sex scenes , and small UI thing where people have quick status overview and change poses to react to player on hover over. I thought it was kinda cute, and not a lot of sandbox games do this.

The main "investigation plot" can go either way, as it's pretty bare so far, so this game would be more interesting for those who don't mind "slice of life" style, rather than more detective stories.

Overall, this feels like it has good programming, writing, and render bones, and that's all you really need for great title. Worth checking out, as it already has lot of content

The game is a pretty bad sandbox. It doesn't really tell you how to progress with a character. All the game tells you is vague "there can be more opportunities with a character at/during *name of a location/event*". That's it. And because of this I'm sure most of you who will try the game will spend hours doing the same things over and over hoping to get a new scene until you start to think that the game got softlocked. On top of that the game is quite grindy too and has terrible UI.
I had enough of this game. 2 stars just for the hot milf mom that allows the MC, her son, to fuck her in front of his teacher.

excellent game with great mechanics and a good story.
Only lazy and horny players will say the grind is way too much.
Money can be earned easily in a casino, which doesn't even use time.
What I only dislike about this game is that there's no in-game walkthrough.

Pros: Renders, story, and animation are good.
Cons: No in-game walkthrough on how to activate the quest

Truly a great game!
Art is not on some top tier level like other games I shall not mention here but it's truly well done.

The buildup is great. A lot of scenes and naughty stuff !
The story is great and exceeds my expectations when it comes to incest stuff.
The only downside in my opinion is that the system itself can be a bit tedious to work around.
Ex : Aunt > Catch her at 11AM on a certain day, ask her to stay at the motel, repeat each day you want to progress with her...
Also the fact that sometimes you're a bit lost and don't know what to do to progress, but it has so much content, you eventually stumble upon something !

Truly one of the best game I've played, I can only hope this dev will feed this game with a lot of content and do more in the same spirit, either way, I'll always be one of his followers !

The game is good.

Only lazy ass says the grring is way to much lol. I guess they didn't play Foot of the Mountains, fuck that game.

Grrinding is easy, you just have to do the main tasks like 3 and those 3 will get you good terrms with the girls and eventually you'll get the scenes, as all the games you just have to make the girrls happy.

Renderrs arre good, the best scene arre animated so is excelent.

The most imprressive of this game is the way you corrrrupt those ladys.
Shit, it feels naturral and takes time but in 4-5 hours i got mom scenes and some sisterrs too, in just that you fucking suck with this games and you think is cause of the grrind.

Man Of The House is proud of this game, shit, i'll say that this game may be betterr that Man of the House.

If you are a Man of the House, Dreams of Desire and Milf City'fan... this game is for you my person wich gender i won't say cause you are free to choose.

I have to agree with @TheDonnyl . This would have made a great VN. Sexy characters, sexy build up, pretty good story, etc. But omg the grind... I played this game for hours WITH cheats and didn't see anywhere near all of the scenes I wanted to. The game even has a great UI and questlog and it's still difficult to get things moving. This game should be called Blueballs Times...

Excellent game, loved the gameplay and the characters design, no stupid blueballing if I remember well, if i'm mistaking then no worries you will be rewarded for your patience

I'm now waiting for further updates

The game itself is pretty good. The animations are good and the story is interesting but it just takes soooooo long to get to the scenes and its also so tedious. And I didnt even play the "real" game. I played with all the guides and walkthroughs and cheats that I could find. It would be a 5/5 if it was a VN but sadly it isnt.

best game i have ever played on this website.

Great characters which require build up but not to a grindy length.

I found it very replayable often restarting and not getting too bored, I enjoy the consistent updates aswell.

If you like slow burn grindy games this is for you.

Pros:
- Good Characters
- Good Story
- Great Scenes

Cons:
- Grindy to a fault
- Couldn't imagine playing this without cheats.
- I like the menus and infographics this game gives you, but good luck reading that when jerking off.

this is the best game i have ever played. The female characters are built really well. Rarely does mc have two families, mother and stepmother. a great idea. The plot is well built by the developer, not too rambling, nor too rushed, giving me a sense of excitement when playing. It's a bit unfortunate why female characters don't react more aggressively when they find out that mc is having sex with other relatives. The opening couldn't have been better. What could be better than watching pregnant girls and all of them having sex with mc. hope the developer can show us more interesting things in the coming parts. A lot of middle-aged women, why not a teenage girl next. it will make me feel more excited.

God Game, deserves GOTY, it´s a little bit complicated because you don´t have a in-game guide and you need to descover everything by yourself.
I downloaded this game a few months ago and i don regret it, beautiful characthers with realistic body.

I like everything about this game, the girls are hot the MC has to work to clap those cheeks andwhen he gets some action it's worth the wait cuz it's animated and very good looking. Keep up the good work mate.

I get it, the models are good, the tags are good.

But none of that actually matters if the game never gets anywhere. This even seems like it's made by some decently competent people and yet I've been playing for hours and hours, with basic cheats enabled, and there hasn't been a single full-on sex scene.

Extreme grindfest, and even with the most detailed "quest log" in any game I've seen on f95, I genuinely don't know what to do half the time. And that's coming from someone who usually likes complex games.

Please, save your time and play literally anything else.

I love Russian games, the Notepad++ gameplay is the best. Give me more draconian one in a billion chance to randomly trigger conditions for events, I love it. Intuitive gameplay is for losers. Nothing gets me off more than looking into a crystal ball to figure out a game's logic.

The story and characters are cool though.

What the actual fuck is this game. Horrible grind, events that never triggers and you have to keep track stupid task lists and schedules. Its a coom game for fuck sake why is the dev trying to copy god damned europa universalis. Renders are somewhat good and milfs are proper thick though.

This game is like a Gin and Tonic, it's an acquired taste. On the surface of things, It has a horrible amount of grind to it. You have to repeat scenes over and over to get to progress. The hinting system is vague and to progress you need to try each dialogue option to see everything. The animations are very basic (although getting better). The grammar is bad and the plot is ridiculous at times. If you don't have patience then this game isn't for you. If you can stick it out, there is some payoff (and it's getting better with every release).

Why keep playing it? All that grind gives you time to start imagining what might happen once you unlock the next scene. The hinting system tells you that there's a scene to unlock with a certain character, but it's up to you to figure out where. You jump around, day by day trying to find that next scene but it's never that easy. You have to keep going to school and keep your commune happy and make sure you sleep enough before you can even think about unlocking that next scene. When you do finally find the scene it's usually not that great but it opens the door to the possibility of an even kinkier scene, but you have to wait for the next update, maybe even four or five updates before you get the scene that you were waiting for. (At lease the updates are regular monthly releases.) While your waiting for the scene, something else happens. The same setup happens with other characters and you're eventually left thinking about all the twisted, kinky sexual adventures that might eventually come out of this game. Usually, the game doesn't deliver, but once it a while it does and that is what keeps you coming back for more.

In regards to the characters, for the most part they are very well done but some of the expressions are weird and overly exaggerated and the character's tongues are weird. Seriously, the character tongues are shaped like a snake's tongue or something.

The grind is horrendous. I solved the money and energy problem with simple console commands (which shouldn't even be necessary in a well-designed game). But
The biggest problem is that to progress with the women, you need to repeat some actions over and over again until you no longer want to see that woman's face anymore. And the hint system isn't complete so you'll often be left scratching your head as to what you need to do to continue the progression.
The lewd-scenes animations (when they exist) are just meh.
The grammar is very bad. Understandable, but immersion-breaking.
It's a poor game overall and in this state it's not worth playing.

I like the game's character designs, also animations could have been better.

like playing it, there's a quest log and claender to guide you and it helps a lot in this kind of games (where you can do spesific things only at spesific times).

earning money is a little hard but there's a cheat so, when this kind of games start to bore with need of earning money, if there's a cheat I use and can have better time playing game.

I am now downloading the latest version and hope dev keep doing good work.