Ren'Py - Sweet Affection [v0.11.3] [Naughty Attic Gaming]

If you like corruption games, then this is a beauty. Lots of levels, lots of characters, and lots of integrated activities at each of the levels.

Graphics are pretty good and there is plenty decent video to augment the stills.

Grind is minimal - money generation is easy and quickly stops being a problem.

The only issue that I (and pretty much every other reviewer) have is the dialogue. There is way way way too much. So much so that normal humans quickly stop reading it. As a result, the excessive dialogue actually ruins what would otherwise be a compelling story. Dear Dev - you've got talent - delete every other sentence and you'd easily be working your way back up to 5-star.

Sweet Affection? I can honestly say I felt neither affection nor sweetness here. This game was more like Treat Depression. As in you get to spend all your time trying to rehabilitate many variations of the same dysfunctional trauma victim. Characters with dark pasts of abuse/death that have entirely consumed their personalities and left only crippling male trust issues in its wake. So even if the nature of the trauma varies, it still ultimately results in you having to go through the same emotionally draining story arc ad nauseam. Filled with I'm Sorrys, That's Not Okays and I'm Here For Yous. Then reading diary entries about how you're not quite like Dave/Jeremy/2nd office bully/school blackmailers/abusive brother onlookers, etc. Same story beats every time.

People talk about long and slow with this game, but I LOVE me them slow burns. The issue here isn't just that. It's actually the repetition of this exhausting trope. So instead of having cute dates, sharing laughs and getting naughty with your girlfriends, you're constantly stuck tiptoeing, comforting and crying with your patients. Leaving you with the dreadful feeling you get when you need to get ready to visit a friend at a cancer ward every time you click on their event.

Not every character needs to be a full tragedy stricken repair job. Constantly hitting that one sob story note may work for some chick flicks to get a quick cry out of 2 hours. But it certainly doesn't work for long drawn out erotic VNs.

Another issue the story runs into is that it keeps its characters' storylines entirely separate. In theory this sounds like it could make things easier, in practice however you quickly realize why no one does this. All the storylines end up feeling disjointed and are entirely inconsistent with each other. As if every character exists in their own separate universe. This game goes out of its way to avoid harem themes, but sadly without it you end up in a strange situation where MC is dating a dozen characters but no one really acknowledges each other's existence. Not even MC when he's talking to the wrong person.

The art is just your standard Honey Select and the animations are serviceable enough, assuming you have the saintly patience to reach them. The UI on the other hand is rather sloppy and strange to navigate. There's even buttons that when you hover over them just say they don't do anything anymore. And with the gigantic file size, all in all this is just not a game I can recommend to anyone.

Im sorry for my english, its my third language.
This is a personal review based on my own expirience with the game, and although i didnt enjoy my time here you may love it, so make up your own conclusions. This is the first time i post anything on this site, since im only around here to look for some random game and not to make friends or discuss politics. The reason i actually decided to post this review is cause i am severely dissapointed with the direction this game has taken. I was a big fan of "Research into Corruption" and when i learned of a reinvention existing after that game died i was very happy. And it really seemed like a better more polished version of that game. Better looking renders, more smooth systems and more characters. Up to a point it really is a very enjoyable game. So since i liked it you may wonder why the one star review. The answer is very simple: it drags on and on and on. To the point were i personally feel like i have to reduce its rating from a 3 which i would say is fair by taking into account the visual and technical down to a 1. Mind you it's technically not "grindy" since you can collect scenes pretty easily and the only things that take some time are the mom and sister events that happen only in the weekend and take up the same timeslot in which case you need to wait an extra week. No , the drag stems from the absolutely endless walls of text without any kind of erotic event afterwards. I personally am not on this website to find heavy story focused games although im not necessary opposed to them, but this game takes it to another level. I dont mind if there is an emotional scene before we get to the erotic part, but here it seems like you have to sit through 5 mins holdingdown the skip button of people talking about their feelings just to get a scene where they hug and cry. In the begining i was hoping the lvl up events for the mom&sis would turn more erotic as their affection level increased but it ended up being the most dreadfull part of it since it was whole minutes of me skipping the dialog while scrolling twitter. Like , am i mad for expecting something erotic to happen in a hentai game when the characters are alone on a beach after date? Apparently i am cause the only fluids that came out were tears. I've lost hope for this game since the creators are so adamant about it's direction but this is just my opinion as a fan of "Research Into Corruption". I dont really mind the change for corruption to affection, what i really didnt like was the switch from erotic to emotional. After the first couple affection levels its hard to get some actual actual scenes besides the cookie cutter stuff. And since this game has so much writing content , you'll be sitting for whole minutes just sitting there reading about how they love one another just to get maybe a very quick vanilla sex scene before you get to read the next novel. Not to mention the fact that the low quality version of this game is around 10 gigabytes making this probably the biggest in size game i have seen on this site. And now that you've read this review that has machingly dragged on and on, you may be somewhat prepared to read play this game. Just keep some tisues on hand (sadly just for the tears)

I’m just here to reiterate what everyone else has already said.

When I found this VN a while back, I had seen a review talking about how it was way too much lovey-dovey bulls***. And since I’m someone that loves a story with tons of “fluff” I decided to give it a try.
I will say it was enjoyable in the beginning, but as many others have already said before, the story becomes so dreadfully boring later on.

The only reason this is getting 2 stars from me is because this VN made for a good sleep aide. On a few occasions where I’ve been up for too long I’d try to continue playing this, only to quickly start passing out in my chair.

I really can’t recommend anyone download this, the low quality version is already huge and I can’t imagine why anyone would download the high quality version.

This would probably be playable for the people who played each update as it came out since it would be in small increments. But if anyone started right now, they would come to a point where they would have to force themselves to continue because binge reading this would be a masochistic endeavor. At that point, there are better uses of your time.

Truly a shame.

A lot of other people have said what I think at great length, so I'll just leave a summary.

This game started off very well in the earlier days of development and I eagerly awaited each update. Would've easily rated this game a 4-5 star back then. Things took a turn for the worse at some point in development (others say it was 6.0, I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure it was just before affection level 5 was released).

The game is an ungodly grind with mountains of awful writing to get through in order to see increasingly disappointing scenes. I check back in on it every year or so to see if they reverted to the original formula, but it seems the dev has doubled down on the new approach. It literally takes several minutes to get through each scene whilst holding down the skip button, it's insane.

Past the first few affection levels the game becomes an unplayable time sink. I don't know who'd enjoy this game, but I sure can't anymore. If you like writing that reads like bad romantic fan-fiction, then you may enjoy this game, otherwise you'll be wasting dozens of hours of you time (that is not an exaggeration) just to see very mid sex scenes that are extremely repetitive.

One of the biggest declines I've seen in a game of this genre.

Let me preface this by saying that the main reason I even decided to bother with writing a review (years-old lurker with 0 posts and reviews here) was because of post number 6948, in which the dev seems to believe his game is being intentionally targeted with poor reviews, going as far as to check each reviewer's profile in an effort to prove that, because people like different games with a quicker payoff than his, they are somehow unqualified to express their opinion on this game.

Anyway, where do we even start with this game? This game started off as "Research into Affection", seemingly a remake of Boomatica's Research into Corruption, unstained by the patreon controversy and a fresh start, keeping many of the same themes of its predecessor but taking its time fleshing out the Mom and Sis characters. However, over time as I would pick this game up again to see what the next level offers I noticed something strange, the higher level events would get wordier and lengthier while losing in substance.

And this brings us to today's "game" that is now called "Sweet Affection", stripped of many of its previous corruption mechanics and fully embracing the slow romance aspect. It amazes me that the dev is so shocked with the backlash he's getting, considering he's the one who decided to do a 180 in the middle of the game's development. Surely this is something he could have seen coming, no?

But I digress, the game is very much like walking through a seemingly endless puddle of water, you can keep walking for hours without getting anywhere. I tried a playthrough where I wanted to see everything, every event, every diary entry and it was genuinely impossible to keep going at around level 5 or so, and I refused to skip text, so I just gave up. There is an argument for having played games to a certain point before reviewing them, but in this specific case, with a word count surpassing MANY novels (and I think even the Bible?), I don't think its fair to expect that at all.

This leads to a game that is objectively impossible to derive any sexual pleasure from, and I would be very worried for the health of any individual who tries to do so. The renders are also showing their age, with Honey Select being severely outdated by this point, while also causing the game to balloon up to its current size at 26 gigs or whatever it is for the "high quality" version. 26 gigs worth of pictures, 2/3rds of which mind you, are identical to other save for a facial expression or movement.

Since you can't really jerk off to this game, one might think it's meant to be experienced as some sort of visual novel but, they would once again be proven wrong. The dialogue is straight up sociopathic, and the only way I can describe it is with a metaphor; imagine you are driving down the longest highway in existence but every 200 meters there's a guaranteed red traffic sign. You never get to pick up speed, stopping every couple minutes to answer the question, "are you sure?"

That's about all I have to say for the game itself, and I fully admit to not having experienced all, probably not even half of it, nor do I have the mental fortitude to attempt it. There are much better porn games out there, even slow burn ones that have sufficient payoff, and there is also an infinite amount of actual visual novels, with compelling character, diverse scenarios and convincing, human-like dialogue. Also, I would urge anyone to read the other 1 or 2 star reviews here as well, they have been much more concise and to the point than mine is. Ironic, my review seems to share many characteristics with the game itself.

from 5 star to 1 star.
Garbage.
Until 6.0 good after that feels like chore
Too much hugs, tears and text.
bad angles.
video too long (watch it full or skip) 0 control over it
1 star for qol in comparison of Research into Corruption

First of all, at nearly 30 gigs as of the latest update, this game is one of the worst data hogs this site has to offer. It's probably the biggest bloated glutton of a game I've ever downloaded here. For all of that, there really isn't even enough content to justify it. Not to mention that it's butt-ass ugly, everyone looks like a porcelain doll, and the corruption for the incest portions is remarkably poorly paced, they go from totally hating you to constantly flashing the least attractively-rendered pussy you've ever lain eyes on at you and they seem to always be leaking some kind of thick goop and it's just so deeply unappealing.

I thought maybe I could overlook the gross models if the story is quality, but let me tell you that it is not. You'll be bored to tears unless you cheat. It's redundant and no part of the "story," if you can even call it that, demonstrates even the slightest understanding of human behavior. Everyone is a complete moron and all the MC has to do is perv on them over and over, never showing any sense of self-awareness, until they just eventually randomly decide they accept it, then after that, that they WANT it. It's been around for ages and gets lots of new content, but none of the terrible trash it already has ever gets fixed. I really, really don't recommend this game.

Huge potential sadly not used to its best.
I like the characters and the principle of getting closer to characters and then leveling them up with events, but the one thing that really disturbs and annoys me, is that the mother and sister route are one and the same.

Review as of v0.10.6

Ima be brief. The game is really good, but REALLY slow. All of the characters I really want content with have none and/or are incomplete (been 6 years man come on). Features are still WIP after 6 years.

There is wwwaaaaaayyyyy too much hugging and crying. Way too much. There is an excessive amount of hugging and crying. If hugging and crying were the same as the population of ants on our planet, that's how many scenes involve both. It was fine on some scenes. Needed even. But it's just overkill at this point.

There should be a premature ejaculation tag because homie can't keep it in for more than negative 2 seconds without ejaculating. Scene be like "Hey mom I got it in". Two sentences later he cums. For the amount of sex this guy has you'd assume that he'd build up some resilience. Nah. Man lets it out faster than the Flash.

TL; DR: This game feels like reading through an essay that was padded to make the page count minimum.

Details:
The game is pretty well done. The art assets are fine. I like the idea of non-corruption generally wholesome relationship building.

But sweet monkey jeebus the repetition of dialog, specifically non-verbal cues throughout the game makes it nearly impossible to sit through, much less enjoy.

My prime example is the sheer volume of "*Smiles*/*smiles*" in the game.

A quick search through the rpy files shows that is is written out in dialog no less than 23,800 times!!!!
If people knee-jerk smiled at the end of nearly every sentence like this game would lead you to believe, you would run away from the obvious serial killers in the room.

Get an editor in on this project. Severely cull the non-verbal cues, and tighten up the dialog in general to make it flow better and not feel like copy/paste bloat. The game will be much better overall if it was sent through several rounds of revisions and culling of redundant dialog sections.

The game in question presents a highly wearisome experience, with dialogue that tends to repetitively surface across an array of tedious scenes. The protagonist is perpetually apologizing for insignificant misunderstandings, while all female characters are stereotypically saddled with some form of irrational issue and an unfounded lack of self-confidence. This narrative structure can be exhausting for players, potentially limiting the game's broad appeal.

NEW review on v0.10.8:

He did it... he REALLY did it....
Managed to get a 5 star game all the way down to 1 star.
Dev isn't learning anything at all - again an update with ONLY Mom+Sis content like in every update before.
If you call the previous updates as "boring" you may have to invent some new words to describe THIS update then.

I had at least SOME small hopes, it somehow could get better by adding at least ONE other girl than the worn old sluts (Mom + Sis). I may have considered about to hold back to downgrade my review, but as you see, everything is getting worse.
Time to give the lowest possible rating because of boredom, and finally deinstall this crap.
SADLY - because not so long time ago i REALLY loved this "game" - which is now obviously only a milking machine for the last fanboys who are for unkown reason still happy to play the same crap over and over again.

NEW review based on version 0.10.7:

I removed 1 star from previous review, as nothing really changed. Even though i had a conversation with the dev, where i tried to proof my point, he did it again.
The most boring update so far!
The new Laura content isn't really worth to mention (half of it is Gina cockblocking and some lore).
Then again M+S content is nothing new. The same boring scenes as usual, but this time it's even worse:
Mom and Sis have BOTH their weekend content at 13:00 for "Knock", "Peep" and "Enter" -> Which means you need 6 times "13:00 weekend", but there are just 2 days (sat + sun). So by simple math, you have to grind through 3 complete weeks just to see all scenes (which are extremely short though), where all other content of this update had been finished within 4 days.
Basically, if you play this game for 30 minutes, you have seen it all, the rest is rinse and repeat (new level, "Knock", "Peep" and "Enter", level up, repeat)

OVER and Over and OVER again and again and again and again.

Overall i get more and more the impression, the dev ran out of ideas and is just trying to stretch the game as far as possible by adding unintersting content just for the sake of it, to keep the game running and the money coming in. (at least i personally feel like that)

I have the feeling, the next update will then make me to drop the rating all the way down to 1 star - if it continues to happen like it did since the past few updates - i guess
(just a gut-feeling)

version 0.10.6

Ratings:
Start of the game and first updates (1st half) = 4 stars
Current situation (game getting boring and repetitive) = 2 stars

=> OVERALL rating: imho 3 stars

In detail:
What started to be a great game, turned into a bad one (NOT saying that it's a bad game in general overall-> more like the recent content over the last few updates is "bad"). It's way to repetitive. Of course Mom and Sis are main Li, but there is a point where it gets more boring than interesting. Instead of including all the side characters and get some variety, every update feels the same.:
MC fucks mom - MC fucks sister - endless senseless dialogues - repeat.
Every new scene is worn out and has been there multiple times before, even the used renders fell like seen before hundred times and being simply re-used.
There has been a time where it was worth to play new updates asap, but it turned into a boring rinse-and-repeat. This is ongoing for several updates right now, and the point is reached where you just get the FEELING that the dev only wants this going on for the sake of it, and stretches the game as much as possible without any new ideas. I know the dev, and it's not like that, but still the feeling is there.

The Low quality version of this game is 7GB........

Dude. There is WAY too much fucking dialogue in this for a sex game. If the developer focused less on writing and more on actual gameplay, it would mean less images, therefore reduce unnecessary file size. It's as though they're trying write a book. The dev needs to think: Quality vs. Quantity. For what good exists in this game it is not worth reading essays of pointless dialogue, we want to play a game, not read a book. Maybe the dev should consider writing a novel?? Would make more sense.

Story is good especially with the side characters
The side characters story is actually better then the story with your mom and sister
Grind is not so bad forthe mom and sister you can just cheat the stats in game to the latest content
Lot of characters
lot of sex scenes from you're own grandma to classmates and teachers of your sister and colleagues of your mom
Concept of the game is good
no bugs
renders are good
Only thing i don't like that there is some side characters wich still have no sex scenes But talk about doing it
Would love to see more updates about side characters

This has been out for almost 6 years now and has little to show for it.

Definition of grindfest....many scenes take 200-300 clicks to finish the conversation. Would certainly help if they used more than 1 short sentence per text box.

MC is a real sleezeball who tells a girl she is the most important thing in the world to him..etc.. then turns around and says the same thing to the next girl in the room, then promises the same to the girls next door and wants to move in with them, then goes to the bar and tells the girl there that he doesn't have anyone special and isn't in a relationship. Unfortunately you can't change that behavior as there aren't any choices...you just have to do that with every girl in Sweet Affection.

When you 'finish' a scene and go to a different room, everyone acts like it's a new day and they haven't seen you before. ie...you can have a scene/convo w your mom in the bedroom, but goto the kitchen and she acts like you just came home...

Gas station, no content added yet..... after 6 years?
The other few places you can access have very minimal content.
Phone still under development?....after 6 years?

Graphics are very entry level and very amateurish. It should have improved in the last 6yrs....
Still bright and sunny at the beach at 10pm.
Not very many locations to access.

Characters are terrible looking and just the same old boring stock images many other games use.
Movements/animations look weird and gross....like when kissing.

Finally, there's NO WAY this game should be over 20Gb in size..... 7 or 8Gb for the compressed version...
Just insane.....

Befor I get started, I just want to make a statement, that I'm here to look for some games to fap with. So you can consider me a desperate fapper.
Now let's talk about this game. It's got amazing size, which can make people like me think this game is promising. However, the quality of the pics are excesively high, I dont know if it's of 4k cuz I do not have a monitor good enough. And out of the hundreds of scenes this game provides, you have got only few sex scnenes (I'm not into foreplay scenes so I dont take them as sex scenes). And most of the scenes you can enjoy, are those kissing scenes. And you can have tons of text to read.
I mean, Im here to find a game to fap with, and sorry I just fapped my brain out so I lost my ability to read too much, but does a game really need so many dialogue to be a good one?
Plus, accroding to some lines I've read with my tiny brain left, girls in this game just meet the MC and they got a feeling on him. Really? I've only read this kind of plot in some games where the MCs have the power of a inccubus or a succbus is helping them out.
Not a good game to fap with imo.

This had potential to be 5 stars but man it has issues that could drag it down to 2 tbh so lets see why?

Pros-

• Pretty good renders.
• Wide range of women to enjoy
• Most of the women have many scenes
• Good variety in types of scenes
• A fun camera texting feature for more content
• The money grind is easy to overcome early on
• Theres easy to access guides to find new scenes

This is pretty much all you need for a 5 star game. BUT unfortunately we are dragged down by

• WALLS of text. Like my man, we do not need an essay to read for a simple conversation
• Walls of text
• walls of text
• walls of text

Another minor issue is the time system. What I mean is there is an hourly clock which moves the NPCs to different location, gives different dialogues with different scenes. It makes it a bit tedious to see them all and to revisit scenes. Imagine saying oh I loved the cowgirl scene for character x, gotta go at 8pm to catch it.oh no it was only available at 7pm, now I only get the doggy scene. Just simplify it to morning, afternoon, night maybe with a few more for early, late. For each time of day give us the clear choice of what we see and you can make it so much easier for everyone.

I have only have 2 words to describe this game... Boring Grindfest. The only saving grace of this game are some of the models, but that's it. Generic music, generic boring animations and no sound effects make it even more boring. I can understand the dev wants a buildup of relations, but with the MC being a complete simp acting like a 12 year old seeing boobs for the first time is even worse.

The dialogue needs a complete overhaul from the beginning. Half the time my brain hurts just trying to understand the spelling and grammar. The other half I skip through with a lot of scenes just repeating themselves.

I understand the focus of the game is on the 2 "relatives" living in the same house of the MC, but with very little story progression of the other characters in the game since it started is pretty bad. The game should just be renamed House Affection. You basically have all these separate games combined into one big game with all the different storylines. Unfortunately, it will never be a harem game.

Maybe in another 3 to 4 years with true progression of the other characters in the game might make it worth playing. And the so called "events" are so short they don't even seem worth the time of doing them.

Solid game, ok animation, bit long on the dialogue. I find it funny that some people decided to rate a game 1 star then write an essay about it. The time it takes to write that you'd find a game you like