Unity - Taffy Tales [S1 v1.0.35 Redux] [UberPie]

Best summarised as an inferior version of Summertime Saga, with significantly worse art and gameplay, and incredibly bloated writing.
Ah, and lots of (sexual) violence and rape directed in women, frequently under the effects of drugs whilst doing so.

Made the mistake of playing this on mobile, and one might think in Summertime Saga props were small, this game takes the cake by a mile. There are a ton of small items sitting at very sharp angles as to convey horizontal rest, making the attempted gathering a real trial and error.
Outlining is further inconsistent, with enviromental objects seemingly outlined as to signal interactivity, despite not being so. The vica versa is also true.

Gameplay is rather monotonous, with little in way of variety, usually consisting of get x then go to y, or meet with character at z location.
Many hours in I came across only two minigames, neither particularly original, or great for that matter.

Not great is also what the writing is, being ludicrously bloated.
Being a fan of text based and reading in general I am not one to skim writing, but fucking hell is this thing a creamy pastry somehow filled with 90% air. I don't remember the last time I saw this amount of needless dialouge with the self, fialing to convey meaningful information or advance character development.
Large portions are spent on spewing insults at one another and swearing, which of course all women present find secretely seductive.
Not to mention the MC devotes significant energy to the exploitation of the disadvanteged, whether those come in the form of financial instability, drug dependency or social status; or just downright drugging and rape. Frankly the subject matter is depressing and concerning to be of joy to some.
No points for creativity either, as we have all the stereotypical characature present; with MC gaining distinctive identity disorder (usually referred to as schizo) after an injury of sorts, rich girl with parental figure issues, black guy secretely dealing with drugs, monetarily adventagious male being a cuck and so on.

The worst aspect by a mile is the art. In most cases it is comically bad, coming so from not bad rendering or anything alike, rather anatomy and form proportions.
Women have a borderline anorexic body, with freaksihly long limbs and neck. Attachment of large breasts onto these frail bodies makes them all look all the more entertaining, but certanily not as intended. Quite a few have their breasts as perfectly rounded masses on their chest without any natural curvature, eliciting laughter the first time I saw it. I cannot fathom how this terrible anatomy can come to be from someone who's clearly adept at rendering.
Despite being visually focused, art has a tendency to change drastically (presume to be different artists) between scneses, particuarly for intercourse, but on ocassion changes mid scene. These styles are quite different as well, with some relying havily on line work whilst others use none of it.
Further worth mentioning some strange design decisions, such as the map being ortographic with locations only placed along two roads, resulting in a massive green void of grass in the middle, and the look of a poorly planned SimCity block.

Bugs were plentiful, with a number of soft locks, menu non-interactivity or items failing to show up, fortunately most were possible to clear with a reload, but still not ideal for budget of this size.

Overall, this game comes to second compared to alternatives, failing to contribute anything more than rape and violence.
I am genuenyl surprised for the amount of attention and funding it managed to keep over the years.

I'd also advise the degenerative nature of the project be declared more visibly, but that's here nor there.

It's not the most polished piece of pornographic gaming, but it has a little of everything for everyone, and it is still being updated. It isn't a full release build yet of course, but you can help by going to their patreon.

let it be 4. somewhere inbetween 'above average' and 'good' [068.2a] and as some bonus to battle some ntr haters with few stars.

the good
-developed /with content
-qol (cash-stats cheats, ingame tips, minigame skipping)
-no crucial bugs (havent run into any)


soso
-saves are incompatible (i play for the first time and dont care rn, regular followers prolly use a cheat to get the save of a previous version ending but what about those who play it occasionally and dont follow up quick enough )
-no teleport to your room to avoid some extra clicking
-text skipping is at decent rate but not insta-renpy like (cannot help myself)
-ingame tips are often vague (especially if you dont read dialogues). u can run into by chance or figure out quickly about 2/3 of it ; for another 1/3 searching the thread is advisable.
-some quests are troublesome (find becca. for that dont forget to 'try to fap' in the stall and follow the quest chain to have 2 french lessons, after that her house door is interactable)
-later mechanics with picking npc/mary feels unnecessary overall. mostly mary has only one action so id prefer some pop-up event instead of extra clicking&skiping: walking-going somewhere-action-going back to sleep-skipping her thoughts before sleep (semi-grind) ; also once she took the sunday slot i needed, so id opt for the ability to change npc 24/7 (as mostly with mary it feels like waste of day) or for day+1 /-1 cheat

the bad the ugly - ART
- big boobs (meh) and ugly big boobs (shame shame shame!)
- some visual inconsistencies & dispropotions (incl rather abnormal arses and shapes) especially during sex scenes.
- mc has horsy dick sometimes expanding to rocket launcher. (so it is more like monster girl boy fantasy game which means rip all the sex scenes and any possible immersion)
- sometimes art feels animeish-hentaish. (not an expert)
- no fem npc face is good enough.
all milfs look like being on drugs.
no gial is cute and catchy (well natalie from the shop and the redhead gial seems ok - but almost no content. all the others id range from okeish to tolerable )

it is kinda upsetting as it feels like that artist is capable of having much better drawings (black stud and principal are kinda tracish & somewhat realistic but who cares; some occasional shots and angles of fems are quite alright, some attention to faces details and shades) so i have no idea why not to make more realistic and-or more attractive fems .

This game has good art, ok stories and ok gameplay. It's basically a VN with the classic tacked-on point and click puzzles and day/night cycle. They're all easy and don't get in the way that much. The reason to play this game is if you like the art, which tbf is really good. But the stories that lead to the art are often underwhelming and not compelling at all. They swing from generic (rich girl being stuckup until you fuck her senseless) to just downright mismanaged, specifically with the qt next door neighbour who's relationship progresses extremely fast, going from your high school crush to a masochistic slut in like 3 scenes. Not saying that's necessarily a bad thing for a porn game, but, in terms of having a character that has a cohesive character, it doesnt rly work. At least for me.

That isn't to say the stories don't serve their purpose, because they do, they are there to shove some porn into your face, but beyond that, they're very forgettable.

It's a 4/5 stars because the art is really good, and the annoying elements listed above aren't *that* annoying.

Games good and better than many peersonally i dont udnerstand why people gives low rating i think 3 is okay but 1 and 2 is insult for this game yeah i know theres problems here and i know NTR not liked by mand plus pussy mc personality but still art is good some characters good many sexy scenes good yeah some characters and scenes not that good and characters too like some characters act like moron idiot or even they have no power or anything like that they act like bossy but still i dont think this game deserves less than 3.5 .

Yeah NTR is big dislike for me too i know people dont like that but i dont like stories where mc stay pussy coward while girls get banged other than that meh dont care.

I cant say sure but maybe my score can go down with future updates like mc becoming retard or that one stupid character still acting like boss and fucking other girls other than that i dont care.

For last i really wish author not adding NTR or cuck scenes to main story that always ruined by them and games believe me i play western and japanese games just add them as side stories or if stories.

Game version: 0.68.2a

Overview
Beautiful artwork and well-written characters and on top of that interesting main plot. If your main fetish maledom or corruption, than I strongly recommend to at least to try this game for 30 minutes.+


Graphic
Outstanding art, you can see it in game locations, characters, backgrounds and sex scenes. There is blink animation in standing pose, but in sex scenes there is only alternation between 2 pictures, I know it sounds quite bad, but actually it is well produced and better than full animations in some games.

Fetishes and sex scenes
Many moons ago author promised 2 separated path: Normal and NTR, but 3 years after and there is only 1 mini NTR scene, so further I will describe only available path now. Lead fetish is maledom with accompanying fetishes like: bdsm, exbitionism, slave, sex toys and netori. Worth noticing trap content, which is skippable. Sex scenes are absolutely astonishing, author undoubtedly knows, that hotness of situation is a half of success of sex scene and other half is distributed between art and dialogues. For examples of such I can refer to these: Loving mom of your best friend sucks under the table, while you casually talk with him or MC use his "landlady" as carpet for his feet.

Characters development
Each character has an unique temper and while you corrupting them your interactions with them changes too. Some can be corrupted and fucked very easily, others can deny your requests and after that you only want try harder to corrupt them. But this department has a problem, characters can drastically change their relations with others without proper reason for that. Yeah, I know sometimes this is because of hiring new writer, other times because of patreon TOS, but it just confusing.

Story
You play as barely legal shy boy living with caring "landlady" and bratty "roommate", your father is dead (most dangerous role in porn games, amirite?) and you are only man in the house, also you go in school full of hot girls. Then after accident you start hearing another voice in your head, more sadistic and self assuring, and after that it start corrupt women and changing boy. Also there are secret high society, occult things and chance to know whom your father really was.
Anyway story is good for porn game with this kind of fetishes, so I recommend you to try follow it.

Gameplay
Game design is similar to Summertime saga with addition minigames. Stats and money systems absolutely useless, so you can save your time and simple use cheatcode or modify savefile. The game is basically linear, this means if you want to get scenes with one character and completely ignore another then I can tell, that you just can't do it and you will need press good old ctrl for skipping text. Also there are in-game walkthrough, which is quite hard to understand sometimes and good gallery, where is almost all scenes that in a game, except short ones.

Horrible dialog. I mean, insufferable. MC is a typical evil/good schizo, but good version is a total goober and evil version is a rapist. Both are detestable. There's so much rape/sexual assault in this "game". Grotesque oversized boobs and penises. Thinly veiled racism. Very little guidance as to what to do. "Story" is disjointed and nonsensical. Bad grammar and spelling. Only "mini-game" encountered so far is a tedious and not at all fun click at the right time type game. The art is okay, but poorly utilized. Three hours in and nothing worth fapping to.

Beautiful artwork, lots of content (as of v0. 68.2a) all kinds of different characters with cool stories and fetishes for all tastes. Only con is that some characters get unlocked only pretty late in the game, kinda wish I, could pursue them since day 1. Overall best 2D game here.

great game remind me of princess trainer also i love that story gets more deeper and there's good drama in story so overall really great game
and also i am gald it's not confusing as other point and click games

Feels like its trying to copy summertime saga ,which would be great if the dev could pull it off, the game is extremely linear, and you can't just go after the characters you are interested in, also it is still full of bugs even in the intro.

A slow buggy mess. The art style is passable at best and laughably bad at worst (the women are largely grotesque inflated monsters and the main characters penis is the size of a small child). A bizarre obsession with fetishising making someone a crossdressing twink and then not raping him completely when vulnerable.

Why this gets any money or attention on patreon honestly reminds me of suspiciously wealthy gay furries

Okay. Let's talk!
For a loooooong time I didn't want to play this game. I found the graphic style, and all that cuck shit off-putting.
In the end, there's a lot of NTR, but you're the bull ( otherwise, you're warned you're gonna get cuck
and you can avoid it).
In the end, the graphical style is easy to get used to ( and yet I'm not a fan of big monstrous dicks and gaping holes ). There is also a trap, but you can choose to avoid it.
The scenario is mostly based around corruption. It's quite dark, the MC goes far in his plan, it's vanilla, but not far from deep festish.
In the end, I kind of regret not having played this game before!

Taffy Tales (v0.68.2a) is buried under so much tedium and bloat, I find it difficult to recommend the game to anyone. The character designs are nicely done, generously endowed and proportioned, all carried by a visually appealing 2D art style. However, most of the drawings are traced and reassembled from other sources, and this leads to noticeable inconsistencies in the art; characters vary in looks, and often the same poses and renders are recycled in a mix-and-match manner. This choice results in serious limitations in how the sex scenes are depicted, in terms of what positions are shown and in what order, which specific girls, and so on.

The gameplay aspect is pointless. The minigames, text choices, and the switching of character perspectives serve no purpose other than to frustrate the player and artificially lengthen the game. There's a code to bypass the minigame aspect, which makes their inclusion all the more baffling. The music is throwaway, played on a loop. The songs lack any emotional or visceral impact, and are completely disconnected from the scene.

The writing is easily the worst part. When the script isn't riddled with typos and misplaced bits of code, the writer desperately gropes for comedy in recent events. The humor is juvenile and nonsensical, and the characters disappear as soon as they are introduced (in the case of the neighbor and every classmate besides Danny and Becca) or neglected (Gerda, Chantelle, and Tiffany). The character development which took place with Clara (her deadbeat husband) and Priscilla (her suicide attempt) are forgotten and meaningless in the grand scheme of things. The dialogue is wildly inconsistent. MC turns into Sinatra at some point, calling the girls in his harem "doll". It's more plausible with Henry calling people "sport" since he's a scion of high society, but why does Red talk like he's part of the Rat Pack? Unintentional or not, the script is sloppily written, and the writing is unrestrained in a bad way. There's no buildup and payoff to any of the progression between the relationships, a discontinuity arising from the lack of any character arcs. Every character is interchangeable and defined exclusively by their relation to the MC (friend, family, or rival) and nothing else.

Every sex scene is written the same way too. The descriptions are stock, and boilerplate, and match the same redundant feel of the gameplay. Eyes must roll white during a female orgasm, no exceptions! Worse, the ratio of the dialogue to the images is five to one, and the writing hardly match the actions in the images. The potentially compelling aspects of the premise, the Red/Blue split between MC's dominant and submissive personalities, is abandoned for dumb comedy asides. Red's a bull and a psychopath, and Blue's a cuckold and an easy mark, a pushover. There's no nuance in the psychology of the characters, nor is there anything sexually stimulating or interesting about them. The rape, corruption and blackmail aspect is played for cheap laughs, and the interactions between the two selves are void of any tension or seriousness. The stilted writing is at odds with the serious tone implied in the beginning, and with the fetishes introduced later on.

Taffy Tales is undergoing a "remaster" process; a telltale sign the game is severely lacking in direction and new ideas. Despite the yearly pacing, the development process has the feel of improvisation. Nothing is thought out or planned in advance except for which character gets fucked next. The developer should focus solely on producing the art, and take a minimalist approach to other aspects relating to the game.

Taffy Tales scratches a unique itch for me, specifically concerning the corruption route. The girls are adorable and have excellent art. I am especially fond of Clara. I haven't tried the NTR route, and I'm not sure I will either. Just a bit too jarring to see the situations flipped so drastically. But I'm sure it's well done, considering the quality of the overall game. The interactions between the MC and his alter ego are great, especially later on in the story when there's more of an understanding between them.

Sure, there are technical issues as well as grammar mishaps, but the content more than makes up for it as far as I'm concerned. This stuff can always be fixed down the line.

If you're looking for a fun power fantasy after seeing tons of hesitant MCs, this is your game.

In terms of kinks and story, this game's got it all. Love the chemistry between red and mc. A LOT of mistakes that breaks immersions such as spelling, wrong speech bubble (name and color) and sometimes doesnt register MC's chosen name and went to default. Also, sometimes the images/animation doesnt line up. One scene you naked, next scene you wearing clothes. Also, sometimes, the "hint" doesnt really help you when the correct answer is tiny af and hard to find, causing frustration and furious googling. But if you can ignore the tiny mistakes (which isnt hard to), its truly a wonderful game. 2 stars off for the mistakes but extra star back based on story.

This game is awesome.

If you like summertime saga, chances are, you'll like this one as well.
Outside of some avoidable NTR and some of the characters not making much sense, there is a problem with the quest book on how vague it is, for what you should do next.

There's a lot of characters to fuck, a lot of fun to be had, and a stereotypically ridiculous story/backstory rearing its head in the background.

The other problem you might find is that the parts where you play as you/your mom aren't great. This happens later on in the game, and interesting a gimmick as it is, its kind of frustrating.
Another problem this game has had is difficulty in advancing time in the day easily. Although you can always pay a visit to the stalls.

While i can admit the art may not be for everyone; I truly believe Taffy Tales is worth the time investment even in its current unfinished state.

I dont even know where to start really. Whether it be the characters, the plot, or just the scenes themselves, everything in this game (while a little rough) is in the upper echelon of wegs. The mysteries of the town, Blue and Reds growth as characters, all of the plotlines around the girls, really everything this game does is impeccable.

I should note that for this little review, i played the non-NTR route as im not a fan of NTR myself, and although there is one spot where NTR is optional on the route, you can still completely ignore it and move on.

The good

Taffy Tales has some of the best detailed 2D art I've seen from an independent game in some time. It's a mix of Reinbach's work that is actually more detailed, providing a very interesting mix of purely Western over-blown proportions with some faint Japanese influence- especially in earlier versions and early CG's you encounter. While a lot of the women are overtly busty, super-wide hips, etc.. There's a great deal of variation that makes each female character unique not just in one or two quirky ways, but quite distinct from one another.

If games like this are weapons, this one is a minigun- it fires so many different fetishes and kinks at you that, even if many of them miss for you, it's bound to hit a few of your preferred kinks in a big way, which allows you to skip past or forgive when the game hammers on certain kinks that are not your cup of tea.

The town overview is comfy, simple, and navigation around is very easy. Although the game itself doesn't really require an over-world map in my opinion, it gets the job done and its only a handful of clicks until you are where you want to be.

The writing quality varies. The description of scenes, providing the minute details not captured by the CG itself, is almost always excellent. There are many, MANY egregious typos that have yet to be fixed, but in more recent versions the dialogue and descriptions are cleaned up nicely- but they did not retroactively go back, as far as I can tell, and fix prior typos. By far the worst writing is for the Main Character himself.

The game's artstyle is so unique, and the setting so bizarre, that it easily towers over many other amateur games in the same vein.


The Bad.

In attempting to shoot so many kinks and fetishes, the game often feels like it's moving at breakneck pace. Interactions with women are heated when it's on the docket, but as soon as you finish with many of the characters you will never see them again. There are a few exceptions to this, such as Becca and Priscilla, but many of the girls are dropped almost as quickly as you pick them up. You'll have to make generous use of the CG/Scene gallery to check out past exploits.

The writing for the Main Character is contentious, to say the least. I completely understand where the developer is trying to go with the 'good conscious' and 'bad conscious' angle of the game, where your MC is struck by a car and this awakens an alter-ego that can best be described as Marquis De Sade. Basically, the only fetish the 'bad conscious' part of the MC isn't up for is murder and necrophilia, everything else seems to be fair game. Blackmail, rape, sadism/masochism training, urination, implied incest, all of it is on the table for the 'bad conscious' MC.

This opens up a great opportunity for replay- you can, in theory, have the two consciouses compete with one another. Good MC might be the romantic love-maker for vanilla-esque content where the Bad MC opens up the plethora of kinks and whacky sex. This is possible for a single scene encounter with Becca, a primary female interest, but that's it. 99% of the game is the Bad Conscious MC taking over the Good Conscious MC's entire life. The writing for these encounters, meant to be comedic, instead after a very short while comes off like an afterthought. The Good Conscious will always capitulate and the Bad Conscious is the #1 driver of the story. Because of this, you have no idea what the MC is going to do next. You have no real power to make decisions at this stage, you're just along for the ride. It's more of a 'kinetic erotica' game in that aspect, where you just drive one direction- forward into fetish town.

Due to this, the hint/quest system in this game is a joke. The hints/tips provided give you NONE of the basic hints: Who, What, Where, When, Why? Some quest hints are very detailed: Go to Claire's in the evening after you have 3 items from the Store. Perfect. Another Quest Hint: "it is time..." Time for what? Where? When? With Who? And Why? Good luck finding out, you need to click on every NPC in every location and burn through every dialogue option to find out.

The pacing of plot/story development is severely affected by this. You'll think you are finished with a character, only for them to reappear several hours later as if you had just spoken with them several seconds ago. Some characters that seem like they're on the cusp of dirty deeds just absolutely disappear, likely to be added in future updates, but with no real hint or explanation telling you such.

The build-up with certain characters is phenominal, with just the right amount of overt innuendo and seduction, but the pay-off for many of them goes way, way too deep into Marquis De Sade territory. The mother character, Mary, is the best example of this. Lots and lots of build up seems totally wasted because, rather than the good-conscious MC attempting any sort of reconcilation with his bad-conscious side at this point (some 70-80 days in-game-time) the mother character is treated like another bargain basement slut and treated as such the entire time.

Indeed, every woman is treated like a trashbin-living bottom-feeding ho. This kills the uniqueness of each woman, as the MC interacts with them all in the same manner- just holes to shag by any means necessary. Therefore you can't find any intriguing or nuanced content with the main love interests or with the implied incest- all the nuance is in the build up, and then totally thrown out the window once the taboo has been achieved. I believe this is largely the fault of the writing department.

The Mixed


Huge dicked MC's are dime a dozen. I get it, I understand why- I'm not adverse to one or the other, I'm here to observe and enjoy. But the MC's tool is thicker than a louisville slugger and nearly as long. It would likely kill most people. It's a detraction to me, not an attraction. I feel like this was done to the point of parodying other famous games such as Summertime Saga. In the end, 80%of the women encountered in this game make me think "God, you're going to hate when the MC bangs you."

I totally understand in the current development that static renders and CG's, rather than animation, make it far easier to generate modular content that lets the development team insert new dialogue and story-segments. Right now it's 99% BDSM/Masochism/Sadism/Forced Corruption. If that's your cup of tea you'll have an entire tea-pot to drink from here. If you can only handle that in short bursts, you will need to take a very long time to get through current content- it's all generated towards the bad-conscious MC being a totally soulless genuine psychopath. Once again, this borders, and often passes, the point of pure parody in execution. You should never take an erotica game too seriously (look at the BADIK thread for reasons why) but leaning so far into parody is also an issue.

TL;DR

Well detailed art that is unique from nearly everything else on the site and indeed in the genre. Touches a little into all sorts of fetishes and kinks. You have no self-agency in the game and the good/bad MC angle has all the opportunity for a dynamic playing experience but that opportunity is never seized upon. The artist is a genius and deserves every penny. The writer needs to get their shit together. There is no good flow of dialogue or pacing right now with any of the stories. The Good Conscious is written like a naive 11 year old and the Bad Conscious is written in such a way as to turn off everyone except the most hardcore of French Revolutionary Libertines- think 120 Days of Sodom without the murder.

The reason I give it 3 stars is because of the potential, the artwork, and the overarching setting. There's a real opportunity here to make a great game with good repeatability on return playthroughs, but right now it's a fast-fire-fuck-fest where the MC's morality and ethics would not be out of place in a post-apocalyptic carnal cannibal cult. I find myself rolling my eyes and sighing way more than I find myself chuckling or being titillated. The writer really needs to clean up their pacing, typos, and in my view add additional 'Good-Conscious' MC options to alter the general mood of many encounters, as most of it is filled with generic hardcore porn dialogue that wouldn't be out of step with Max Hardcore, Czech-Casting, or other porn-productions currently wanted internationally by INTERPOL. This is bizarre, as the descriptions of sex and the women are top tier, but the MC's dialogue and descriptions are frankly soul-killingly-disgustingly poor in their taste and execution.

Basically, this is a very classy looking game with a classless and tasteless MC/dialogue. A real juxtaposition, which has led to the currently juxtaposed rating of this game.

Art is great but the game is infuriating to play.

quest guides are actual shit.


Imagine thinking this type of quest hint is in any way meaningful or useful.

What is the point of this? Why am I looking up peoples posts on f95 to figure out what to do next?

This is straight up disrespectful to the player's time and energy as they have to waste time triggering flags they have absolutely no idea of to progress forward.

The plot is also a little disturbing with the insane narcissistic MC having straight up raping or breaching consent. This is considered good and beneficial to the MC's social standing.
Overall terrible plot that can be excused as a vehicle for the art which to be fair is well done and the only saving grace of this game.

Really like this update. I was expecting a bit more of Dany content, but i like what we had. Also liked the Stacy and i believe i'm curious to know why she's so special and how she discovered mc's phone number.

Art 5/5
Plot 4/5
Fetishes 4.5//5
Designs 4,5/5

Rate: 5/5