Unity - Taffy Tales [S5 v1.07.3c] [UberPie]

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

It's an alright game. Art is pretty good, but sometimes it is too comical. The multiple personality storyline is good, something I haven't seen before and it makes for good writing. The NTR potential for this game is high because, without the evil personality, MC is such a cuck. The gameplay isn't amazing but it isn't too grindy like other similar games.

This game is very well made. Personally, I love it. Since I'm a NTR fan, i really appreciate if this game have a NTR(netorare, netorase) route in the future, if not it's still a grreat game to me but a little sadder )))

It's not for everybody but I've always loved this game. It goes very down and dirty at times, but stil manges to be funny and a little meta, at points. Great art, great everything. There are a few bugs but that's not a serious issue. Reccomand it.

really good game love the art and the story i hope to see this game grow more and more love how the MC dominates all of them especially the mom and clara but i have one problem no unfortunately no incest patch and there is some bugs but over all great game loved it all the way and the hint system really helps 95% of the time

First of all, though I give a three star review, I do recommend this game. But there are a couple things to bear in mind:

1. Despite being a VN, and thus depending heavily on good writing (as opposed to gameplay), it has numerous spelling and grammar issues throughout most of the content, except for the latest update (68.2 at the time of this writing), which actually seems mostly fine. Until the earlier writing is edited for errors, I can't make this a four star game.

Another issue with the dialogue is that the names of the MC and the two women he lives with (classic landlady and roommate situation) can be changed at the beginning, but often (very often, actually) the dialogue just puts in their original names anyway. Also, it seems the names are supposed to accommodate incest, but if you put in their relation nicknames, not only the MC, but every other character in the VN refers to them that way. It's awkward to see the landlady referred to as Mom by everyone in the game. But if you stick with Mary, often times it will be confusing because later on, characters refer to her as "your Mary" or the MC refers to her as "my Mary".

2. Trap content. There is a warning about trap content, and the game always makes it optional, and in itself that would be fine. Unfortunately, even when saying no to trap content, the game's dialogue seems to assume that the player has played through the trap content. And you can't just say no the first time and be done with it--no, the game asks you every single time there is a trap scene if you want to play it through. In the latest update (68.2 at time of this writing), it even ends with a double ask, where you decline, and then it asks again if you want to decline, with the warning you will miss a lot of content. From what I gather, about three scenes worth of content is cut out from this one decision. I can only imagine all the references to this content the player will have to endure in the dialogue of the coming updates. It's super fucking annoying, and the game's dialogue from the character's alter ego is always trying to push the player to play through the trap content. Not cool.

Setting aside the above two issues, the game is actually great. The 2D style is original and good. Animations, though without sound, and basically just two images flashing back and forth, are still a good experience because the art style and quality is just that good. Posing and angles are generally non-generic. In general, the visual art is definitely a very big plus for this VN.

Music is generally good, nothing super special, but also not something I've heard elsewhere, so it feels original, and always appropriate to the type of scene in which it plays, whether non-lewd scene or lewd scene.

The dialogue and narration, setting aside the issues I mentioned above, is very good and creative: varied diction, sentence structure, and good description. Sometimes the written description is at odds with what is depicted in the visual art though, but usually it's not egregious.

The story is enjoyable and entertaining, going through various twists and turns, with different character story lines developing and then merging, while an ever-present mystery slowly unfolds. Well-told and well-developed, thus far.

Another big plus is that the game doesn't really have grind in it. The player doesn't have to constantly replay scenes over and over again to build up relationship stats. Most scenes are unique, and what grind there is in the VN (for making money, for example) is easily bearable.

This VN is a work in progress, and for some reason there are lots of things that can be clicked on that will say that whatever it is, is a work in progress. The first couple times it happens, it seems okay, but eventually there turn out to be so many of these undeveloped objects/locations, it's just weird. You'll just have to accept it, even though the dev should probably just make all that clickable stuff unclickable until he actually does something with those objects and locations.

So all around, this game is worthy of trying out, but be aware the dialogue and narration needs to be cleaned up, and there is the constant pushing of the trap content to watch out for (unless you are into that sort of thing).

The amount of content in this game is insane. Excellent artwork, unique. This is a game (so far) focused on corruption, don't expect too much vanilla romance. Nothing to complain here, nothing. I just wish luck to the devs.

Taffy Tales is in my opinion a very flawed experience, first off is the fact it's made in Unity but honestly it could easily be made in Ren'Py with how it's structured, nothing of real value would be lost.

It has a map with locations that have doors and stuff, but honestly I'd prefer it if I could just have a box with characters or questslines to click on because the whole moving around and the time mechanic all feel like ways to extend the game time artificially which just bogs down the experience.

When it comes to the art it's pretty damn good overall, it's a unique artstyle to compared to other games out there which works in it's favor.

The story is not very compelling to me, I don't particularly dislike it but I don't like it either, you go to school, start getting into relationships with characters (mostly women) and uncover some things going on with them and the town, in the end it's a harem game though.

The characters are quite numerous although a large part of them are at this moment in time very much underdeveloped but I do find most of them interesting so that's a positive, the dialogue for the characters is decent but nothing that makes me go "whoa".

The MC is a weird one, he's two wildy different people as he got an evil persona after an accident that just wants to bang chicks no matter the cost, the good persona is mostly a goody-two shoes who's quite the whimp.
Also he has a horse sized dick so that's something.

One other thing is that this game got censored thanks to the change in Patreon's rules sometime ago, this clearly does have an impact on the content of the game and will so for the foreseeable future.

In general the updates have a long time apart to but the updates are at least of a decent size as far as I've experienced.

CONCLUSION
I have things I like and things I dislike about the game, the most glaring one being the slow/grindy gameplay while the most positive one definitely being the artwork.
It's a 3/5 for me, hopefully it can improve in the future.

The art is the only redeemable feature of this story- and while it is incredibly hot the rest of the narrative totally ruins it.

The plot is a mess. The MCs two halves is a combination of the two worst male MC tropes in H games. A wimpy pathetic virgin juxtaposed with a manipulative asshole.

The MC treats the kindest characters with the least amount of care.

I wanted really hard to like this game because the art is so incredibly hot-
but the game was awful.

Milking way too hard.
Game has started so many plot lines but very few of them actually has actual development and the updates are almost never on schedule, in fact several months late.
original art is a plus point

Version Played: 0.47.5a

Games with original art always get an extra look from me and TT has some really beautiful art in a style somewhat reminiscent of Boris Vallejo or George Kamitani's when it comes to the over exaggeration of the body proportions. I can see how that can be a turn-off for some, but I personally think it's very sexy. The story setting is the common school boy who bangs 'em all, which, coupled with the above, draws some comparisons to Summertime Saga right down to the alliterative title. Thankfully, the game distinguishes itself with both its art and its willingness to go to some darker places than SS ever did. To that last point, I find the game gets a bit too cruel at times and BDSM is decidedly not one of my fetishes, but it's never so much so that I'm repulsed.

Positives:
+ Great art!
+ Gameplay is generally point and click in an old school adventure game style, which helps break up monotony
+ Good representation of different ages and body types of the ladies (though all remain conventionally attractive)
+ BUSH!

Negatives:
- Currently only the Evil Side is implemented, so if you're not a fan of forced/BDSM/dark content, the game might not be for you at this stage
- Sometimes character art in sex scenes looks substantially different from the normal art
- Minigames can get a little tedious

Dig this? Try!: Summertime Saga, Sex Note, Waifu Academy
Note to Devs: I know that the main focus is probably finishing the dark side atm, but looking forward to seeing the Light side as well.