Ren'Py - Take Over [v0.72] [Studio Dystopia]

This game is a perfect example of “wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle.” My favorite characters are the mom and sister, and it’s like they’re intended to be used up in the first 30 minutes of playing. I kept waiting for their social media or behavior to change, but nothing did. If Katy becomes an exhibitionist/public use girl, wouldn’t she be a little sluttier on social media?

In a game like this, I would prefer fleshed out corruption of the characters over things that ridiculously amplify development time, like different body types for every single render.
Why not just have one alternate body type for each character? This would make the characters actually feel unique.

This brings me to my next point. All the characters feel exactly the same. When you’ve done one voyeur/public use/exhibitionist route, you’ve done them all. Why not give each girl a specific fetish and put more detail into their corruption process? And have girls’ behavior change after progressing through a course?

I played this game 2 years ago, and it feels like nothing has really changed. Other than the addition of new copy/paste side girls that I couldn’t get invested in. Why not add more content for the main girls of the game: Katy, Celia, and the boss?

honestly this Game defies expectations for what you assume would be some random Ren'py game, and reaches a lot just by being very well write and having interesting and entertaining characters all around.
I just hope that the Mind control elements return to play a role in the story, lately its been a bit missing. maybe in the future the main character can develop a new set of drugs with new effects?
also, I really hope that Pregnancy will come to the story soon enough

A part of me wishes the rating took into account when a game has a large majority of 3+star reviews, and either outright ignored or put a cap on the effect of 1-star reviews.
1 star means the game is pretty much unplayable and barely any work has been put into it, not that you dislike it and want your opinion to count as much as possible in the overall score. For instance I hate NTR games, I am aware I hate NTR games, and therefor I don't review games containing unavoidable NTR unless they are near-unplayable garbage or obvious cash-grab.

Anyways - Take Over is far from unplayable nor garbage as MaraTD has put a lot of love into this game, listens to feedback no matter if you're a Patreon or not, and takes constructive criticism in a very professional manner.
It has been interesting to watch the game's development from pretty much the beginning. Back then the basic idea of the game was semi-original, flawlessly executed the dystopian atmosphere through character interactions instead of spoon-feeding the player, had decent lewd content however the game-world quickly grew stale as the core game loop wasn't implemented.
As the months have passed he's slowly introduced new and varied characters, expanded their place in the game-world nicely, made sure to satisfy most perversions(While not stomping on Patreon's rules), and managed to nicely tie all of this into the core game-loop.

One thing I'll give the negative reviews - The early game is sort of grindy. However this is Ren'Py, there's nothing stopping you from either using the console or editing the game files, it is very straight forward unless you start editing facilities. Just be aware that you'll most likely skip over certain scenes with your housemates.

TLDR:
One of my personal top 5 due to its well executed world atmosphere, fairly consistent and developed(or developing) characters, plus a nice mix of mind control/lewd content, management/strategy, and story.
There isn't that many scenes worth repeating at the moment(MaraTD has promised this will change in the near future due to a stronger rendering-computer), but Take Over still manages to deliver content for many hours so the game doesn't suffer from it.

The only reason for me giving it 4 rather than 5 stars is due to MaraTD's QA. On one hand it is totally unreasonable to expect a single developer to adequately test all areas of the game for each patch at this point, however I am sure there's at least a few users both on Patreon/Discord and in this forum that would be happy to help out in exchange for early access.

So far, this is an absolute great game, with lots of things to do, many girls to corrupt, and plenty of fetishes too. Not to mention the great story of how you're building a resistance up against a corrupt government!

this game is really good tbh well for my taste it has a bit of everything I like about it and i am sure the creator is doing everything in his power and passion to make this game beautiful and complete show him some support aways keep your passion and keep making great games

Fun game. Really like Emma. Writing can be a bit wooden at times but other than that it's a decent game. Don't really have much else to say but apparently ratings need two hundred character text reviews as well so hopefully this will be enough to pad that out.

I waited until now to try this game, with high expectations.
The quality that I was expecting was instead replaced with a dull game, bad CG, boring characters, and nothing to be exiting about.
Sure, theres a story here and work behind it all, but the sandbox style and avoiding suspicions and using serum is getting old fast.
The girls changes clothes and attitude depending on how many serum u give them, but theres no transformation or progress, they just change immediately after they get the serum. that for me is ruining it all. I enjoy seeing the girl change, here I just see the result, more serum more slut. the gamestyle, to click around is not fun and eventually I just give as much serum I can until the girl is a analwhore and thats it, quit.

The game starts out interesting but quickly becomes boring. Even from the onset. Expect to grind in the beginning, especially to offset issues of a defective RNG (or psuedo-randomization) of events. Thus offsetting these situations results in an abnormal amount of grinding, especially to overcome certain things that arise in the game.

One event, the checkpoint, is an obvious resource stripper or time waster. One must either pay to lose an entire part of a day, or lose 3. Thus you either have to build income to help offset this or simply waste the time... which results in further drawing out activities or left in situations where your using sleep to skip as much time as possible to accomplish what task it is you desired or may be required per the game. Ironically I've had this scenario trigger for 5 consecutive days and completely cut me off from the primary means of income completely. Part of the serum grind to ensure I don't end up screwed results in no cash. And that grind is to accomplish tasks required. Thus a total of 7 days pass before the player is able to gain access to these areas.

Most other RNG events quickly become static, making them more annoying when they occur than not. And should the player blow through corruptions then early content is quickly missed while other variations continuously repeat.

As I said, boring. As mentioned previously, often characters that appear are then discarded to begin the process all over again. Thus there is no reason to have any attachment, nor are the repeatable scenes worth going back to after a certain point as they never change. Nor are a vast majority of older characters continued on. They just drop off.

At other parts there are a lack of choices that honestly make no sense; why is the player not able to corrupt other characters? Or manipulating them in some fashion? Any sense of actual scheming is removed to fulfill smaller niches or as an excuse for 'furthering' a plot.

It is also a lack of depth at manipulation with the character rising through the ranks in attempting to infiltrate areas that result in a lackluster experience. When engaging in such things one has to be a bit more cunning then dosing and fucking. While added systems and events are interesting in the beginning... they all become boring. They follow similar patterns while dropping off older systems for the new shiny. And these constant additions merely turn older intended systems into lackluster features that will rarely be touched as dealing with them becomes a larger pain to deal with from the development side. And thus moot to the player.

The game is going through a rough patch. The last I played through was v14, and I would give that particular release a 5 star review. Its definitely in my top three as a stand alone. I downloaded the latest version - v21 at the time of this comment. The Dev is currently experiencing computer troubles, and it shows in their work. There are a lot of missed opportunities and corners being cut as a result. The images are of increasingly of poorer quality to the point of multiple fully "snowed" out images - it gets bad . As you continue through the game it gets increasingly text heavy with less and less payoff. There are increasingly more and more scenes that "describe" what's going on while hovering either in a single pose or being off screened entirely. Very little animation in general - which is unusual for a 3D project, especially for one that has been ongoing for as long as this one has. The scenes are not 1 for 1 later in game, so if you don't enjoy certain fetishes your left out in the cold - this doesn't happen too often, but often enough to mention. Lastly the images tend to hide the action, even from the beginning, which would be my only critique of v14 - lots of boobs, faces, and backs. Very low ratio of visible penetration, creampies, and vagina - more so for some characters then others - its definitely there, but still a low ratio.

this one is very underrated, the dev try hard to please everyone with as many models ,body types,traits as they can , the general story is very good yet some event are too long with too much writing , i think that wasted time should be used working on the main girls (the one u can hire them ) dialogue and options , i think it is better to accelerate the story and finish the body types ,traits of the old girls before making new ones ..

Game version: [v0.21]

A neat story concept, but the convoluted gameplay systems and the shallow writing ultimately undercut it and make it feel unsatisfying.

I enjoyed some of my time with this game, but the lack of actual choices and the short, underwritten sex scenes make you wish there was a full version of this game.

Excellent game, cool setting, good characters, good story and use of mind control fetish. picks up the mantle of these types of games, if you liked the original lab rats game you'll probably really like this game.

Well fleshed out characters, complex and engaging plot, good visuals, steady development pace! Beyond hoping for a bit wider array of fetishes or shown body types, seriously couldn't ask for much more!

Review v0.16:

I can't believe I haven't reviewed this gem yet!

The game is set in a dystopian setting, reminiscent of the Soviet Union in some ways, including Slavic (but not all Russian) names. The game however is not set in the historical Soviet Union or any other nation. The premise is that there is an oppressive government which is against any form of lewdness. The MC is a brilliant scientist who discovers a mind control pill and uses it to gain control of any nearby female for sex (including dear Landlady and Roommate) but eventually realises that he can use his drug to mount a revolution.

What is great about this premise, is that although it is left to the player to decide how far he wants to take the corruption of everybody close to him, but at the same time there is an incentive to take it as far as possible. There is something strangely satisfying and exciting (but at the same time very wrong!) in placing your conservative landlady in a brainwashing machine and turn her into a willing prostitute.

Another one of my all-time favorite characters is the heavy-set romantic interest Emma, who is both a genuinely nice and perverted character. Later on, you may choose to change her body type, share her and undoubtedly much more in the future.

Some of this may lean to NTR but it's all optional and completely up to the player.

In the second half of the game so far (the revolution part) the game play becomes a bit complex because there are a couple of variables that you need to manage. You can also use the console cheats to skip this, if you so choose.

The visuals are pretty good in my opinion. Maybe there are better looking games, but this certainly does the job. More importantly, the visuals are very fitting for the story setting. The UI is customised quite a bit to fit the atmosphere of the game. This is something a lot of Ren'py devs overlook, but here it looks great.

Update
I'm lowering the rating slightly, my primary issue being that as the game has progressed it's felt more bloat than refined. It is still not a bad game and likely worth a try but I think it would have benefited from a simpler game system and a few fewer women in favor of perfecting what it had, adding to the fetishes it already had, etc.

Original Review
There's a lot to offer in this game and it's worth giving a try.

The renders range from decent to good, none are bad. Aesthetically and fap'ably good basically lol. The game play is fun and unique, the idea behind the game is executed really well in combination with it's adult themes. The application of transformation / body mod in it is one of the better around here and Patreon. It's got pretty much all the Ren'py features activated so it's smooth to play and console commands exist so you can currently control the grind level. It's had a decent record of save compatibility too and it sees frequent enough updates.

The only negatives I see are, it is getting a little complex as more features are added and there comes a point that could detract from fun. The transformation, while great, hasn't been updated in a long while so once you've done it a bit you see it all. Lastly while there is some diversity in the women, especially with being able to body mod them, there baselines have a lot of similarity. It does have a chubbier girl, one thicker black girl, and the occasional side character, but many of the core females (ie, Mom, daughter, work boss) are very similar body types to start. None of those are major things though, the good still outweighs the bad in this game by a large margin.

Overall a game worth playing. If you haven't ,give it a try and see what you think. It's got the makings of a five star game.

I rarely submit my opnion about a game but for that one i have to.
Firstly the story : i'm a big fan of narrative game and that one is very good ! you're not there only to fuck you also have allies and ennemies that you meet trough the storyline. Shrortly the story is very good appart the fact that it is linear but for the people who accept that it will be worht it.

Then the characters : all of them are interesting and to be honnest that game is very immersive thantks to each of the charaters and all of them are uniq in their own ways.
Only bad point is that the MC have one goal and that is to fuck so the danger you will face are thanks to more intelligent people who will see the potentials change that could bring your work.

I'll say it : try it and see if you like it !

Really great game. Most of these types of games have one system that doesn't change throughout. Even the games with decent stories get boring after a while. But this game is unique in that the system changes as you progress through the story. The plot is also really solid in my opinion, and the characters look really good. Its obvious that the developer put a lot of thought and effort in to this game. One of the best Ren'Py games I've ever played.

Plot 7/10
Renders 5/10
Quantity of renders 4/10
Gameplay 6/10

Good idea, but the realization of it is very mediocre :/ Renders are completely unattractive for me, but it's the matter of taste.

Anyway - IT COULD BE BETTER, but there are worst games here.

Overall score: 6/10

Excellent! Imaginative, original, mesmerizing. The entire Take Over "universe" should be worked on and expanded into a game with elements of complex strategy of taking over the city and the entire country via sexual corruption and institutional corruption. The political/strategy elements in this game are almost as interesting as sexual parts. In fact they are complimentary.

A great idea to build a story around, but I'm not quite sure the dev (or anyone) is capable of fulfilling it. You're in an almost utopian...distopian society. It seems like a mix of capitalism, socialism and communism... but the only bad things about it seem to be that there's censorship... and maybe the government is trying to mind control you. Apart from that everything seems just fine! The game hints at menace, but it isn't really developed to the point where you should be in fear of the government and even one of the rebels that you recruit says that she's fine with the way things are, she just wishes there was less censorship. So there seems to be a disconnect there and what this game really lacks is an antagonist because as far as I can tell, we are the bad guy. Which is fine, but there's not enough established, story-wise, to earn this, really.

Pros:

Kinky. There's lots of fun fetishes at play here.

Love the characters and their progression as you corrupt them, especially the sister. Having her salute you is just fucking adorable.

The story, as much as I think it won't deliver on its promise because it's too... odd... I do enjoy it, for what it's worth.

At its core, it's a game and a management sim, so there's non-sexual things to do to keep you invested, but at the same time it isn't that grindy.

Character diversity. Lots of great body types in this and the ability (potential ability) to modify characters to our liking is just awesome.

The aesthetic. Love the kind of 20s / 30s feeling of some of the characters.. the lab boss being the prime example.

Cons

As others have mentioned, the renders can leave something to be desired. There's far too many instances of blowjobs, for example, being the girl on her knees ready to suck a dick, rather than performing the act itself... which is annoying.

The story.... this may change, but right now the entire antagonistic aspect of the game is lacking and the main conflict seems non-existent or small potatoes. Needs to be elaborated on, a lot, to feel central. Right now we're the bad guys and there's nothing even close to challenging us.

Not a lot to hate, a whole lot to love. I eagerly look forward to what this dev has to offer.