Ren'Py - The Caretaker [S2 v0.34 Public] [IceCreamParty]

This game gave me a throbbing headache, by the end of season one I finally understood the map layout and how dev want things to work, only to be greeted with a different UI in season 2 which changes gameplay in a significant way, causing me to instantly uninstall the game. The UI in the first season was bad enough, having to adopt to a different one, even though it might be a small improvement, is not something you wanna see. Stick with one UI, please

Too many characters for my liking (there are like.. 13? in total), there is barely any depth despite you having to progress characters a fair bit, the mom son part (which was my main reason for giving the game a try) was a disappointment.

Animation is decent, it could obviously be improved in multiple ways, but they do hold up. As mentioned earlier, the sandbox aspect is bad, it took forever to learn the layout, and the fact there are two distinctly different UI between the seasons is the thing that made me make this post in the first place, I don't understand the decision to not fix up the first season before rolling out the second. Some of the icons are too hard to spot in my opinion, but there are only a handful of these in the first season, so I'll let it pass

2 star may be a bit too rough, but I will never touch this game ever again despite good looking characters

It's a good game but it feels kinda empty? I really wish i could say what it lacks but every update kinda does it job by working on it! Please redo the walkthrout paper since it's not really understandable kinda like my writing. Love the Game!

TL;DR: Came for the models and unique artstyle. Stayed because. . . well, I didn't.

It's a shame that such a promising premise and such unique models were so thoroughly trashed by the perfect combination of the worst gameplay a sandbox can offer, combined with one of the single most unbearable MC's I've ever had the displeasure of playing as. I'm almost impressed this game disappointed me as badly as it did.

STORY: 2/10
It's exactly what you'd expect out of this kind of game. Insufferably pathetic MC who probably has some deep psychological issues he needs to see somebody about (and not in the funny or endearing way, just the sad pathetic way), just lucks into a dream harem circumstance where he's the only male around and coincidentally every person he meets is either just as horny as he is, short bus levels of clueless, or swooned by some of the worst charm I've ever seen.

Nothing original to see here, and the one unique premise it had going for it (being a male caretaker in an all-female hospice) went absolutely nowhere past the initial premise.

It's worth saying that I normally love openly degenerate MCs, but I felt genuinely off-put by just how obviously unwelcome the MCs advances were and how obviously he just seemed to not care. It wasn't 'cool' or 'alpha' or whatever, it was just weird. Every time he openly harassed somebody who was obviously not into it I felt the urge to file a restraining order in their place, and then it'd somehow end with them being into him.


ART: 8/10
Now THIS is where the game shines the brightest. As somebody who's a huge fan of Twisted World, the unrealistically enlarged proportions was the main reason I gave this game a chance in the first place, and I've gotta say if nothing else it definitely delivered on that front. There's a nice variety of models, and while the renders themselves aren't anything too crazy, the models carry the game by far. If the gameplay was even SLIGHTLY more serviceable I might've put up with it just for the models alone. If you like gigantic tits, asses, thighs, or just wish these games were more adventurous with their models, this is definitely the game for you. Assuming you can tolerate the gameplay, that is.

Course, there are a few misses, and in typical Koikatsu VN fashion, the MC looks like a weirdo (and not in the endearing way, as you'd probably guess), but it's not enough to take away from how much I liked all the other models.

If you're wondering why this rating is 3/5 and not 1/5, this point is the entire reason why.


GAMEPLAY: 1/10
I understand that this was probably the dev's first project and I'm not going to bash him for that, I haven't made shit so I'm not in a position of authority or anything like that. But for fucks sakes, can we PLEASE stop doing the "random time on a random day" gameplay loop for these kind of games? Nothing kills your enthusiasm for a game quicker than realising that you missed the single time of day on the single day of the week for a character you really liked and advanced too far to rollback all the way, meaning you have to do the ENTIRE week again just to take another crack at it.

It was the worst part of Twisted World and it's somehow even worse here with roughly 3x the amount of characters with specifically timed events.

Add in the fact that they have ROTATING SCHEDULES FOR SOME REASON and no matter how good I thought the models were, there's not a chance in hell I'd be playing this one.


Oh, and for what it's worth, S2 does try changing the gameplay somewhat. I actually dislike S2's navigation more than S1, at least once you figured out how to get where you wanted it was fairly easy to get places. In S2 I'd always have to scroll through the entire list of the game's locations just to get anywhere, just to find out that there wasn't anything going on there and do it again.

All in all, if you were hoping for or expecting something like Twisted World, no such luck. It's essentially just your standard powerfantasy AVN with your standard awful sandbox gameplay and very well-done and varied models.

I tried this because the models and varieties were unique in a way, sometimes outrageous, but they piqued my interest.

Unfortunately the gameplay is absolutely not it, even for sandbox standards this is pretty bad, navigation is a huge chore, looking through quest logs to try and find the next thing is even more so. For instance having to click through at least 3-5 doors to get to your room so you can sleep every night is mind boggling.
Sometimes the next event isn't on until a few more days, and you also have to make sure you go around clicking 20 doors to talk to all the different NPCs every day.

I found myself completely lost on S1, I figured well, it's old, maybe S2 improved on it, so let's skip S1 since there isn't much to the story anyway. To be fair it tried to improve the navigation but it's still so confusing,

I ended up deleting both seasons within the first 30 minutes of attempting to play. Unfortunate for a game like this where the models aren't all copy pasted from other games..

Review as of 0.19

I enjoyed that. It’s nice every now and then to have an unapologetically degenerate MC who is active in trying to get what he wants. Getting to the sex stuff was quick but not too quick in my opinion, I don’t like when these types of games are too quick in getting to sex but I think The Caretaker was a good amount of speed. I liked the models, very varied types of thickness with all the LI’s, I like that. And the sex scenes are pretty creative. Some devs stick too closely to the default positions but the dev plays around with the positions well in my opinion. The story is a porn story not great not bad just decent but the character interactions are interesting.

Love me the Gilf and I like how she feels like a Gilf and not just a milf with gray hair. Her tits are saggy but not too saggy and it really feels like she’s gonna pull her hip when we take her to Poundsville. And the armpit sex was my favorite scene, very rare and the big titty armpit sex is top tier. Definitely looking forward to giving it to Simona.

Didn’t really like how Officer Harris extorted the mom into sex, it left a bad taste in my mouth. Hope we can get payback on her, won't feel good otherwise.

Having an amputee Li is a bold move, gonna probably turn away a good amount of people. Not me though amputee girls need love too and if they got a fat ass I’m in there.

But yeah, overall no real complaints. The story ain’t much but it’s nice to have a game that’s quick with the sexual progress and I do come on this website for porn so it’s nice to have some games that get to it quicker. A relaxing play.

It was pretty bad.

The story is pretty much just work in the hospital and try to fuck girls nothing else, which I didn´t really mind, but the dialogues also were pretty much just boring.

The game has music and sounds which is always good, but the moans sound too realistic.

The sex scenes have pretty average and sometimes bad animations.

The models look okay.

But the worst part is the gameplay and quest design, the map is annoying and too clunky too navigate. And the quest are just very bad, there are far too many times where yoou have to wait until monday noon, friday afternoon, which is just annoying some are okay but the majority should be " go there in the afternoon on any day" and not "wait until it is friday and then go there in the afternoon"

v0.17
I played until there was no more content for any girl, except the obviously bugged trash girl.

This has almost all the problems many of these sandbox games run into.
Too much clicking around to find scenes. Too much dead air. Too little reward for it.

Models: 4/5

Sex: 3.5/5

Animations: 4/5

Characters: 3.5/5 (not much depth

Gameplay: 2.5/5

UI: 3/5 (pretty enough for the art style, but designed to be a clickfest)

Story: 1/5 (barely there. Pretty much isnt)

Content Progression: 2/5 (Horizontal progression amongst many characters, making for none of them being very deep)

Enjoyment: 3/5 (high moments, long low moments)

Example of gameplay loop:

Imo, another good game failing by execution of it.

fun and sexy. game does not take itself too seriously. I actually laughed at the jokes.
Girls look very good with (usually) massive tits and asses, although there is a decent variety of other body types too.

Instead of grinding money, you just automatically get paid every week. (without actually doing work).
and you can rapidly skip time. Some of the paths are annoyingly specific in what day and time you got to do them. But it is all laid out explicitly in the in game questlog. And as mentioned you can just skip time.

It should simply be a standard across everything on this site, but instead this game gets high marks for remembering what it is, a porn game. I love when creators remember what it is we are here for and provide. This is one of those rare games where I like so many different characters and each one actually has content so I end up having to force myself to cut jerk-off sessions short and save some for later. Not an easy thing to do, but almost all of the content is so fappable I can't do my normal routine of saving whichever character I like best for last and exploring everything else. I have to put the game down and finish it another time. So on the most fundamental basic level of porn, this game passes with flying colors and is worth five stars for that alone, I can think of very few others which are so straightforward and rewarding.

Bonus points go to this art style, which is available in a couple of other games but it's always a pleasure to see as it's probably my favorite if not top 3. The story is also entertaining with the interactions and characters making me laugh on more than one occasion. Also the variety of characters is vast and I like it. It's not a generic variety either where you have; a super busty girl, a thick girl, a different hair color, a loli (always disgusting unpleasant surprise btw, on a side note). No this game actually changes it up; an amputee, a blind woman, a chubby girl turned fit, it's just difficult to achieve true fappable variety. Typically to accomplish it would simply result in several undesirable characters, instead this one accomplishes everything being great without needing supernatural stuff either. They're all regular human girls.

The game is funny and arousing, simple and not overly time consuming so nothing draws it back. It passes with flying colors and that's all I can ask for in a porn game.

Reworked Version: 0.1

Raunchy porn fun. Simple plot: MC wants all the pussy and the plot maintains this goal without unnecessary dialogue while having enough plot to hold the game together.


Girls and Content

• thicc girls for breakfast, lunch and dinner: with a variety of proportions to suite your tastes
• niche character fetishes: character traits you don't often find; blind, gilf, amputee, nymphomaniac...
  • scenes (obviously) play towards these conditions which will scratch your fetish itch
• distinct character personalities
• unique location: medical centre main hub of content
• decent amount content: both ecchi and H
  • there's something with every girl in the building
• nice teasing scenes before main course
  • the fact that Masturbation fantasies don't reveal nudity is something i love as it helps not ruin the surprise with each girl
• hot short sex scenes: just enough animations for each scene—and no goddamn "Continue"—"Cum" button
• each girl has their own unique H scenes—not all have one yet—basically it's not the same positions reused for each

Sound and Visuals

• feel good music matches with scenes
  • killer bass menu song
• sex sfx generally matches
• can't individually adjust music and sex sfx because they both are controlled by the Music slider as opposed to the Sound slider (for the sex sfx)
• simple stylistic design on the Koikatsu models - makes for some cute girls like Irina and Melody
• renders are okay
  • there's attention to light
  • the saturation can appeal to a more cartoonish style but i'm not a fan of it
• animations are great — a lot of ass jiggle

Gameplay

• sandbox burdens the game having to click-through a bunch of rooms to get to where you want to go
  • annoying to navigate: hallways look too similar
• the skip-time grind: currently you will have to use the Pass Time button often to complete quests
• quest grind isn't too much but also not interesting either
  • only purpose it serves is a buffer between H content which is a good thing - it's just the method that's the issue
  • only good quest was finding Cunny as there's a different interaction on each progression and it's more interactive

The game's strong suite is the sex scenes and the sexually niche/unique sort of characters to fap to. What hinders this experience is getting there through poor sandbox.
However, as the game is still in dev: sandbox will always appear as a bad design because for sandbox to work, there needs to have content that brings some significance to traversing rooms. This can only truly be critisized on completion of development.

personally rage quit over Cunny and cheated
cuz im a cheater
1 time weekly event involving 2 characters featuring hide n seek
found myself snoozing 1 too many times

the sandbox aspect is just brutal
pursue a character bout 10 business days (Collette?)
then wait a day to find out in order to proceed you have to have pursued some other character.

or pursue a character 10 regular days (Melody)
finish helping them only to be put into a loop till the following wednesday...
the scene is kinda sub par imo physics look weird and im a fan of booty thats why i went after Melody.

Quick travel and Time skip (1 day and 1 week option along with each period of the day) would help alleviate the grueling slosh that is the experience.
But thats just it, it'll make it slightly more bearable.
Leah and Colette ought to prepare a schedule that you can slap on your personal menu so you can see what time characters are available and where they are if they are available.
it aint a good feel to find out Colette not around weekends by walking back and forth from room to front desk at all points of the day to check
-or maybe there was another way to tell that i jus didnt know of

so Gameplay for me is a 1.5/5 w/ a potential to be a 2/5
Animation is 3/5 its hit or miss the first scene with Cunny was good, Melody disappointing 2nd scene with Cunny is aight and the others i dunno
Renders 4/5 i like the chara designs but the quality seems low
Dev is a 5/5 noticed it late but i see the Dev's got no qualms sliding in dms helpin ppl out thats pretty cool
and the game has charm i put it on the watch list since first release