Ren'Py - Abandoned - The Collective [v0.01] [Grabb505]

Gr8 concept and I liked the graphics. I want to see more games like this but we need more animation. I voted for this game because I want more people to play this game I hope I really really hope that everyone likes this game as much as I did Gr8 game I need to see more games like this.

The following review is based off my personal experience with playing this Game/Visual Novel... I try to be as brutally honest and detailed as I can, and these are my own opinions and thoughts, from one or more play throughs...


(01/28/2018 - Original Review - V0.0.1 Demo)

Not sure how you can even call this a Demo...

The visuals are practically non-existent, as all you see is part of the UI, a repeatable 1-hour work picture with the male protagonist, and 3 erotic scenes with Ashley... The Ashley model is very well proportioned and looks like a very real person, even though the visual events still look a tiny bit grainy... The protagonist visual looks like a standard male character, and is also a tiny bit grainy...

The script is practically nonexistent, but what little there is doesn't appear to have spelling/grammar errors... There is no actual plot because there doesn't appear to be any story... You are basically thrown into a grind type game where a male protagonist lives in a house with his childhood friend Ashley, and eventually more people could eventually live there too, in later content... That is it... A majority of the rooms, including the protagonists bedroom have text placeholders instead of backgrounds...

Overall, this is more like a partial game play shell, as not even all the functions work... Including the ability to use Back, according to their intro warning... A demo should have all the basic gameplay mechanics in place as well as basic content, but this game doesn't even have all that yet... The only content is 3 quick erotic scenes, and a work scene, and that is it... Most of the UI Text is so hard to see because it blends into the background, I almost didn't even know it was there...

It really just feels like a basic grind game from what little they show... They could have just uploaded some pictures in a zip file if all they wanted to do was Demo their artwork... In any case, I'm unsure if I will revisit this one because I haven't a clue what it plans to be, other then a bunch of porn pictures for now...


(02/06/2018 - Review Update - v0.01)

At the behest of the developer as well as curiosity on how this visual novel/game was developing beyond Demo, I tried this one again after the first content update... And I have to say it looks a lot better now then it did in the demo...

The visuals of the characters are pretty good, albeit most scenes they are in, seem to be a bit dark... The shower scene with Ashley doesn't show her hair wet (not even matted down by the water), even when it is clear that water is hitting her head and face... Some other immersion issues in the visuals are with any room showing day light coming through windows when it is in the middle of the night... Unless this takes place in some part of the world where the sun is out 24/7? Suggestion on working through those scenes for the time transitions...

The script is pretty spot on, as I didn't run into hardly any spelling/grammar errors... As before, this plot revolves around a male protagonist who works from home as a journalist, and he has one female roommate at first (a childhood friend named Ashley) and later another female character moves in (Sophie), even though the landlord didn't inform any of them (protagonist didn't seem to care much)... He then basically lives out his life there... With a small bit of progression via some random events now and then, as well as some randomization of common dialogue scenes with the two roommates (which also repeated a lot)... Unsure if those conversations are stat effecting and/or just there for role play immersion?

Ashley seems to be a bit of an odd ball, speaking about weird stuff all the time, and appearing to be serious when doing it... Perhaps she's a bit of a loon? Where as Sophie is your typical horny female tenant, who seems possibly sexually attracted to both the protagonist as well as Ashley... She disappears at night, and lets say, she seems to be almost as much a pervert as the protagonist...

The game play is very much your typical grind fest, with lots of repeating of some scenes, dialogue, and events... The issue I have with this particular grind process, is that for the moment the CTRL skip function is turned off on purpose, which requires left clicking or space baring, through all that repeating text... And that is a quality of life no-no in grind type games with lots of repeating scenes/text... Perhaps it will be turned back on later into development? I don't know... The other quality of life no-no I see, even though for now it doesn't really matter, is that when working, the money doesn't actually go into the protagonists pocket till the end of the week when rent is due... And you don't even see anything on the UI to dictate how much you've even built up before the week ends... There should at least be some indication as to what money will be paid at the end of the week on the UI, but that is not the case... You'll just need to keep track manually and hope you don't screw up...

I did run into some bugs, with the buttons in the lower right hand screen, when Ashly and/or Sophie appeared in a room, after other scenes had played out (such as the dishwasher filling, dinner, breakfast, etc.) the chat with character button would not work, until you selected a different room and came back... And on a couple occasions, the bedroom buttons stayed on the screen when in another room (that only happened a couple times after other scenes/random events played out)... But again, going into a different room and returning would fix it...

Overall, this update shows a lot more of the mechanics as well as game play style for both the grind and the story content... There isn't much in the way of a plot at the moment, and not even sure if this is a relationship grind? or a corruption grind? or a love grind? As all you really get out of the current content is the expectation of lots of sexual content without any real meaning and/or deep story... It is still early, so that part may still be in the works for all we know... The focus for the moment seems to be on the hinting of more erotic/sexual content, and if that is it's main focus overall, then this will just be your typical grind porn fest... But it's probably a little too early to 100% tell... It shows some potential...

Will I revisit this one? Perhaps a little further down the road, in order to see what direction/s it is really heading, for the long haul... Best of luck to the author/s...