Ren'Py - The Hard Way [v0.34.1] [Muffin Maker]

It's really irritating to get to a point and get an image under construction. If it's not complete then the option to start it shouldn't be there. Wait until it's finished before putting it in.

The story writing is average at best and the renders and graphics look a bit primitive and cartoonish.

It doesn't take long before seeing that money is going to be an issue. I'm also not entirely sure what the message about the patreon phone being better was but if that is the Dev's way of getting people to join his patreon it wasn't the way to go about it.

I can't recommend this one and it went into the deleted category.

I like this game it has lots of possibilities it would take more sexual positions to be able to undress the characters yourself
I arrived at the end of this episode I will see to raise more the relations with the characters

Too many updates with little or no real content. I might give it a miss for a month or 6 and then update. Like the game/story but just too drawn out for me at the moment. Could be I have missed some content as I have not used the walkthrough. I'll check on that later!

While the idea behind it is interesting, this implementation is bona fide trash. You get bombarded with dozens of utterly forgettable women. They're basically all the same sex crazed nympho with different skin. They want your children because you said "Maybe don't do that" to a bully. There is no build up to the scenes other than daily greetings.

The story could be okay if it didn't drift off into "Fantasy Conspiracy - The Game" from the get-go. I don't want to read about your posts on /r/conspiracy in a porn game for fuck's sake.

The gameplay loop is also idiotic. Especially given the inability to mod out the repetitive grind. Oh I forgot, the dev thinks the game where you have to grind for tens of thousands of dollars by clicking buttons that give you $11 each isn't grindy.

This game is a joke.

v0.28.6

gave this a go and quite disappointed.
first girl tries to kiss me after saving her from some douche and i get 'image under construction'
game has been under development long enough for THAT not to happen right at the start.
masses of dialogue errors too

it seems to me like the developer/s spent a lot of time designing a game but less time on writing it and even less time on the mechanics. the grind for money pulls me from 'mildly entertained' to 'bored' pretty quick and what stat is not being affected by all those gym visits? as none have moved in days, sleep once dropped to minimum then takes a whole day of napping to get back to full and the rinse/repeat to raise girls stats and scenes, leaves a lot to be desired.

once i discovered that the 'cheats' section on the phone includes just two options, of which neither is a cheat, i quit and deleted .
no game should need cheats. the fact that i was looking for some just highlights how poorly designed this is. happy to grind like skyrim, but when it gets THIS bad....

EDIT : has gotten worse and even more buggy, if that was even possible. the grind is so bad you will need to be an anal retentive to be entertained and the payoff for that grind is bland at best. had a glimmer but developer soon snuffed that out. shows no understanding of player experience.
would never back this developer

I enjoyed killing a few hours with this game. Seen better and seen worse but has plenty of content and did not comit the crime of actually making think. Animations are ok but not great but the story keeps trundling on enough to keep you interested

This game looked interesting, but a dev who intentionally makes their game aggressively incompatible with modding makes it a hard pass for me.

Maybe try being a member of the community instead of acting like an asshole and trying to play the victim when called out.

Let's just say this, I've put this VN off for a while then gave it a shot. The numerous cast of characters and grand ideas hooked my imagination........Until I played it. Guys, if cookie cutter (barely) animation and cookie cutter women (interchangable) is your thing (the Dev TRIES to use different shapes and sizes......TRIES) then by all means, have fun......Sorry

This seems to have a great deal planned out. I find the plotlines interesting, and getter than average grammar ( I know, "Grammar Nazi"). I wish the animations were mor diverse, but I see you are supplying some variety there too.

Really nice games, very original and fun! Not perfect but it will keeps me comming back! Great story line, nice girls! Just need to work on grammer and on the gym at high school. Perhaps more scens in the clothing the girls are in at that moment.

I really love the game, you can grind you stats and money but it is not necessary to enjoy and progress the story, it is that freedom that makes me enjoy the game. Having said that, I would really like to make more girls pregnant. If you make it possible, I would upgrade my review to 5 stars.
Keep the good work up!

There is a lot of content, but there are a lot of places that are still
under construction.
Pros
Ladies are pretty attractive
Renders are pretty good
Story is interesting
Cons
Writing is in need of some help
To many places are under construction
Summary
This is a decent VN, but the writing needs help. Being this far along in development I doubt it will be fixed.
Again, being this far into development, there should be less under construction areas.
These are the things that kept me from giving it a 4 star rating.
Since there is a ton of content, and loads of women you can interact with, I'm going to have to say that this is a VN worth your time.
Unless you support the dev, you only get 2 tiny cheats. Supporting at the $20 level you get access to some seriously heavy cheats. None of which brake your experience. Although trying to interact with anyone in the high school gym lead me to an error encounter for the duration of the conversation. It fixes itself though.
Overall even with the bugs, and places under construction, and the writing mishaps, I'm recommending this VN. Hopefully some of the things listed here are addressed and are improved.
I think overall Muffin Maker is doing a pretty decent job with developing this VN.

kudos to the developer for the research on tons of conspiracy theories.
i like the story,some may say is too far out there but hey... is a game.good plot and well writen!
i love the variarity of girls,all shapes and sizes ,there is a lot of girls sometimes hard to keep track but im not complaing.
i wish there was different sex scenes with the girls,its the same with all of them but i understand since there are so many of them,maybe we get some variarity in the future.
the look of the girls are well done,a lot to chose from.
the gameplay is a little grindy but not the worst.
overall i like the game maybe is not for everybody but if you like it you like it.the only thing i wish it had more different animations.
well done muffin maker!

I really wanted to like this when I saw the number of characters and the beginning was really promising with a very unique setting and character structure. It was really gearing up to be a great time... then you get to the series of "Lessons" that the MC goes through.

Now, I am a very scientific minded person and the first thing they brought up about things that diverge too far from established fact meeting heavy resistance in multiple fields is completely true. However that doesn't mean you can just start spouting out pseudo-science theories as if they are the obvious truth being covered up by the ultra rich shadow government. A few of the things that are brought up as alternative science are actually pretty interesting and just as valid as current fact, however most of the stuff that the author put into this game is just plain wrong. I'm not going to go into this further but any time they bring up covid do yourself a favor and just skip the conversation, it legitimately put me in a rage some of the things that were said.
Honestly I think the author should have set the plot in a more fantasy or sci-fi setting, rather than the contemporary USA, and put these forward as how things worked in their fictional world.

Outside of the science problems the main detractors on the game can both be put down to a lack of focus.
There are a lot of characters in this game but they are largely interchangable with almost all of the female characters being essentially the same character with all the development they get. The fact that they all use the exact same sex animations for every single encounter in the game doesn't make things any better.
The other problem is that in the gameplay you're essentially just going from one story interaction to the next with working/relationship building being something you do when the characters you need to interact with to advance the plot aren't available. The gameplay itself is also pathetically easy to the point that you just have to go around doing all the daily interactions you can in a day to max out every characters affections and the only difficulty is remembering which characters you've already maxed out since they blend together so much. There is almost no point in actually working as each week you're given $1000 and your weekly expenses are around $300, rather than working you just spend your time grinding relation and buying whatever new upgrade you need when your weekly pay comes in. Not that there would be any point in working to begin with as you only get $10 for every hour worked.

In the end I'm honestly pretty disappointed by this game. The concepts put forth upfront of a matriarchal community based upon free love combined with aliens and mythological creatures could have been really interesting, in fact it kind of reminded me of the tenchi muyo series a bit. But in the end that concept is barely expanded upon and is just used as an excuse for the mc to fuck any woman he meets in the game.

If the dev reads this I'd recommend dialing the games scope back and refining your ideas and characters.
Also stop having the characters put forward your ideas as the obvious truth hidden by the shadow government or whatever and just have them presented as alternate beliefs that certain characters ascribe to. Trust me, just changing it enough that only one or two characters believe this and can admit to flaws in their own reasoning as well will go a long way to improving peoples outlook on this game.

Game's pretty ugly. Lots of characters but the interactions and story is pretty haphazard.

Maybe it'll get better with time but I dunno if I'd hold my breath.

Best of luck to the author of the game though.

interesting game, lot of girls, need more interaction with girls, have more item for better gameplay, increase the wage from jobs and better implemented sistem .. i enjoy this game but i have to say the the ui sistem and character locator need lot of improvement .. overall i enjoy it and waiting for the next update ..

I tried to like this game but two things hold this game back. One the sex scenes are fucking boring, and with a cast this large it's no wonder considering everyone shares the same scenes exactly. Second the game is plastered head to toe in the dev's insane ideologies and if you aren't drugged out of your mind while watching conspiracy youtubers rant about frogs being turned gay or interdimensional vampires then it'll get grating very quickly for you too. Others have mentioned it and yes, it is that bad, in fact I'd say this is nearing temple OS. The only good thing about this game is that the models are nice, so much so that I think they are wasted here. Don't play this, it isn't worth it.

It's a pretty normal sim game, move around the map, do jobs to get money, talk to girls to get laid and advance the plot, manage time, the usual.

The good:
-Put in some grind and you'll get to a point where you can basically cruise around town and fuck every girl you see right in the street
-Good hint system so you'll never be confused about what to do next

The mediocre:
-3d models are kinda meh and the animations are jank

The bad:
Oh god, where do I begin.
-The game has dozens of characters and they're all the same character in a different suit; sex scenes and dialogue are identical across all of them
-Plot and gameplay are totally disconnected; you'll be told (in boring infodumps) about a conflict between the Illuminati and secret communities of supernatural beings and then you go right back to the normal routine like nothing unusual is happening
-Plot swerves into ranting about how 5G causes COVID and germ theory is fake without warning, cause, or the slightest hint of irony
-Description says the game is meant to have 1000 characters and span 50 years when complete, which is both nigh impossible and actively undesirable (who the hell is going to play 50 years of a one-day-at-a-time time management game?)

tl;dr I came numerous times so it doesn't get a one-star but I cannot in good conscience actually recommend this to anyone.

Is this an attempt to red-pill the porno VN audience?

I'm a sucker for sandboxes that let you just roll around free-using the love interests, so I got further into this than I should've. It's initially a goofy time-waster with a cast that's maybe 4 times as big as it should be.

Then I started pursuing the events, and holy shit. The plot of the game, such as it is, is a festival of far-right conspiracy theories, delivered in all seeming seriousness by characters that are supposed to be on our side.

The antagonist is plotting to wipe out the non-human population of the city with a deliberately designed virus that totally isn't COVID-19, friendly "scientists" deny germ theory, your scientific contact is an anti-vaxxer, all the characters take it as read that the government is entirely tyrannical, one of your side quests is an attempt to prove that the world isn't flat that your character is failing to do (and this is a universe with manned space flight), and someone recommends you sign up for Rumble because YouTube is "full of censorship."

The MC is one unreadable 30-page speech away from being John Galt, and it honestly wouldn't surprise me if that's what the author is actually building towards.

There are a couple of other games and VNs on this site that can get weird with their politics (i.e. Solvalley School occasionally taking time out to shit on feminism), but The Hard Way is a fucking soapbox for crazy shit in a way that comes off as a series of author tracts. If that's not what the author intends, then he needs to take a very long look at what he's doing.

Point and click teenage wet dreams simulator, not for the foolhardy. Artwork is good however. Just a lot locked behind a patreon wall which is not cool. Storyline worth pursuing if your into that kink, the characters are not all accessible and some of them which you want to fuck are not available. Making it very frustrating to play as a game. Author needs to work a lot on this to make fun to play.