Ren'Py - The Hard Way [v0.37.0] [Muffin Maker]

I play porn games to see porn and maybe enjoy some storylines. I do not play porn games to micromanage a Hunger bar. Seriously, I don't even play Non-porn games with that bullshit in them. Also the art is Kind of crap, and everything is a bit of a mess.

Wow. Gameplay is lacking, UI is mediocre, sex scenes are both terrible and copy-pasted. Definitely a game that has prioritised breadth to the detriment of everything else.

In addition to this it seems to contain weird american right wing conspiracy theories? Seemingly in a serious way. Very strange.

I think there's something to be said about overly ambitious porn games, that simply being: you have to crawl before you can walk.
The story is quite simply a power fantasy; a main character that, throughout the game becomes stronger and stronger. They have no flaws, and they are the best. Many games take this approach and can be done well if the player can maintain their suspension of disbelief. But in the process of ultimate DNA, goblins and aliens, evolution being fake (according to the game) and the MC being related to all 20+ different looking characters without a shred of self awareness? I can't stay immersed. Sex scenes that are just the same poses but different character models swapped, and no cohesion in the story objectives. The game is essentially you waiting for all the characters to have sex scenes.
I'd recommend not supporting this so the game creator can end this experiment of a game and begin working on something with much more focus and a lot less anti-establishment conspiracy theories that add nothing to the game.

Just awesome. Tons of charactes, fun storyline. Freedom to roam. Numerous interactio s with each caracter and they just keep growing in number. Frecuently updated. Vast interactions and places to visit. Comprehensive stat and building sistem. Just a complete game in general.

So many sly dad jokes, veiled and funny they are. I would be lost without the hints. I don't understand the karma or corruption stats as they don't seem to do anything. I am sure this will change as the game progresses. Also the name makes it hard to find any info or even this thread, there are tons of games and movies with similar names.

i usually not write a thing even surfing this a lot for new games, but i have to say i'm enjoying this quite a bit. Giganormous amount of wincest girls (and others not so familiar) to have a good "time" you know. A sandbox game with incest, pregnancy and a harem from teen to milf to fuck is what i enjoy the most. Almost all the girl are relatives thank to the crazy but working plot, it's easy to read and not having a biblical text made it more enjoyable for me.

Now some points:

-The renders work well for a happy wanking session but they need some quality improvement

-I think that adding more pregnancy would be better for those who want that fetish, and not talking about adding the child plot too like Yvette (when the child's come with update, it even better) more like impregnate an fuck so you can a good fertile harem to have fun until the real deal comes

-Getting one or two variations (likes missionary) with every girl will add more use for the game between updates (Similar to Summer Time Saga and the impregnation point, i play a little more just for the sake of repopulate the world XD)

-The grinding is not that hard for getting girls but the most important, money, is a bit slow. Giving a litte more should made the grinding less boring (Weekends you can get very little money and building the house requieres a lot)

-Some sort of sign on maps when you have to click something to enter it, it's not like a labyrinth but some users get lost with the first Town Hall interaction. At least some visual tutorial.

The only reason this is not a one star review (a score it definitely deserves) is because at the bare minimum this dev has ambition, and I feel that it is important to reward that.

Brief rundown of why I think this game deserves the worst score possible:

CHARACTERS: the only nice thing I can say about the characters in this game is that there are a lot of them and they are relatively diverse in appearance. This is great if your main goal is to have tons of characters that don't all look like palette swaps. It is a terrible thing if your goal is to have interesting characters. The models are just OK, none really stand out as amazing, and the majority of the interactions you have with them are the exact same for every character. The interactions that aren't copy paste are either brief events that may end in a two frame blowjob if you're lucky or just end in rather absurd, thinly veiled rants about the real world, but I'll get to those later.

STORY: the main story here is... "Interesting". It's a plot that roughly resembles others that have been told before in much better ways. Character finds out their heritage as some kind of superhuman and builds a harem and power base while dealing with the fact that their world has just massively expanded. So far, so good, except that kind of story needs tow things in order to work: interesting characters that we actually care about and want to engage with, and a world we want to explore and take control of. Neither of these are present here. As stated before, the characters we interact with are almost universally bland and lacking in any characterization, and the world just frankly isn't interesting, again, mostly because our only way to experience it is through these boring characters. There is little-to-no conflict and little reward for engaging with the game.

The above would have relegated this game to the middle of the inconsequential pile, not even meriting a review or second thought, if weren't for how damnably smug it is. As I said before, this dev is ambitious. They clearly know what they are attempting would be really impressive if they pulled it off (spoiler: they haven't. All they've done is take a boring game and added enough meaningless characters that you have to use the in-game character list every time it tells you to go talk to someone) The potential grandness of the game seems to have gone to the dev's head, as they frequently stop their boring exposition in order to rant about real world issues.

Now, I'll be frank, I don't agree with any of this dev's implied views on politics, science, or really any other field of note. I think most of what they have their characters embrace takes the prize for most absurd thing I've heard today. That said, I've enjoyed games from devs who espouse many of the same views in the past (though generally not all of them at once, not so very centrally to the plot, and certainly not so poorly articulated). I value the diversity of opinion and can certainly separate my personal views from my enjoyment of a good work of art. That said, this falls well below the threshold of any kind of good art, so the constant lecturing on topics that the dev can't even articulate very well just ends up grating in the same way as someone who thinks they are funny constantly telling jokes. You can work any kind of view or perspective into a work like this and I'll generally accept it as long as you do it well and have a reason for it to be there. Torturing us with poorly informed and constructed rants about the very issues many of us are playing games to escape will not endear your game to us any more than the lack of sex scenes or character depth will.

TL;DR: don't play this game. Wait for the final update to come out, play for half an hour without finding a convincing character or good sex scene, and then close the game before you waste any more of the precious little time you have on this earth.

Several girls look nice but that's all that is good.
There are way too many characters you will not remember their names. The gameplay is repetitive and boring as it's all the same dialogues with everyone. And the sex scenes are all the same too.
You can waste hours for no reward and it's not worth it. Pass and play something else.

Ambitious project with lots of girls= +1 rating
Great character choices= +1 rating
Optonal fetishes (incest/beast)= +1rating
No threesome/foursome = -0.5 rating
No good event sex scene= -0.5 rating
Every repeatable sex scene has the same position= -0.5 rating
Grinding and No scene Gallary= 0.5 rating
Lots of efforts to make a good game= +1
That's makes a total of 2 out of 5.
But don't worry this game has lots of potential

First I must precise that I rarely post here even if I visit frequently. There are many games available and most of the time they are either forgettable or too much restricted to certain fetishes (or lack of it). This preamble just to avoid being dragged in a useless controversy about the dev's intentions, morality and practices (plenty already in this thead).
On reading the 57 pages of the thread (yes and almost taking notes...) and the dozens of reviews I was not waiting for anything good from this game. However there was this strange assertion the dev was willing to integrate hundreds of characters with animated sex scenes... As I am also a Renpy dabbler (no game released yet, and maybe never...) I was curious to see the result, even buggy and unfinished. So I was rather surprised by the ABSENCE OF BUGS, which I consider a feat (in 9.6 free). And It is true there are dozens of decent girls with a rather decent effort to explain how the MC is Alpha Male brother and son of all the female armada (almost).
There was grind and it is difficult to understand the importance of the stats, their evolution being non linear and sometimes useless. What saves the game from failure is that the Dev seems to have taken into account suggestions made here (or from his patrons), one MUST USE the provided HELP (phone applet) to follow the story.
In fact It reminded me of Adventure of Willy, a game with incredible ambition but which requires a walkthrough (and is difficult even with), but with Hard Way Help-cheat you do not need a walkthrough. So the convoluted story makes sense (somewhat) as we are here for porn...not SF or fantasy horror.
But in the end the interest is lost because your goal is to seduce all the girls, and it is highly repetitive (except for compulsive fappers, and I doubt even that). Variety is the spice of porn, and it is difficult to succeed trying to satisfy a broad audience. The dev cannot have variety in situations with so many similar characters. Further he does not use enough DAZ hair and morphs, the renders are average and some animations are ugly (with distorted necks or leg positions). I admit there was an effort to provide animations, but it is not enough to maintain my interest (and I am not in the pregnancy fetish).
The most negative aspect was the poor use of clothes, and I was appalled by the girls remaining fully clothed (default) in sexual intercourse (even in the bathroom), was shattering...even if the clothes are removed during some animations, the beginning is off putting. Regarding the plot I do not see where the game can go without losing all momentum.
However I consider a newcomer should try the game, the first weeks are interesting (despite some grind you want to fuck these young ladies or/and their mothers) and it is an acceptable sandbox experience for harem lovers. I will not rate above 3 stars (for the effort) because I do not think the scope of the game is right and the sex animations are dull repetitive and rather vanilla (and as a personal note I dislike furry and female monsters but that could be a plus for some readers...).
Hoping this review could help a newcomer. Thanks for reading.

I was ALMOST tempted to give this a (generous) 2 stars, but we gotta drag this average down because it is NOT a 3.5 game.
Edit: Hey it worked! 3 is still too high but I did what I could.

This dev seems to be in the crowd of "there's never enough characters to bang!", because there are a ridiculous amount of them thrown at you at a rapid and outright unforgiving pace. New girls don't come in singles, usually you're introduced to 4+ at a time, there's so many names thrown at you, you might forget your own name! And while we're on the subject of rapid, the pace of the story is 0-100 in a second. 1 minute you're a nobody vagabond trying to find his family, the next you're dancing around a massive corruption scandal and flirting with aliens. Most damning of all here is that so many lines are boring or so absurd they take you out of the game. This is the WORST thing for a game, as when a player loses interest during important moments, the game has failed.

Lets set aside pacing and look at the characters. And by look at the characters I mean notice the complete lack-thereof. These girls aren't people so much as exposition dumps, and after that they're basically nothing. Even the ones who have some degree of backstory don't feel like a person as much as a living mcguffin to drive the plot when necessary. Not to mention interactions outside of cutscenes are re-used lines that you would say to any of the other girls. Speaking of reused, the sex scenes are the exact same with each girl, just a model swap for the respective girl. It's like choosing between wonderbread and store brand: yeah, one is slightly better, but they're both on the low end of the bread spectrum so who really give a shit if you have to you toast it to make it edible? (Portuguese rolls from an old bakery best btw, not accepting arguments)

Lastly, and most importantly for a porn game, the art assets. I could do a tangent about the uninspired or recycled backgrounds, but who's really paying attention to those? We're here for the character models, and holy shit are they not good. They range from passable, to "great, now I'm flaccid". Possibly the biggest offender is the MC. I'm not one to focus too much on the guy, especially during the sex scenes. In fact I kind of prefer when the MC is a first person perspective, occasionally maybe you see an arm or the body, but you're not looking at them. But if you insist on having a visible MC, make them look good, or at least inoffensive. This guy looks like he'd only be considered handsome in mountainous West Virginia. It's not good to have the character you see the most of as the ugliest.

I'd like to say give this some time to develop, but this was posted February last year and is on version 9.6 as of this review. I don't see much hope for things changing from where they stand and will be sorely disappointed with their development going forward.

Edit: I gave it some more time and tried out the pregnancy content, and man what a let down. They look ok, not good but ok. The real disappointment is that the characters behave the exact same, say the same lines, and all sex acts are the same (though with a pregnant belly). The real show of laziness comes from when they're in the hospital giving birth, the characters STILL behave the same, having casual conversations during one of the most important moments of their lives. It's outright comical to have three girls in the delivery room giving birth and have them all reacting to your mediocre one-liners the same as if they were in the gym. At this point in time I'd recommend a hard pass, the dev really needs to step it up if they care about this game because this stuff is just plain sloppy.

I don't understand all the hate for this game. I suggest playing it first before hating on it. Almost didn't download due to haters. Now I am going to support the dev. This is similar to summertime saga in that the mc goes around and screws a harem of girls and there are lots of them. All have animations teen through milf. Lots of locations also. The dev spent alot of time on this. Can't wait for the next update.

content amount = 5
render quality = 5
animation quality = 5
model variety = 5

Enjoying the direction of the game. Could definitely do with more variability in the sex scenes rather than just being the same motions with the varying models. I do appreciate the variability in the female models though.

I loved this game. Good quest tracking and decent progression. The renders and models are fantastic. There are a few grammatical and spelling errors. But, hardly enough to notice. I can't wait for the next release

I think this might be my first review here, but I just had to write this one.
The good:
* A lot of characters... I guess? It's comical how many the game just throws at you in the first 5 minutes.
* some kind of freedom and "gameplay"
The bad:
* characters are as shallow as a puddle on a flat highway. Honestly, entirely useless.
* Repeatable character interactions are copy pasted as well and you'll just skip through them.
* art is average at best, but usually worse. Environment art ranges from overly-reused (park for example, you will have seen in 20 games already) to terrible renders full of noise. (seriously, at least render your backgrounds properly...)
While character art is kind of okay, it looks liek the dev just had fun designing dozens of characters and then just threw em into some kind of game.
Sex art is terrible, copy pasted for every character, low quality, no background and not remotely exciting.
Progression is also atrocious. You can be banging people after like three in-game days. You'll strip them nude and bang them in the middle of the street, no one cares.
The game also makes a point of saying everyone's a virgin, but then you just fuck them raw and no one cares.
The story is also a mess that makes little sense....
honestly, I would strongly recommend to avoid this one.

The story is good so far okay at best and the renders are alright. There is room for much improvement and the characters are okay could be better with design and the dialogue could be better if it was more in depth. The scenery could be better with more to come.

What a massive undertaking of a game. Good luck to the creator on pulling it off, but so far so good. Can't wait until we have more breedable characters. Got a whole town to repopulate! Really hope they include the "mothers" for that feature.

Very promising, maybe a little too ambitious (on the nb of characters, please keep the aging mechanic). I learn something on a country global economy. I've always been looking for a game with "sex over generations".

Early in Developement, but promises to be big. Give it Time. I like the prospects of many characters, different kinks and of course the story. Now a bit generic, but could be very entertaining. I hope for many different possibilities.

I liked the story and also the gameplay. For me it was not repetitiv.
I cant wait to later impregnate all the girls!
One thing i would like is, that there are to pics per chat in the char list. The ones that are already there and one from the side where you can see the belly grow if that girl is pregnant.
For now its a solid game as is