Ren'Py - The Hard Way [v0.40.0] [Muffin Maker]

Well - review based on 0.059a

Sadly i have to give 1 star.
Basicially the game had a good start and renders seemed nice.
Unfortunately the dev decided to take this game to the stat-grind-league. You have more to do to keep your stats up (like senseless running around to find some food - all stores closed) than being able to enjoy the game.

Now you could say: mod your stats, use saveditor-online or whatever else to bypass the grind and get back to the basics: enjoying an adult game.....

... You COULD ... but you can't! - The dev went crazy and hides the 3 most annoying stats for not to be found. Not that he named them badly to hide, the stats are basicially not existent in savegame. Seems he had split them up to multiple variables just that you are not able to figure out.

Just this game is not THAT cuffing that i could live with those shit.

In addition to that, this game is a mess of bugs and broken triggers. Also i had few crashes.

There is just ONE way to handle such attitude: BLOCK that crap and move on to other nice games, where the developers use their time and energy to code nice content, instead of wasting ressources to prevent players from doing what they want to do, and try to tell them how they have to enjoy the game (because that's no joy - thats "mental rape")

EDIT:
What i forgot to mention is, that the developer wastes more time in scripting anti-mod-detection, than he uses to create actual content. Even dozens of false-positive detections were reported and once you got detected, ALL your savegames, cheated or not, are corrupted!
YES, you read right: the developer destroys ALL your savegames, once the game THINKS you have cheated. Oh - and of course: alt+tab out of the game and malwaredetection are reported to trigger that shit.
And "1000 girls" isn't really as nice at it looks first - as every girl reacts the same way and you repeat your actions 1:1 with every girl.

As an update,
After playing for quite awhile, and becoming quite addicted to the game, I just wanted to add/change a few things in my original review. I'm not apologizing for any of the original, it's just that the game has changed.
Muffin Maker seems to be trying very hard to make this a great game, and it will get there eventually. It's obviously been a learning experience for him/her. Most everyone on this forum has been quite harsh, (me included), and for that I'm sorry. Back to the game............
The Hard Way started out w many, many characters and no content. Now after some time, it seems like the game is maturing bit by bit. With that last update I only had 1 error I think, and that was with a complete restart for me. It's still kind of a quirky game but maybe that's the whole point, who knows.. Hopefully MM will continue to add content and expand each character, even more than adding new features or buildings.
Anyway...... folks should probably give it a shot. I've bumped up my rating to Average now rather than poor. Hopefully it will go up higher with the next few updates.... Though the discussions of the women fucking dogs pretty much put me off. I didn't realize it was tied in with the story as much as it is.

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original content below.

As other keep saying, it's gets buggier and buggier each time you play.....
Awful play experience.

As for content, it's strange. They add 35 or so girls before having much content with a single one. Most of the sex scenes are just black screens with a message saying there are no images with this girl, or something like that.

Very grindy game which it seems like you need to restart with each update? I'm not sure. Just read some of the comments in here. It's not like there is the occasional bug, but many all the time. Just not worth it especially for a game that isn't really bringing anything new to the table.

I don't know, maybe they'll get it figured out. I hope so but it's not looking like it.

Lazy and lack luster. adding more females does not mean the game is better.

It has a weak storyline that i find myself skipping because its just dumb.

The animitations are the same 3 loops with only the female render changing.

Game breaking bugs, and absolute pointlessness. Forget being fappable this game can't even give me a semi.

Some might call this ambitious.. I'd Say it's a waste of time money sponge... a point that should have been ovbious from the get go when they asked for a "patreon code". This game isn't about making a good game, it's about trying to appeal to a broad audience on one level or another while being as lazy as possible and making bank.

TL;DR:
- v0.05.5
- Story premise is fairly interesting but badly executed
- Cheap models
- buggy mess
- Grind does not equal investment

Overall, it's just bad. The story itself could be super interesting. But the way this dev chose to present it is just... boring.
You arrive at this town populated by dozens of women and just two men, so all of the females are IMMEDIATELY all over you. There is no romance, drama or corruption. You talk to them about the weather often enough and they will jump you. Now, that can be entertaining from time to time... if it only wouldn't look so cheap.

The models look like the dev simply used every character he could find in an asset store for less than $0.50 and rolled with it. No apparent costumization I could recognize. And when it comes to the actual lewd-scenes with these dozens of females, they all look the same. There are like 4 or 5 sex-poses, that are identical between ALL the characters. Like they were just set up once and then rendered with the different female models in a loop.

And then the worst of it: It's buggy as hell.
At some point, the women will just vanish. You will live in a ghost town. So no more working, because the boss is not in. No more buying food, because the store-owner is not there. No renting a hotel-room, because the receptionist won't show up.
The dev seems to spend more time trying to harden his game against people "stealing" patreon-codes, than proofing his scripts.

the games had become fluid from V0.04.4 to V0.05.4 and then come V0.05.5 and return of the bugs it is patetic. passing are tempt to fight the patreon code cheaters to get back all the bugs it is lamentable instead to improve the game you only have to destroy

It doesnt work on my Samsung Galaxy A51... it says mobile game and doesnt work on it. Well actually it does work but at first decission i can make (whatever i choose) there comes this game crash or whatever it says. There stand rollback etc.

It might become a really good game, so I'm giving it 4 stars (even though now it might look more like 3-star thingy).

Pro:

• The story is rather interesting (with mystery and clues).
• The multitude of places and characters makes it feel somehow like real life.
• Some of the models are cute, some even very beautiful.
• It's harem, so, no need to choose just one or two partner.
• The gameplay does not feel grindy (at least as long as new events pop up).

Con:

• The graphics' resolution and quality are below par.
• The sex scenes are rather poor. (Small scale. More transitions than images makes them look constantly blurred. I wish devs rather make it a slideshow than blurred transitions. The Yvette's handjob seems gay-style, as we see the face and the body of MC, while Yvette's face is hardly visible behind his penis.)
• There are some bugs and deficiencies (like missing pictures, instant clothes changes when the kissing starts, a couple of non-starting events).

If the devs would improve it, especially the quality and composition of sex scenes, then it would be a proper decent game.

v0.04.4

Update: I'll raise it to 2 stars, cow women!, better in game guidance now, but how do you do cow women with no/limited lactation content, and damn the same positions on sex with every girl and they're not even all the best? Still a game with some good concepts in it and lofty goals but the way it actually plays is stupid grindy with too many women of which almost all are pointless as they won't ever have content mixed into a sandbox with a hunger/cleanliness/sleep grind thrown on top... hard capping this at 2.

Update: Lowering it a star down to 1 star. It's just a train wreck to play. Pointless grind and maintenance tasks, sandbox world that's excessive and often pointless, renders/art don't validate the flaws, doubt I'll be trying again.

Nice but relatively generic renders in a grindy open world game with often guesswork interaction with the characters. While it's not allowed to name them by name, it plays like some games that were released four to five years ago. There are some glimmers of potential in it, big titties are big titties, but at the moment when compared to the wealth of adult game offerings it isn't yet even breaking average. It plays as if the developers ideas were beyond their experience to actually work into a playable game that doesn't feel bloated. It's not 'bad', it's just not 'good', and it's overall not a fun play experience for the adult content you get.

0.03.2
I guess the 2 stars were for previous versions, probably should be removed now. For a 0.03 there are a lot of stuff to do. This is a pretty good sandbox game with a pretty cool story and pretty interesting planned features. I don't know if the dev has realized quite how hard implementing everything he's planned into a game like this is though.
For 5 stars I'd say improve the spelling, or get a proofreader, variables like Hygiene were spelt wrong along with words like 'weird' becoming 'wierd'.
Other than that a solid effort with actual scenes, which beats like 90% of 0.03.

my 2 cents

the game looks very good
renders and animations are well made

the story is unique - and for now well written
cant wait how it unfolds
the aging concept is a new one - hope it works well

for the sandbox part - well we have to wait and see how the dev´s will manage it at all in the future

i am really curious about how they will handle all those girl´s (50+ ?!)

4 stars ( yep 4) for now
(maybe change it later)

edit : 1 star with both eyes closed -well , you can read at main topic why ...

As of version 0.10.6, the plot seems to be developing into an interesting, complex story. The graphics continue to be perfunctory, notable mostly for the clever use of automation for animation, though there are a few hiccups here and there: in this version, every blowjob includes 2 sections with some kind of misspelling that throws an exception -- luckily those exceptions can be safely ignored. I would've looked through the code to see if I could identify the problem, but the dev has configured the main archive in a way that makes it difficult to decompress. At the end of the current episode, there's a note that sex scene graphics are going to be redone: it will be interesting to see. None of the graphics are 1st-person at this point, and, while that would make it more immersive, it would also be a daunting prospect to render the animations for a couple dozen different LIs, probably make it impossible to automate the animations, and likely result in an enormous distribution file. Personally, I get distracted by the time spent yacking about variant ideas about the motivation of the government, but I'm sure some find it amusing. The game has improved enough that I am giving it one more star.

The story is kind of intriguing, which is what kept me playing, but the graphics are almost non-existent in v. 0.02.3: most interaction occurs like a badly-staged play, with the characters in the scene all lined up mid-stage. When a person is talking, their mouth opens, and their faces change expression to reflect changes in their feelings, but it feels like I'm watching a set of cardboard cutouts. The images for kissing, making out, and sex acts are mostly missing, and those that exist are all in the same position with the same actions. There is no descriptive text about kisses or sexual interactions, so they come across as being relatively sterile, formalized acts. It seems impossible to communicate with the dev without becoming a patron, which is unfortunate because there is one character whose kissing and making-out scenes trigger infinite loops, and I would tell the dev that and send snippets of tracebacks that illustrate the problem, but that isn't possible, so I may just delete it and forget about it. It's mildly disappointing, because the plot seems like it could make an interesting game in the hands of someone who knows how to write narrative fiction and position characters, lighting, and cameras during interactions.

This game is not off to a good start. There are a lot of missing images to content the author has included. And where there are images, they are all exactly the same except for the actress involved. There are a few "doggie style" sex scenes, either vaginal or anal, for some of the girls. They are identical. And it's hardly doggie style, since he ends up picking the girl up in a half-nelson style act so you can see the penetration.

On the positive, at least the girls have a varied sized bust, from an A cup to gigantic mammaries of death.

But given the lack of imagination the author has shown in positions, I don't hold out much hope for this improving. I hope the author proves me wrong.