VN - Ren'Py - The Intoxicating Flavor [v0.11.7] [PixelsLab]

Yikes this was hard to play, My brain hurts trying to follow the story. Not to mention the dialogue doesn't make sense half of the time because the dev's first language obviously isn't english. All round an extremely confusing mess..

This game starts off slow, but once it picks up, I found myself completely immersed in the story. The visuals are absolutely gorgeous, and I genuinely cared about the characters, just like I would in a great book.

As many others have mentioned, the English translation in the first few chapters Is Meh, but I didn't feel like it detracted too much from the overall story. However, as the game progresses, the English did improves and becomes Great

I was curious to check out this game because it seemed like the dev put some thought into the story. But despite the grammar issues, the story still has not grabbed me to keep me interested in the long run. To be honest, I ended up skimming through some of the dialogue while trying to stick to the main plot, just so I could get to the scenes with the redhead mom, who quickly became my favorite. Although those sex scenes were way too short and basically felt like filler for the story.

I will say it is above average in relation to other games on this site, but it definitely needs a lot of work. Some scenes felt forced even with the choices I made, and that really took away from the whole experience as the game is more of a kinetic novel than a traditional visual novel with multiple routes. Right now, I'll give it this rating because I see some potential, but I might change my mind later if the new stuff added is better or worse than what is available now.

As other reviewers have pointed out, there's not much to review since it's nearly impossible to get into the game due to the atrocious grammar. Nearly every sentence contains a serious grammatical error that removes all immersion from the game making it a terrible slog to get through.

Some examples from the first hour of gameplay:

"...but I want to know why did you attack our driver, too"

"We thought we supposed to be the only people on the island."

"Wow! I feel like I'm under questioning."

"Lets meet each other since we're stuck here together."

"Now when we know each others names, we can rule things out."


On top of the poor grammar is the never ending cavalcade of non-choice choices where only one choice shows up. Not really a choice at all, and yet again serves only to break the flow of the story.

Not sure how I can give this any stars at all. With grammar this poor there's no immersion, and without immersion we're left with endless fast forwarding to get to the adult content, and if I'm going that far I might as well load up some porn rather than waste time fast-forwarding. Even worse, the adult content is barely passable. Very few renders with "animations" that are maybe two or three frames. Worse still, you bed everyone without effort. Even with perfect grammar the story makes little sense.


It may sound cruel, but this game has no redeeming qualities. I can't recommend it to anyone.

I love the Game and i can defenetly can tell is a beautiful game and story so far.and i hope it will be continuew in the future and i hope that everyone is willing to try it and review it and tell everyone about it.

Might I suggest you look around for better english proof readers. That's assuming you even proof read the written portion of the novel (Which I strongly doubt). Think the story would make more sense if it was in braille or in sign language.

It's a shame really, because I could see this having plenty of potential, only to die in darkness due to the poor english.

I have no idea how this game can have 4 stars, I cant bring myself to rate it above 1 star since Im not even able to comprehend the story because the English is so bad you'd think an illiterate goat wrote it.

This is just stupid kinetic novel, where you are forced to choose between 1 option like 1000 times.
WHY?????

This game (v0.9.2 at the time of this review) is a slow burn, but once it gets going I found myself completely invested in the story. The game looks beautiful, and I found myself caring about the characters in it, as I would in any good story.

As many have mentioned, in the first few chapters the English translation is not great, but I've seen worse and I personally never felt it took too much from the story. As it goes on, though, the quality of the English improves to essentially perfect.

I think the only kind of real complaint I have, and it's more a complaint of expectation than a critique of the product itself, is that this is almost more of a kinetic novel than it is a VN. There are some choices in it, but they don't really feel like they matter very much. I like KNs, but it's always a bit of a disappointment to play a VN only to find out your choices don't really matter that much. I will say that at least there aren't single-option choices thrown up just for the sake of clicking.

That being said, I really got invested in this game and can't wait to see future chapters.

The Intoxicating Flavor [v0.9.2] review-
Great renders with stunning female models with different personality and good story though English could use a proof reader but I don't mind it much . Likeable main character and no annoying gameplay and nice background sounds which feels nice while playing game . Sex scenes are animated and well done . Overall 5 stars looking forward to next update .

Cons:
This story will bother some people for how linear it is. Not all sex scenes are optional, and the story largely dictates that you get into the romance and other situations. I saw some complaints about the author's english, but it's only a problem in the early chapters, and not impossible to read. The author could always go back and fix it all, but I don't think it is worth slowing down progress on new chapters.

Pros:
If you're here for the sexy, the girls are hot. If you're here for the narrative... this is fucking awesome. It feels very run-of-the-mill for a chapter or two, but stick with it as it gets wilder and wilder. Each character has a distinct and diverse personality, with demons and secrets in their pasts that unravel slowly over time. The MC is an intelligent figure, but is held back by memory issues and a dark, twisted personality forged by a troubled past, but new acquaintances have him changing for the better. This is an awesome story that I'm really excited to see more of.

The models are GORGEOUS and that is something I give the dev credit for.
The writing/English wasn't great, but I managed to ignore it to pay attention to the story... but then it became a chore. It has waaaaaaay to much text without saying anything in concrete, an idea that could be said in fewer words gets unnecessarily extended.
I liked the potential it showed at first, but as it continued I realized the story doesn't appeal to my taste. I won't say it's a bad story, but it feels like it goes in circles and it's too fantastic for me and gives the illusion that, at some point, it stays stuck.

In the start It looked like to be good, but it just become more boring after each update, might as well been a text based game, the hottest scene is in the start, which is not even sex but only grinding. I keep hoping for something good with each update, but I realise now, it's never gonna happen...
Just feels like a milking game... I give 2 stars for the renders and models... The rest is just dragged out boring...

OK... So I tried to like this story. I really did but it was just too long and has become circular in its progression.

The premise is original and if you have managed to get very far into it, you eventually begin to see what is happening and why, or at least you think you do? The problem however is that it takes forever to get to that point and yet it still doesn't completely answer any questions. You end up with a "vague" idea of what is going on but you are never quite sure.

The translation is appalling at first. It is so bad that it gets in the way of your understanding of the dialog in many cases. It does improve as the chapters progress and becomes fairly easy to read but there are still times when you really have to read a sentence multiple times to figure out what is being said.

As the chapters progress the dialog gets long... VERY LONG!! There are multiple scenes where you end up in click hell in a single scene. One scene in particular had me at 500+ clicks solely on a single conversation between the MC and the antagonist. I gave up counting at 500+ mind you! This isn't the only time it happens either. Chapters 5 forward are so dialog heavy that I simply couldn't endure it anymore and found myself speed clicking through scenes just to get to a point where I felt the story was actually moving.

The renders are fine. Nothing we haven't seen before and nothing unique but you really lose all of the visuals because of the slow and arduous reading that goes on and on.

Folks, I get it! So many fans are fawning over this story and using lots of big words to describe just how deep the story goes but here is the ultimate problem however. All of the "depth" of story hides the glaring fact that the story is as of 0.8.8 nothing more than a dialog heavy story that goes in circles. You have sex, you walk around the island, you swim alot and you have these strange dreams that "try" to bend the lines between dream and reality and just become confusing. Then you wake up and do it again, and again, and again.

It's one thing to tell a story that has depth. It is another thing to bury that same story in character dialog that says so much but means so little. Visual Novels are just that. They are visual in nature. The problem with this story is that someone forgot about the visuals and just started writing a novel. After a while It began to remind me of the TV show Seinfeld.

A story about absolutely nothing.

Dropped this game after finishing Chap. 2. I don't mind "bad" English translation, mostly because I'm not a native speaker myself. But the story itself is quite needlessly convoluted and difficult to follow from time to time, and what further bores me is the fact that you are not given much meaningful choice to make: it's just tons of dialogues and narration in order to expand the storyline. If I'm not given the chance to "play" an AVN, I'd rather just read a printed book instead.

Renders while there is a bit of consistency issue, look great, and you get to see some unusual environments. Animations get better as you play through too. I like the evolving relationships as well - bummer that they are pretty linear without much say of the player. Characters are interesting and blooming with each episodes, Maria especially imo.

But sometimes it's soo hard to read the dialogues/monologues - dev should hire a proof-reader because its clear as sky that English is not his first language.

The major thing that I disliked is forced romance and overall lack of meaningful decisions. I understand that it is for the story's sake but I still don't like when it happens and it wouldn't have to be this way. For me personally, it is a big turnoff in VN games as I love to shape the path of my MC.

Great models, but terrible story overall...Boring ass game...Seemed to have potential at the beginning, but now has just turned out to be a pathetic DoD wannabe...A good writer might help this game though...Tiresome experience

0.8.6.5
Huh, I had really good time playing, and this doesn't happen that often. I admit, that first chapters were really hard to piece together because off all those jumps between past, present and dreams, but after a while I was able to get the gigst of the plot. Renders are also looking very good,and story is enjoyable. And what a moment for the ending cliffhanger definitelly recommend

Reviewing v0.8.6.5

I've realised I haven't rated this yet although I've been following and enjoying it for a while, so it's about time to do it.
This has been one of those I look forward to the most for a while. The main reasons being two fold:

1. The renders
The quality has been good from the start but is also very obviously getting better and better.
The setup of the scenes is clearly thought through and adds to the quality.
In more recent updates there are now animations which are of incredible quality. When I play Ren'py games I usually don't want full on animations, but here, they are really adding something.
As for the models they are pretty good, and has one of my favourite girls on the whole site (and I am picky). Furthermore their face expression receives just as much attention from the dev, not just the posing, and it makes a world of difference.

2. The writing
This is an interesting one and pretty unexpected, let me explain.
The story I find a bit complex and must admit I have at times skipped some dialogs that I didn't get. On top of that the dev isn't a native english speaker and one can tell even from the game description (and I sometimes wonder about the proofreaders too...).
However, despite that, I found that the level of detail spent to craft the dialogs, alongside the aforementioned facial expressions, makes for an experience that you sometimes feel in your belly way more than you should. There are certain scenes I know I felt deeply connected to because of that, and I liked it. Certain scenes with Katie in particular, the way she fights with the MC and gradually warms up to him, it's just well done. And I think this is the main reason I hung around when in other games I probably would have left due to a lack of perceived progress and sex scenes.

Now there are bad points too.
As mentioned above I don't enjoy fully the whole story, which may be because I'm not into the supernatural things (but like I said, the relationship building part is wonderfully done).
There's also a lack of decisions so it's more a VN than a game.
And then there is the Alice model which to me looks weird (both old and new models), so in a way I wish there was more gorgeous models. But then that turns into a positive because it means I get to see Katie more

And so that is where it leaves me. I know my attraction to Katie may make me too soft for this game and maybe I try too much to compensate against a potential bias. But objectively this game is quality and a work of art that is very good.
What would make it Excellent for me? Some decisions or maybe variations in the sex scenes if the story is important to be linear. And some variety to the sex which has so far been pretty basic (but oh so well done - now that I write this I'm not even sure as it may not work at all... dunno, still curious I guess).

One of the most underrated and underfunded AVN's out there. Especially considering there is a creator on here that makes almost a million a year and doesn't even really update the game anymore and is one of the most overrated games ever.

My computer recently crashed and burned and so I had to start all over. You can easily see how the creator has improved the quality of the renders by huge amounts over time. Don't even get me started on animations. I've never seen one that does anything close to the hip movements in one of the more recent scenes. Also the story is good and better than 95% of the other AVN's out there.

On the plus side the renders in this game are good. I would say they are excellent but the dev went overboard with Depth of Field. What is the point of having a nice video card, high dpi monitor and HD resolution if creators intentionally blur 80% of any given picture. In some pictures/scenes it makes sense to have a focus but it is so heavily overused it significantly detracts from the visual quality.

I'm not really into MILFs but Maria is maybe the hottest I've seen in any AVN.

The English translation of the first few chapters is so poor it heavily interferes with the dialogue and even affects the story. I honestly can't understand what the characters are trying to say at times and it makes the writing/dialogue so awkward. I wouldn't be able to experience this AVN without it, for which I am grateful, so this is hopefully taken as constructive criticism.