Ren'Py - The Library Story [v0.97.5.75 SE] [Latissa & Xaljio]

As most other folks have pointed out, this game had been "in development" since Obama was in office. It was a cute & fun game then, but now their development schedule has grown increasingly lacking. The promised update has been promised since February of 2024, and now it is November. They've used excuses like "one of the two developers was sick" twice. Once in July and once in October. The most recent update made it so every save game would crash and it even took away content from people. The developers are scammers at this point. Do not support either developer, and do not get your hopes up for a working product.

Developers so slow that you could consider it a scam. Updates comes by about once per year and it's by no mean significant. Haven't seen anything close to this ever in my entire life. The game itself is somewhat grindy and slow but the art and scenes are nice but nothing more than that.

All you need to know about the game is that it has been in development for over 8 years. Approximately 4 of which are version 0.9+. At the same time, the game still has 0 sex scenes and a lot of pointless grind for no reason.

I decided to write a review on this game, which I played for a long time and followed all the updates until a certain point. I was even a patron of this project for a period, but canceled the subscription because I realized that the developers simply decided not to finish the game, but to maximize their profits.

The game initially looked very promising, with attractive art, decent gameplay, and a good story. However, over the years, the developers put in less and less effort, resulting in very slow development. Updates only included a few new scenes, quests, and events. The version updates became so insignificant that it seemed like the developers were just trying to collect as much money as possible without finishing the game. Despite understanding the developers' challenges through last couple of years, it's been a long time since the game's development started, and it's disappointing to see such slow progress.

I would rate the game 3/5, but the lack of effort from the developers is a major reason why I'm discouraged from continuing to follow it.

I really like this game. Great storyline, nice graphics. Very original, there are only a few games like this. The downsides are the long updates and it can be a quite grindy game. Take your time with this game make it more fun.

Every blue moon I remember this game exists and check how its going
The answer is always the same: exactly as 10 years ago

Should add some kind of "vintage" or "game of the decade" at this point, would certainly help with the main purpose here: milking patreons

Back then when this project was young and showed promise, art ui story scenes... Everything was fine and kind of unique, but since then literally hundreds of other similar (and sometimes better in every sense), projects have been created AND finished

Today this only serves as a time-capsule of simpler times, which is already showing its age even when far from being completed and labeled as "new game"

Shouldve started with a book, not a library

I enjoy this game, its fun, hilarious, and the artstyle stays true to the base artstyle, and I respect that. I hope the creators keep making games like this. People really do underestimate how hard it is to make a game like this and still have it be as good as it is.

Developers absolutely untrustable, and deadlines are never respected. The respect for the patrons is almost zero. Each time they promise many contents and in the last two years have published a couple of small updates, postponing each time the real contents update to no one knows when.

Summary: It is a game that has been out for a long time and it is a game i want to give a higher rating, but from what i have seen over time this is the best rating i feel it deserves.
Pro: it is funny an does not take it self seriously with a interesting take on this genre.
The game has a semi interesting combat mechanic that i feel is good and put together.

Con: the game has game has been out for a while and update are far an inbetween an feel as tho there is no meat to the updates.
I can play after a update and have no idea what is added as it can be so small that you miss it. It is a shame that most updates are like this with being small details that they are missed.

I really liked the game. Great text, good storyline, nice graphics. In general, in terms of thoughtfulness and originality, there are only a few games of this kind. The downside is long updates, but many games on patreon are now sinning with this.

It is an idle game that wastes players' time and annoys them. I don't want to see another crappy game that will milk Disney this much. We don't know what to do in the game and how to access your rape shit content. These jerk developers should be a good guide. I'm not giving this crappy game 1 star because of its visual art

This game develops more than 6 years. For this time I found a girl, bought a flat in the capital city in one of the European countries. Besides my main job, prepared an open-source tool for developers that already is in the release version I think for two years. And this game is not finished yet...

About game.
- Really poor animation and ero scenes.
- Maybe fun but not really the story
- Poor quests
- Boring game
- not user-friendly interface - to do some action you need to click a few times (but really it can be only one)

This cashgrab was at version 0.9 in 2016. 6 year later thousands of games in videogame industry (even those made by one person) got their full release since and this one is still unfinished piece of crap with art style not changing( in terms of becoming better) a bit or any meaningful progress at all.

OK I finally finished the game -- or at least, finished up to the point where there's nothing left to do until they finally update it.

I like the artwork and the humor for the most part. I wish there were more games with Disney-like characters and artwork.

But my god, the grind. You have to repeat certain things dozens of times before you get anything new. And there's nothing to tell you that's what you have to do. At many times, I just assumed I had reached the end of content for that particular thing, not realizing there would be more.

I had to ask lots of questions in the discussion area as to what to do next, because it's not intuitive at all. You should be able to ask Binker "What should I do next?" or something for some of these quests.

I wanted so much to like this, as my favorite games are the cartoony ones.

But then I got near the end and when there's finally actual real sex scenes, they're rape scenes. You watch while the girls are raped by the Beast, and then by the tentacle tree, and then you get to rape Belle finally. There should be a "rape" tag so I would have known to avoid this.

I like sex games where you help the girl realize her own inner slut and she comes to love what she is doing. It's another thing to rape her into it. That's not my fantasy which is why I avoid games with the "rape" tag.

Anyway, I tried, I really did. I tried to like this so many times. But that's enough.

I played this game years ago and the concept intrigued me... now playing it again, they've added a lot... but boy is it grindy. A lot of the quests seem kind of stupid, like the one for getting telescope/guild access... I had to kill 4 grizzlies twice in a row when they almost never appear in combat. I'm 50+ days in and haven't finished more than 3 of those quests when it seems to take like 6+. Then, there's a lovely bug where when you enter an area and get attacked, if you click on an item in the background, through the combat screen, it picks up the item... and then freezes the combat system forever, so you have to reload.
And some of the fights don't make sense; bandit camp - impossible fight, the only hint is "figure out a way to trick them", like okay, that really gives me a lot to work with! Same for beating the Beast when he goes after Emma - seems impossible to win. Tentacle plant also seems impossible with no hints how to get past it. I shouldn't have to read a walkthrough to figure this out either. Factor in that I'm already maxed out hunting skill, have armor and the best weapon, and these are still undoable.
Then, so many quests and alternate characters open up, but nothing ever really finishes. Devs need to work on finishing Belle (and questlines in general) before they start adding in random shit all over the place that is half-done. It's like a cockblock when you get 5 steps into a quest and the next part just says (for the Nth time) "more in 9.8.5.5" or whatever version it is.
I shouldn't just poo-hoo the game, because there is some things about it that are great. The art style is charming and appealing (though not especially erotic), as akabur games tend to be. The underlying plot is actually some great writing; the entire concept of the book keeper corrupting Belle is nice. There is a good amount of humor, and a good variety of stuff. The problem is really all the filler crap; it feels like that classic patreon game where the dev pushed in-game progress to a standstill in order to disguise how little content is really there. Like go kill (literally) 100+ animals to make one iota of progress in one out of fifteen quests you have open. I've played less grindy MMO's.

I have better chances finding Belle in the real world and doing whatever I want to her than doing it in this game.
It will also take less time to do so.
Doesnt help that 5 years later after release the game is far to be at "v0.96.5" as it is at the time of this review. It is just a number close to v1.0 to give you a feeling that is about to be finished, while the main point of the game, making Belle yours, is far from being close.

They recently added some actual lewd content with Belle, which helped a lot. But again, far too late. The main point of this game, if you look at the description, is to corrupt Belle and be able to do with her as you please. That includes a lot of things, including wardrobe personality etc...

None is present in the version who is 0.03.5 from being completed, and considering the pace they are adding content, you will probly have 1-2 scenes added that justifies that, like a good Kickstarter scam.

Do not bother.

tl;dr Less than the sum of its parts

The writing is really great. Usually in these games you get either a lot of scenes of bad quality or a few scenes of good quality, but there are a lot of scenes of good quality in here. It's a lot of fun to read.

The art is simple, but solid. It's not really going to blow your socks off but it's consistent, thematic, drawn well enough very little jumps out at me for looking 'wrong', and there's a fair amount of variant details. Animations also aren't amazing but not wonky either.

There's a lot of interesting game elements in the code as well. Corruption stats, inventory, combat, a rudimentary economy and such.

Unfortunately the big problem with this game is not the writing or the art or the code, it's the design, which is at best a classic "there's no planning here, we're just adding shit as we go along" non-design that results in a grindy, unintuitive mess of circuitous quest triggers that is not much fun at all to plod through. To make the obvious soundtrack joke, No one clicks a zillion times to try and do shit like Gaston, at least in this game.

It's a shame, because when it's good it's pretty damn good. But good luck actually getting to the good parts if you don't want to decompile the thing and write your own anti-grind QoL mods for it.

I have been playing and supporting this game from almost the very beginning and have always really liked it and the idea around it. To corrupt Belle slowly and steady to make her your own little sex-slave(sex-princess),nothing is really better then that!!

It's very clear that there is a very talented coder behind the game, namely Xaljio who is also know for coding Akabur's game. This clearly shows with all the mechanics and details you have in the game - Everything from advanced fighting to well though out quest-lines.

The art fits perfect in line with a disney game and Latissa does a really well job here to make the lewd content come to life with both still art & also animated scenes.
Latissa also does the story/dialogues for the game and its clear its not the first time she writes a good fantasy story.(A few things do get lost when translated from Russian to English imo)

Pros:

Cons:
This review is a bit biased since I do work with the team to improve it so take it with a grain of salt & and try it out yourself.

The art style leaves a bit to be desired, but the gameplay and situations are really fun. I really enjoyed the sleeping scenes and skirt lift scenes. If you're into voyeurism/exhibitionism this game will be wonderful.

This game is amazing, but has an update speed on par with Akaburs old games. Where we have to wait months for content (usually 3 - 7 months in between each update that has content and is not only fixes). Probably due to the fact that Latissa has to work with Xalijo whom is known to work on several projects at the same time. Thankfully, he cut down his workload to 2 projects, but Iris Quest still hasn't really gotten an update.

Other than slow updates I really enjoy the game, but progress to doing adult stuff with Belle is beyond slow, especially since this revolves around her and Gaston. They post up a million polls on the game, but it seems everyone votes for side activities first rather than finishing the main story, which ends up giving the feeling that I might as well wait 2+ years to even consider playing the game.

Art is great. Could be better if ima be honest. I've compared her art, and honestly what I see in The Library Story seems to be refined sketches compared to what she usually draws.

Edit: Forgot to add, for a 4 year old game, there is not nearly as much content as there should be.
Edit 2: 0.96 and still can't fuck belle. All you get is a stupid tentacle. I used to donate to them so I can say this, everyone that supports them is a moron. Who purposely picks tentacle rather than finishing the main story? They can add side content at anytime, but when you guys only voted for tentacle content for 4 years straight it's kinda bad. If you don't care for tentacles or are expecting actual content, then don't bother downloading.