Others - The Lodge [v4.4] [Alezzi]

Agree with several previous reviews, this is a game with 4 star art and probably a 3 star gamed burdened by a 1 or 2 star engine and a 1 or 2 star use of sandbox and, when combining those, the negatives outweigh the positive. It's about a 1.5 but I'll round up in this case because kudos for the 2D art which looks like it's original.

Positive Points:
+Original Artstyle.
+The idea to rent a lodge to make money and fuck the girls.

Negative Points:
-The engine is desastrophic.
-Awful save system.
-2 sound options: mute or become deaf.
-Softlock and bug
-Sandbox system isn't used.
-No real management.
-Really weird story
-Sex scene animation

Conclusion:
The game looks really promissing with a great base idea and an original artstyle but everything is ruined by multiple negative point.
The engine choice is terrible, all the save are automatics, no slot, no possible reset. If you're softlock you're just doomed, the only way is to use the option to jump to a version of the game but how are you supposed to know wich version you were when your game crashed or softlock? And even with that some "jump to version" will softlock you too!!!
Sandbox system is useless because the story is completely linear, there's no point to navigate in the different map. Same with the renting system, there's no management or anything like that, it could have been resume by a text box. The game is more a VN with no choice when you have to manually navigate in the different place.
Story is really weird, you're a kind of asshole who rent lodge to make money and found pretty girl to seduce and fuck them. However by renting I mean that he can enter with no invitation when he want. Imagine the owner of your holiday lodge came with his "young" girlfriend (it's a nice way to say child sex abuse) during the evening to eat with you before fucking her in the spa and come back the next day to fuck your wife, it will be a pretty akward situation.
The sex scene are disappoiting, only one bad animation (the last one with Belle was something...), the game have a great artstyle, instead of 1 animation 3 or 4 images should have been better.
The mini game to farm money are boring and unbalanced. One is long (1min), annoying and give 60$ if you make no mistake, the other is short (5sec), brainless and give you 50$. Why should I play the first one?
I can only put 2 stars for this game, there is really good idea behind all the negative point, the game is only at the beginning so he can change to become really great.

Test done in version 2.3

The game is in some alternative engine, problem is that it is featureless and buggy. Tried to find how to save the game and I came in some menu to jump to new content which I could not back out of. I made it just past the first sex scene before it crashed, tried again and crashed at a slightly later time.

The game is build like a sandbox, but you have to follow the steps exactly to progress which is just annoying. Travel is very unintuitive and confusing.

The whole premises of renting out a house and then living with your clients is weird and awkward, the guy just walks in all the time uninvited and everyone just acts like its normal.

Dialogues are terrible and characters are just empty shells without personality and very attracted to the MC for no apparent reason.

I like the art style though. +1

TL/DR:
I feel bad for the artist of this game- they have a unique and beautiful style, but the game-play and narrative is so incredibly lacking the game is currently not worth playing.

0.8 Update:
Things are improving and getting fleshed out. Map got a elegant new Ui. New locations had great art.

Pros
~The art style is so cool. Next level even. Very minimal use of solid black border lines. Almost everything is done with solid blocks of color. The BGs are so vibrant and have movement in them. The girls and MC all look amazing .
~I like the concept of being a suave agent gent renting out various lodges to attractive women. It is a winning idea for harem games and resource management games. (Albeit quite a bit over-done.)

Cons:
~There is no point in having an open sandbox if the game plays linearly. I like sandbox fine- but if you are going to do it make sure it is full of stuff. (Could simply be an early development issue I suppose)
~The minigames and monetary loop are god-awful. I needed to click the screen x20 times to stack boxes like 10 times in a row to progress the plot at one point. What a snooze fest.
~There are no meaningful choices
~The dialog is very Engrish.
~Characterization is weak
~The MC has really weird looking balls. They look kinda....squashed. Like someone put them in a hydraulic-press or something

Just played to the first sex scene and i really liked the art style and mechanics. A lot of people don't like sandbox, but i don't mind them as long as devs are reasonable and don't make interactions between characters depend too much on grinding. Dev is doing a good job on that aspect until now, since you can interact with girls whenever you want. Some things bothered me though. First, i know the game is in an early build, but i'd still like to point out that it could use more sprites, more facial expressions during dialogues to be more specific. it would give the characters a more natural look, also, the lines on the sprites borders are too heavy, it makes characters look like cardboard cutouts and it doesn't fit the art style. The second thing is, writing needs some work. The interaction with Lana, for example, felt pretty basic. It did a good job presenting her character, a shy teenage girl who's excited to discover the world, experiment things, go to parties, drink, meet boys, etc, with a somewhat reasonable mother, who's a little on the controlling side. But her relationship with mc felt too straightforward. I'd like to see more of her personality during the gameplay. I know their time with MC will be limited (three days in their case), but it's possible making a convincing writing for that. It would give the game a longer gameplay without too much work on the visual side, and the sex would feel more natural.

Looking forward to future releases, fun little game so far, and a unique art style, not much substance yet to it but it is just the first release and what is there is good. Will definitely be a top tier game in the near future.