Ren'Py - Abandoned - The Regional Manager [v0.171] [Horizontical Studio]

I feel like this game has a lot of potential, and I give it 5 stars not because of what it is now, but for what it will surely become in the future.

Pro's
Great art
Sandbox
Actually fun to play
Doesn't go over the top with dialogue

Con's
Sometimes I felt like it was difficult to find the next step I should take.
Every girl I was able to attract was unavailable until the next update.
I worry about spending all of the time it would take to get through the full game, given that there is still so much left to do, which would mean I would have to come back and play it multiple times.
I felt like there was too much incentive to be the bad guy, when really I wanted to play the good guy. Like if you don't blackmail the girls you simply aren't going to get laid in many cases.

Suggestions
There needs to be clearer directions for how to progress with each girl. The guide is very helpful, but sometimes I felt like "what is this person even doing here and how do I get to the next point where I can talk to them?"

There were many time where someone would give you their number and you would not gain them as a contact, which was just confusing to me.

I told Sam to break up with his girlfriend and they are still together, and I still cannot figure out for the life of me how to get that girl into the photo studio.



Bugs
aside from some typos I think there was 1 very major bug.

I was able to increase my relationship with any girl I wanted simply by looping their conversations over and over and figuring out which response gave me the positive points with them.

Playing the memory game on the first day gave me enough money to never have to get money again.


As a whole I would say this game is awesome. I look forward to its updates, its exactly the kind of game I like to play. The art is not at issue here, I would say the biggest problem here is simply pulling together all of the assets into a cohesive and playable game.

Really nice work on graphics as well characters background to be revealed. Thanks for the entertaining and the time I was contemplating about each situation.
I like the approach beeing not the "nice guy" as well.

This is a very long game and many characters, each character has a very complex and interesting personality and circumstances, perhaps because of so many characters ,,,, each character is unfinished, and it seems very I don't see the end of the game in a long time.
Game graphics at first glance not beautiful, but if you play hard for 1 hour, you will discover that the character's body is great and the face expression is very rich.
I think the game deserves 5 ^ for all of that.

Even though the game is still in the early stages and contains numerous cons that I will discuss, it is already one of my favorite games on this site. For blackmail lovers like me, this game is among the best of the best, and I liken it to High Rise Climb (another great game with plenty of blackmail and a somewhat similar story).

Pros:
- There are a large number of scenes already despite the game still being in the early stages. Most games either only concentrate on one or two characters and have minimal new scenes for each update or have a ton of scenes but with weak to no story accompanying the scenes, but this game is definitely a beautiful exception as there are a huge number of characters and the majority of them already have their own storylines involving at the least, scenes where you can undress them, and many of them scenes where you can do more with them. The few other games that have a similar number of characters normally results in rushed scenes where the player doesn't have many choices and it turns more into a visual novel than a game controlled by the person playing it. However, that isn't the case with this one, and the scenes for the most part are all done very well.

- The characters fit their character personas well throughout the game. This isn't like most games when you start corrupting an innocent young lady and she quickly turns into slut mode and starts to love the one corrupting her. The characters seem to follow their individual goals and attributes throughout and maintain a high level of unhappiness and/or hatred for the main character when succumbing to give in to the desires of the main character.

-There is a variety of characters fitting different ages, careers, and personalities. There are characters who are the equivalent of a sister and mother (you have to manually input their relation to you) for incest lovers, but there are also a lot of other characters that fit to individual fetishes such as college students, teachers, office workers, a doctor, a dentist, nurses, a lifeguard, a maid, a store clerk, a young delivery driver, a couple living in an RV, a corruptible mayor, a corruptible police chief, corruptible businessmen, etc. However, what I absolutely love about the game is the specific details given to character's backgrounds such as an office worker struggling to get money to provide financial support to a husband suffering from cancer as well as their daughter, a demure young woman who finally got away from an abusive partner only to have him reenter her life, a struggling immigrant trying to make a living on a small paycheck, etc.

- The English is very good. I'm not sure of the game creator's background, but most games similar to this have barely passable English, but this game seems to be done by a native English speaker. It is interesting if you go to the creator's Patreon page, one of the giving levels is "Assistant to the Regional Manager" which is an Office pun that few non-native speakers would have any idea to create.

- The game contains a checklist and an additional help tool (the question mark in the top right of the screen) that provides some information on how to get sexy scenes and find hidden places. While neither of these tools are perfect, the creator seems to already have some tools in place to help one find the many, many scenes in this game.

The cons (and they are many despite the 5 star rating):
- The renders are definitely not the best and animations are as basic as it gets. I say this merely to point it out, but I have a feeling there is a trade off here between the creator having only enough time for either impeccable renders or a large number of scenes and opportunities, and I know personally I'd prefer the scenes and opportunities over perfect renders.

-There are a number of bugs (please note the game is in v0.0.31 as I write this and the bugs may be fixed in future versions). I'm hoping the creator will eventually address this, but there are a host of bugs throughout. For example, after blackmailing one character who agrees to send a nude picture each day if you call her, there was a glitch while I played where she would always say she already sent the picture for the day (the only fix I could find was to click the advance one day icon). There are also several bugs when researching other character backgrounds within the office's archives .

- The game desperately needs a walkthrough or better hint system. After playing my first time through I missed a ton of scenes based on the images available in the game folder which makes me think either the game has steps that have to be followed through in a specific order or they are only triggered based on specific scenario settings that I haven't figured out. I am hoping a more thorough guide will eventually be created as there are a ton of different characters and it is very difficult to figure out what to do in what order which leads to a ton of time wasting trying to figure out who to talk to next. This unfortunately leads to it sometimes taking hours to figure out how to do things that could have been done in a few minutes with a guide or better hint system.

- Many scenes tease you by saying it will be implemented in a future update or even worse ends without giving a warning that you can't continue further. It is a big letdown when you do the many steps required to get a date with a girl only to be told you'd have to wait to a future update to go on the date. This particularly concerns me as this a tactic that has been used by other developers of blackmail/coercion focused games (ex. Bad Brother Saga and Teachers Pets) that unfortunately often rarely lead to the updates ever being created in future updates. I'm hoping this game will be different. A separate issue is there are several scenes that don't continue further, but the game doesn't alert you which can cause you to waste a ton of time trying to figure out what to do next when you are actually unknowingly taking part in a mission impossible quest due to the creator not alerting that there is nothing further to do in the quest at the moment.

-Many of the sex scenes are a bit rushed. This isn't necessarily terrible as I'd prefer it over long sex scenes that feel grindy, but it does seem like some scenes progress (and end) much quicker than they should. For example, the first sex scene with Cecilia was over much too quickly.

Overall, this game ranks near the top of my all-time favorites despite it being at an early stage of development. If the developer keeps things up at this pace (and fixes the bugs and provides an easy to follow guide), he or she definitely has a masterpiece in the making which has me very excited and looking forward to future updates.

Excellent game. Beautiful girls (lots of 'em too), quality renders and a nice story for each of them. I look forward to the future updates of this game. Also, a little more "hints" or walkthrough would be excellent.

This is a great game, with so much content already! I do get a little lost in it however, and am looking forward to more tips/hints/checklist in the game to work out what I've already done, and need to do. I also get the feeling that I'm missing out on content by some of my choices, but I can't tell. I'd love it if everything was repeatable, to see what the different choices do.

nice game, i like sanbox, and this game has a lot of possibilities.
but relly need a walkthrough, or at least some more detailed hints. sometimes i don't know if there is more content when the mc is good or bad, and how to make it.
waiting for the update.

One of the better proyects of this year. Looot of content for being the first versions and lot of choices too. Seriusly, this has as much content as Bastard girls R and you will actually see it. In the cons i would say that there are some minor bugs and without cheat mode/using the in-game guide it can be a little tricky at times, but being soo early in development thats a given, sadly. Looking foward for more of it!

The game look nice, have good renditions and average animations. Quite a lot varied characters, a bit of corruption and blackmailing, some scenes with touching and grouping, a lot of random events with a lot potential...but that's it all of them fells not finished. For now there's no real pay off, no real sex scene. Main character is more like perverted kid then real villain - the evil path - cant fuck anything wtf?. Also karma mechanics is kinda retarded the more evil you are the less evil you are lol. Karma is represented by point and by doing "bad things" the points go down...and you pay with those point to do bad shit so yes crazy. I though being bad move you to being even more bold but no it just make you more quaint.

Hopefully the devs will be brave enough to move on, the game has a lot of potential but its grindy as hell and give not much in return even with cheat mode on. On other hand really few here are brave to go in that direction - unless main hero is woman or some alien then quite a lot strangely - well still looking forward how it will go ...version 0.0.2

Be bold give players real choice!