VN - Ren'Py - The Roommate [v0.12.11] [togs]

This is an ongoing and developing story which I am thoroughly enjoying. The developer teases the reader with suggestions of things to come whilst satisfying immediate needs with fairly frequent sexcapades of the MC. 4 stars because the artwork isn't Rolls Royce, but it's perfectly acceptable especially considering it's the dev's first outing. Low star ratings are the result of the mean spirited and impatient, ignore them. This story is fun, implausible perhaps but this is porn for Christ's sake, what do you expect, James Joyce!

This game had a promising beginning with a sexy and a straight forward plot : You get to choose how to use your position to get girlfriends, mistresses and sugar babies.... It was about a guy being promoted in a big company and he could us this new position to get girls...

Now the plot is all over the place, and I have no idea what is going on anymore. The dev inserted ridiculous sci fi plot about cloning and crazy science experiments... Just why?

Also the dev inserted many characters to the extent you lose track of who is who, and many rape trauma behind the girls and forced girls and forced scenes....

Overall a prime example of a story that started well, up to a certain point.
Lovely characters, an entertaining narrative and light-hearted conversations.
It was a little bit on the slow-burner side, but that actually benefitted the climax point of the first sex scene in my opinion.
Would I rate the first half of the game, it would be a 4-5 depending on wether you value highly advanced sex scenes.

But then the P.A. switches. I really felt that at this point the developer decided to take away player agency and started to implement fetishes that catered to a minority.
Former decisions were ignored, multiple LIs were either forced directly onto the MC or pushed into existing relationships.
You're forced to share one of the main LIs with another girl, including cheating if you deny her fucking with her without you.
One side-LI gets taken away by a lesbian without any player agency.
Half the "sexy conversations" stirred from possible player interests to tales about gang bangs (-rapes), bukkake, sharing, whoring etc.
Even tho the developer already acknowledged the abundance of players concerns about these topics and claimed to redo at least some of it in one way or another, it kept getting worse.

My hope lies in the rework coming with 0.12. including an overhaul of Kiki, removing forced content ( both existing and planned) and implementing choices for LIs, especially for the overused forced lesbian content.
It would be a shame to see this game with all its potential going down to a chain of bad decisions.

Edit: Although the latest update promised to give the player the possibility to avoid sharing by selecting it at the beginning, even a complete fresh run had exactly the same forced content. It changed nothing.

Updates have continued a downward spiral of shorter length, dumber logic, worse pacing, and increasingly unavoidable content (perhaps to make it feel like the updates are longer by preventing the player from skipping content). It feels like the developer has checked out... and so shall I.

Pros:
1) Good animations
2) reasonable conversations
3) Sexually arousing situations

Cons:
1) I've had women "roommates" before and its not that complicated, if you're living together, its either going to happen or it IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. There's no middle ground.
2) Grindy, grindy, grindy
3) Kari goes from offering her self up for sex to absolutely nothing whatsoever, no kissing, no massage, no cuddling, who the hell does that?

A lot of good, kinky ideas wrapped up in an execution that doesn't do the ideas justice, at least not consistently.

The art is serviceable, and gets noticeably better as the game progresses. Character designs are varied and good.

The core concepts are interesting, the overall plot is fun, but the pacing is terrible, especially in the early game. Too many plot threads get thrown to the player, and because there is so much going on, no one thing gets focused on long enough to really become developed. This is a game that would benefit greatly from a sandbox mode, so the player could choose what to focus on.

That being said, this did manage to keep me interested all the way through it's considerable length. A lot of good potential here, but would benefit greatly from editing and streamlining.

Honestly one of the most well-written and engaging stories on the site, at least so far as I've found.

Most choices don't seem to matter overly much (right now, at least) outside of determining what kind of relationship you'll have with each of the women. I imagine the depth is going to balloon tremendously as the game continues to be developed, and I'm very much looking forward to that.

This game hits the sweet spot for me. I'm very much into the BDSM-scene and this dev handles it brilliantly. No cheap blackmailed or forced submission, just consensual adults engaging and enjoying their kinks. The art looks quite good, and the characters are relatable and attractive. I highly recommend it.

The writing while not particularly gripping is at least serviceable enough, though it takes a while to build up to anything.

The game makes you aware of stats like energy and money, but so far no decision I've made has really forced me to consider them - which isn't a bad thing, I don't tend to like thinking about such things in these games. Just makes me wonder if they have any real purpose since I would really have to go out of my way to fuck up enough for it to maybe matter.

Anyway - I think it's worth a go - I'll be looking forward to future updates.

Had to go through several times. Not for fun either.

Got to I believe it was Day 70 and started a loop for the London trip. This went on for a few restarts. Finally got it sorted out.

Overall this is an average VN. Just slightly above basic. There are animations, but they are weirdish looking sometimes.
Writing on average is decent. The humor is what saves this VN. Lots of back and forth keeps you just interested enough.
Characters are getting to be over loaded. Meaning there's starting to be to many to deal with. I skipped Van altogether.
Story was really interesting until the big plot twist. Was it needed? Probably not with everything else going on. You're focused on building up your company, and now this twist is in place to distract you.

Summary
Average VN overall. Could have gone without the plot twist, IMO.
Writing is ok, and the humor is pretty good. Lots of banter between characters. I laugh every time I see Kayla.
Characters are unique, but there's a lot of them.
Will there ever be a way to check the stats you seemingly acquire throughout the entire story? Probably to late to add something that should've been there from the beginning.
Although it's an average VN, the recommendation is still there. Give this VN a try. Might be worth the time.

I have been playing this game pretty much from the beginning. While I wasn't sure how things were going to turn out with the various L.I.s I like how the dev worked that out so far. Other than a few minor annoyances this game has been fun. It will be interesting to see how the harem moves forward & how others are worked into things considering a couple seem to have disappeared since the game began.

Review based on v0.11.01:

Ok, this game has popped up now and again and by reading some of the reviews and posts here I figured I would give it a try.

First of the story. Its basic, not terrible basic but your average kind of basic. You become CEO of this supposedly large company after your late uncle and will over time find out about some shady stuff he has done over the years, leaving the company vulnerable of getting sued, so its your job to fix the mess he left basically. The story do have a few interesting ideas going for it but also get comically strange at times. You will get to know A LOT of characters, their pasts, present and future hopes and dreams. Supposedly the choices you can make is said to push the story this way or the other but I have yet to see my choices make any meaningful difference to the plot, I have tried to go back and choose differently but so far, besides a few main characters, it seems mostly like changes in text before it comes to the same conclusion as every other choice. The main character is this nice guy with a bit of a dom kink, but dont be fooled most adult scenes are boringly vanilla. Adult content is surprisingly sparse and far between each other, first 30 days I think I can count on 1 hand how many adult scenes I got. The models and scenes are also a bit basic, if you look on the screenshots that is basically what you get throughout. What puzzled me is how animations go from bad to ok and back to bad again at random. There is also no music or sounds in the game.

I see some find real enjoyment in this game and that is great, sadly for me its just an average game. But would still recommend to give it a go, you might end up liking it more than me.

Simple but nice graphics.
Plenty of content.
Nice color choices.
Dependable updates.

Cons:
It's a kinetic novel, basically.
You can't get rid of any of the characters.
I 'chose' all things that would rule out a relationship w Kari but it still puts her and the mc in bed together several times.

The really bad part about the game is you don't have any choices. Supposedly they matter with respect to the characters feelings but not to the game.
For example:
I didn't want to give money to Kari from my paycheck...it took it anyway the first time.....
I didn't buy her a phone...she has one anyway....
Kari is supposed to be 'made' for the mc...yet no matter what she goes against his wishes such as refusing a job, not quitting the titty bar, and a couple sexual relations......
I didn't want coffee but still have to go through a morning scene every day w her and mc having coffee together.....
Even trying not to have relations w her, she shows up to give you a blowjob in the shower. You can't say no...there's no choice.....

Can't hire who you want at work. For example, the stewerdess, I said no but she works there anyway. Same w office girls, I couldn't stand them but I made me hire them no matter what I chose. If you try to hire one you want, it just says she refused the position.....

Looks like it's going to force a prostitute into your harem. I stopped going to the coffee shop the second playthrough so am not positive if it forced here all the way on you. ...

Choices just don't matter. It's the biggest downfall of The Roommate. I was hoping for more of a game not just reading and clicking. It's a pretty boring experience when you figure out you can't shape anything the way you want it.
I'm certainly glad others like it, though, and am very glad for all the success the dev is finding with it. If you don't mind not being able to make any decisions, then The Roommate is honestly a nice read with some really funny parts.

i never intended to rate this game cause it was too vanilla, so i stayed 2 years without playing, lately i was bored and downloaded and holy fuck, well worth it, no clue what the dev went trough, but the sex slave routes are amazing, or at least Lois is extremly well made!

there are a few other more spicy stuff that might not be for everyone
there is still the romantic route for those who enjoy such things
not everything is for everyone, but kudos to the dev for finding a good balance on a well done story so that it can please of a few of the more extreme niches in this community, which i personally feel that are being neglected!

if you can go over the build up that last up until 0.5 perhaps(?)
i´m sure you will find something that tickles you just right
probably the 5 stars was because i did not expected much from this game
but the turn around is extremely well done! for the extreme stuff ofc
for the rest romantic bullshit, guess it never needed the turn around!

Im big fan of the harem games, and this one is rare gem. Renders are decent, maybe little outdated. Not many animations. But we have a lot of LI's , lots of kinks - milking/lactation, anal, threesome, potential sharing (not my thing), bimbofication/transformation (which is rare and i love it).
Dev should add some screens with all LI and their statistics, its hard to keep track of them without it.
I like MC, that he is a chad, not some weak wimp, although his face is strange.
Overall good harem game. Looking forward for more.

Hmmmm. . ..
I didn't think this would happen but here I am.

I'm dropping the game. I don't know if the dev wanted to reflect what it's like writing so many LIs and making it work. If it was the intention, the scene with Kari being mad at the MC late at night was honestly perfect. She is the main gf. And yet she learned about something important last. Homeboy has stopped showing her he likes/loves her as much as he used to.

Then the morning scene where the she asks the mc if he wants coffee or something else while she is clearly in the mood for some lovin' only for homeboy to say "coffee would actually be perfect.". . . ..
I'm playing a porn games homes! Not a, "Life is such a drag! Let me just get a little boost before I go back to slaving on the 9-5 at my company where I spend a lot of time taking good advantage of my position to get into willing panties. But these panties stop mattering after a while. . . it looks like the panties at home don't matter that much anymore.
who knows. In 3-10 years from now we might all be jaded, love faded and no more sex."
I didn't do any exploring for the swinging paths but I guess Kiki leans HEAVILY to swinging even if none of the choices you've made lead to anything resembling any desire for that.

This may or may not mean the dev is going to make more paths for that. But I have been losing interest here and an extra reason is an extra reason.

As you probably can tell in the preview images, the graphics aren't great. The game has animations, but again. They nothing to marvel at.

For any of you who came for the milf/aunt. . . . I've played everything so far while avoiding swinging and slave/dominant paths. I did not get any content with her.

Absolutely beautiful game, the renders are really amazing, the game is beautifully written. I have just played a full playthrough of the latest version, and have since added the game to my watchlist, I look forward to all future updates from the developer.

The Roommate is what you get when you slam an ero-VN into an absolutely absurd soap opera. The story violates suspension of disbelief in the most heinous of fashions and there's t&a everywhere. Huh... that might actually just be a soap opera come to think of it.

The story starts out in a somewhat reasonable way. For about the first half of the content you play as a Steve Jobs wannabe becoming the CEO of your great uncle's fortune 500 company that does... things?... it's not very descriptive. You don't actually do work or pay attention to the company. You do PR heists and try to quietly clean up the ocean of abused women your great uncle left behind. It felt like a decent slice-of-life VN told from a unique point of view.

Then halfway through the story things go sideways. The company basically falls to the wayside and it's girl drama all the way down. Absolutely absurd shit starts happening to the point where I could only really laugh. Unfortunately the game plays it straight, but maybe that's for the best for humor potential? I think no personally, as it feels like I'm laughing at the story rather than with it.

It's typical VN style gameplay throughout, with hidden stat boosts based on your responses to characters. Your choices don't really effect the story though, so much as your relationship to individual characters. At the moment I think there's maybe five girls with whom choices actually matter, then a dozen other side chicks you can fuck if you choose.

There's a staggeringly massive number of characters in the game. It's too many. I think you could safely cut half the characters in the game and it would play better with more time to develop the existing characters.

Also, can we please stop with the spontaneous reveal of downright grim dark backstories for characters? Not every girl needs a past of trauma, rape and daddy issues, especially in a game that has very little in the way of horror beforehand. There's two girls in the game who reveal traumatic histories and then it's basically back to business as usual. It's so fucking unnecessary.

The look of the game seems great to me though. The girls in the game wear a lot of downright whorish clothes throughout the game, which I love, and their models generally look good. There's also some shockingly great animations in the game, though they're all quite short.

Overall though, the Roommate is giving off vibes of intense development creep as of patch 10.05. Choices gradually become fewer and further between, many characters get almost no focus in the story as if they've been forgotten, and the story meanders between events without much in the way of an arc or thoughts for the future. If you like the way the game looks and want to play a decent secretary corruption storyline, that's most of the good stuff you'll find here. It's a whole lot of absurd story and filler to get to it though.

Love the initial story and mystery . The personalities of the girls are all done well. The renders seems a bit old school, but that's okay because of the story.

I like the initial setup as it does not feel forced or like a continual fuck fest.

If you are intrigued by the story and look forward to playing a millionaire business owner this game will positively suprise you.

Rated as of Version: "v.0.9.14"


I'll be honest in that, when I started playing this game I wasn't expecting too much. I liked the basic concept of the story, playing a millionaire business owner seemed like it might be fun. The beginning of the game seemed to confirm my skepsis, the character poses seemed unimaginative and the story stuck in a bit of a loop. You say good morning to your roomate, she makes you coffee, you go home, sleep repeat.

But after a bit of playtime I found myself suprised to be more and more caught up in the developing story. Relationships to some of the main characters started developing in interesting ways and the general story started becoming more engaging, to the point where I played through the entire game within 2 days. It's not a story that will stay in your mind for it's amazing literary character, but while playing it will keep you engaged and exited to hear the rest of the story.

Giving the game some time to look past the beginning really allows you to see the progress it makes, both visually and storywise. Another positive surprise a new player might encounter is the relatively long playtime. One will find that this is one of the few games where you really note the 2 years of development that have gone into this based on the length of the game alone.

The amount of characters you encounter is high, though not exactly balanced. At the beginning you will find yourself engaging mainly will Kari and Lois, allowing you to better connect with their characters, but rarely coversing with others. Toward the later stages you will meet an amount of female characters that is large and diverse but by the sheer number makes it difficult to keep track of.
Small notes from the developer help you understand more complicated aspects brought up in the game, some may find them useful, others may find them annoying. A switch to toggle them on and off might serve both these groups well.
In some instances I believe the branching is not quite perfected, I noted some pictures (especially based on the selection of front desk staffers), to not fit to the choices I made previously. I found this not particularly bothersome.

In general, this is a game worth checking out, if you are intrigued by the set-up and a developer worth supporting based the speed with which they create content. I wish lots of luck with the further development.


Gameplay: 4/5 | Art: 4.2/5 | Story: 4.1/5 | Writing: 4/5
OVERALL: 4.2