VN - Ren'Py - The Roommate [v0.12.14] [togs]

This game is so bizarre, and I'm abandoning it. It's on the verge of being great, but the dev keeps making bizarre decisions. For instance, the MC discovers a sex cult that sees him as his master. In addition to being an odd curveball, I'm many hours past that and I haven't had a chance to fuck any of them.

The various girls also don't have much of a distinct personality, making them all melt together. This seems partially due to your actions determining if they're your employee, girlfriend, mistress, whore, etc. As a result, the dev doesn't give any personality traits that could make any path not make sense. This is another example in a long line of cast explosion with too many LIs. In the end, the women are all boring and all throwing themselves at you for no reason.

Another thing that rubbed me the wrong way... this game is extremely NTR-coded. While you can disable NTR in the options (and I did), every other scene still has men walking in on your LIs changing clothes, LIs wearing see-through clothing in front of other men, LIs saying they're excited by the idea of many men fucking them at the same time, or exposing themselves to other men. I probably would have finished the game, as I have with other mediocre games, but I hated this aspect so much.

VERSION: 0.11.05
SUMMARY: Not bad but not great either

PROS:

1. Models are decent looking and plenty to choose from.
2. Dialogue is decent and written, structured well. Pacing is also not too bad.

CONS:

1. Pretty dull story for more, not much intrigue going on that keeps me the player engaged, its very drawn out.
2. Too many faces, too many characters which gets confusing as fuck. Rather than adding so many characters, focus on half as much but make then twice as fleshed out. Spend more time on dialogue, story, character development and renders.
3. Game is very drawn out, impregnating is an option that you never see has any effect on the love interest. Same with some of the crazy medical changes, its there but just takes ages to actually go anywhere, which looses the player interest IMO.

TLDR: Decent, but drawn out too long, doesn't go anywhere and looses the player attention with basic and vanilla lewds. The concept of less is more is lost on the developer IMO where more attention to fewer characters would make for a better game.

I'm just getting started (day 11), but already think this is going to be a great game. I like the fact that there is a challenge in juggling things like how the girls think of you (intimacy, confidence, etc.) as well as balancing your checkbook (or whatever the kids call it these days).

I am a bit confused about the purpose of the calendar. It seems to be of no value, and is stuck on the first week of the game. No scroll bars and does not respond to the mouse wheel. And it is empty, so yeah, that's worthless. I wish there was a way to check on the characters and their points. Keeping "score" off-line is a pain in the neck. But maybe that will be resolved in future updates.

The renderings are great, but there is no voicing, which is a nice luxury, but would be a great addition. Haven't seen any animations yet, so can't comment on those. Hope they're smooth. I am looking forward to seeing how the plot develops (such as it is). Also will be interested to see how new characters and developed and how their relationships play out. Already looking forward to breaking Mrs. Jakes. Ha.

I think there is room for much more utility from the phone interface. So far it's fairly useless, but hoping that comes later in the game.

Update: As of game day 78, I see that the calendar is starting to be populated and keep up with the accurate game date. Still seems a little unnecessary, since the days' events are announced each morning, but I suppose it makes it easier to schedule ad hoc events like seeing Ashley. The phone still seems pretty much unused. It is rarely available. That could (and maybe is) improved in subsequent releases. Money seems to be no object, so I'm not sure if there will ever be any need to make economic choices. We will see. The characters are mostly interesting, although naming 5 of them Kiki, Kira, Kara, Kiri, and Kari is confusing.

good game, i just wish kari would talk more and move a bit she acts like a human-robot, like half ot the time she just stands the same way no matter what the situation. Also there shouldve been more scenes with the barista like especially after you become her sugar daddy, its like you paid her for one night only they couldve milked the whole sugar daddy-baby dynamic, wouldve been pretty interesting. The models and renders are AMAZING and very unique especially kari plus Lois'submission path is pretty enticing, the animations in the latest releases are pretty good but from what ive seen the scenes in all the paths are pretty much the same and only the text has been changed and few extra scenes here and there and i guess thats why the size is only 1.8 gigs even though there are 80 days. To round it up i feel like the theme of the game is AMAZING i love the whole office theme, i just wish there had been more scenes with the barista and that one office employ who was jealous of kari but great work by the dev keep the updates coming! GOOD LUCK!

V0.11.03

it was nice for a while but seems to have lost it's way. for a game meant to be less linear it has become very linear. the factors outside a player's control are the direction the developer is taking it. updates have become rushed, with in-game time skipping by with emptiness, and sub plots have become lost (what happened to all those women underground? background noise now).
even the adult scenes have become very bland to look at.

story had a direction at one point but has just become a muddle of whatever passes through developers mind this month, rather than structure for the whole game. you can be well into one character and getting hot and heavy and then *poof* out of existence for them as thoughts go elsewhere.

art is average to poor, with adult scenes now becoming hollywood/soft core porn. pretty short and dull stuff. erotic if banging your tool against a chair leg is your thing.

writing delivers....just, but with no real direction it is just lip service. got an advanced AI and an underground harem of beauties, women left right and centre, bulging boob drugs and a disease that will kill the MC unless he breeds breeds breeds, which many women clearly want to do and an ever aroused MC and THIS is the delivery of all that?
beggars belief

whole thing seems to have become a chore for the developer as passion is no longer on display.

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.