Ren'Py - The Sin Within [v0.5.0] [CigarRex]

I giving it four stars is because the purple guy scenes go hard, but the main guy remains in his base body he is dumb, writing is frustrating and meandering .
The movment scene is janky . Overall I will not play it until it is completed, that too also with skipping unseen text when main guy is in the lead , I am serious if you want to enjoy this series keep skip unseen scenes toggled omn and vigrously skip where it starts getting dull.For now this game for me is stalled

3.8

I am not spoiling it because it is a review because otherwise there arer lot more things for me to discuss (both +ve and -ve) E.g. Like thye scene of debauch club party can be read like a holy celebration of the sin coming to its own.

The Sin Within is a dark, immersive narrative experience that masterfully explores the themes of control, desire, and corruption. The game centers around a male protagonist who wields both supernatural powers and mind-altering substances to manipulate those around him. What makes this premise so effective is how seamlessly the story weaves his growing dominance into the world’s unsettling atmosphere. The supernatural abilities are not just flashy mechanics—they serve as metaphors for addiction, temptation, and the loss of humanity, giving the gameplay real emotional weight.


The use of drugs as both a gameplay tool and a narrative device adds an extra layer of tension. Each use feels like a double-edged sword, enhancing the protagonist’s control while pushing him further into moral decay. The visual design and haunting soundtrack perfectly complement this descent, creating a world that feels both beautiful and sickening.


Overall, The Sin Within stands out as a well-crafted psychological thriller. Its blend of supernatural power, psychological manipulation, and moral ambiguity keeps players constantly questioning where the line between power and corruption truly lies. It’s a disturbing yet fascinating experience that proves how dark storytelling in games can be done right.

Aside for a few glitches of objects coliding weirdly the visuals in this game are leagues above the average HS vn and the effort put into the lighting and camera angles show that CR has a solid grasp on visual language.
In the sound department things are mixed, the background music is serviceable and theres a good amount of songs so it doesn't feel repetitive, it's dynamic to the scenes so that's another point in favor of it but one sound effects can be a point against it, they tend to be overused and a specific one that reminds of a rope tightening feels misplaced in it's use.
As far as the interactive parts of this it boils down to look for your prefered girl and see the content of her with clear indicators that tell you if you still have stuff to enjoy, not that many meaningful desicions or gameplay aspects as of yet but I believe they aren't needed if theres no porpouse or interest from the dev.
I really appreciate the fowardness in the writing for this game know what it wants to be and thrives in it, right now there's the common tropes for most of the LI and it's understandable since theres a lot of them but the current development for the main cast is looking promising. Overall the writing is funny when it needs to, good erotica as well and each character has enough uniqueness to stand out although the screen time of them drags them down.
Often the common response with this kind of games is to be cynical, but I choose to believe, the promise of this game has a solid base thanks to what im been able to experience. As long as the dev has a solid work flow and consistency in a few years we can expect to have a true gem of a game here.

[v0.5.0]


Premise: The game starts with a 5 hour long VN prologue before throwing you into the sandbox. In short our MC, regular school boy get awoken as incarnation of demon of Lust, one of the seven deadly sins. He was found out by demon of Greed and forced to sign a deal where he has to find other deadly sins who all conveniently reside in this very town, all the while getting stronger by seducing as many women as he can. Prologue has some choices but they only affect which scene you will see immediately and have no long term consequences.

Erotic content:
The game features an UNHOLY amounts of sexual teasing and nudity, but not a whole lot of action. MC is supposed to be this lustful demon that seduces women for breakfast, but when it comes down to business either he or the woman just conveniently back off to keep progression at bay. There is a clear disconnect between the narrative and the gameplay in this regard. Game has like 20 nude/teasing scenes for main characters and like 2-5 for side ones, then we have like 5 oral scenes in total across all of them and still no sex! Now that I think about it, there is one sex scene with Myra, but it was such a fleeting moment that I kinda forgot it. While I'm at it, basically only Myra and Ms. Claire have an appropriate amount of sexual content and we have like what, 40 girls? I actually found myself skipping text a lot, not because the script is bad (tho there is quite a lot of needless yapping) but rather because after hours of countless teasing I want to finally get to the climax, yet it's never there. I also began skipping the lewds, because I know for a fact that there will be no sex and this is yet another "half nude magic touch ahegao scene #132". The rare intimate scenes of actual oral and kissing are pretty sexy, with superb animations and stage directing, with only cringe SFX detracting from the experience. Speaking of .... the cracking, crunching, stroking, squeezing and similar sound effects are WAY overused. SFX in general need to be toned down a notch. Some of them sounds are also too loud and can't be adjusted with volume sliders, RIP eardrums. Most of SFX is comedic in nature and used where this kind of mood is inappropriate. BTW, comedy's pretty silly, cringe even for the most part. Game's trying too hard to appear funny at times, but does not succeed often (there are good jokes, but not a lot).

Gameplay:
The UI in the sandbox mode is actually pretty good: not bloated and convenient to navigate. One the rare cases where sandbox doesn't feel like a second job. The part I did not like is that you have to repeat same exact events/conversations just to grind love points for characters. As far as the decisions go, there isn't much of a player agency. The choices are fairly rare and they don't play a significant role in the narrative.

Visuals:
Graphics are rather appealing with smooth renders, varied environments and pretty models, tho I wish the dev didn't bloat the mom's model so much out of proportions. I mean she was already thick enough to begin with, but now she's just straight up fat. Can you please experiment with BBW fetishes on some unimportant secondary characters instead?

In conclusion, there is a lot of content already and it is of high quality for the most part, but unfortunately not a lot of payoff both in terms of story/relationship progression and the erotic content, so I'd rather wait for further updates before checking this out.

playtime: 15+ hours

Great game overall. Love the unique premise, and the characters look amazing--though the height of some characters is interesting. It certainly scratches a number of itches that many other games don't.

My main complaint is that it is an unreasonably slow-burn with the relationships and the story. The MC's interactions with many love interests are still incredibly hot at this point, but there is barely even any touching with most. Just a lot of nudity and accidental contact.

I would think that a story about a l*** d*mon would move much faster in this, and would be regularly using their influence for sex with a handful of LIs by this point, but it's not the case. Also, when interacting with many LIs, they indicate how ready and seducable they are, and they're willing to go further with MC, but it still stops short of that every time.

The game would really improve and feel less grindy if it didn't withhold so much at this point, but I assume that will come in future updates.

Goated game, awesome to see CigarRex interacting with the community so much. Make sure to stay true to your vision, you're on fire with this.
Crazy excited for more content with Zoey and Beatrice! I hope we get to see more of their toxic relationship at home

One of the best out there. The story is not too slow, and it's a corruption harem builder which is always fun. Every girl caters to different fetishes so unless you're looking for something very niche it's almost all in this game. The animation is amazing and I'm looking forward to more because there seems to be a lot of content but you blow through it very fast.

Love the game but not a fan of some of the new characters design. The skateboarder (was it Kat?) looks purple in some shots.
Preferred Megumi pre-expansion just concerned expansions may get out of hand with how MC talks about it. Love the family and Anna and most of the other girls but definitely prefer family featured content.

Take a look at the review just below mine wherein they go over proportions (odd power for Lust to have in so much that it's not just curves and sexual proportions but just about everything is odd to me but I'll see where things go), invisible barriers for example where some scenes are stuck without progression and some have a slight addition added in v0.5.0 which from what I've played so far do not add much to family content. Some scenes seem to have continuity errors where MC and possibly family members especially Penny are/aren't comfortable or know/don't know things that have happened before in other scenes, perhaps this will be more or less resolved with the new Instance system or something similar or through dialogue edits or simply left as is? I could always be remembering scenes wrong as some were months ago however I do not believe this to be the case.

I really really wanted to give the game a 5 star review or even a 4 however after the last update and to some aspect (body mod/proportions...) the vacation update I really struggled with whether to give TSW a 3 or 4 star rating (as 3.5 is not permissible) and unfortunately as much as it kills me to do so I have to currently rate it a 3 even though the main girls are hot af things like the newer Sandbox implementation and some breasts (like Beatrice I believe) look quite odd.

Wasn't the biggest fan of the Brick-by-Brick update but that's mainly because I'm more into family focus than external departures. Also not into forced content, could we get the option to see the 5 random washroom scenes with the option to exclude the waterworks content?

I.T. girl knows...

Robin (best girl)
Pre-expansion Megumi
Anna

Sleep and dream scenes were fantastic and in desperate need of continuations as are other fam scenes around the house but future updates I suppose.
More levels to the girls progression (currently 1 or 2) or have we maxed them out for good?
Has the Good/Bad Love/Control Lust/Mind Break from the previous loading screen (R.I.P. my fav fam background) and early game beginning been scraped or will there be mechanics for that eventually implemented? I'd really rather not break the fam or have things get too out of hand into abstract fetishes as it slowly seems to be hinting at progressing towards however it is Lust and according to Greed the MC must follow his but I just hope it doesn't turn into something akin to those Japanese comics where things get so obnoxiously wild and large you can't even tell who is who and what is going on due to extreme fetishes being taken to, well, the extreme. A fine line if you will or options to see things one way/routes or exclude certain content which doesn't quite seem the way to go either. Just seems like a departure from what it once was.

CigarRex at times doesn't seem to be sure exactly where to take TSW or perhaps isn't sure how to get there or some implementations have altered the course perhaps along the way?

I look forward to future updates and hope to one day rate The Sin Within a 5 star but due to certain major elements it may already be too late and may earn itself a 4 star. Devastating recent development choices but there is still hope especially as there is a great game with fantastic potential past the flaws.

Edit: After seeing CigarRex liked this review I checked all the others and upon seeing they liked a 2/5 review, this Dev sure seems to not only accept criticism but handle it well unlike others I have been unfortunate enough to hear back from.

2 years have passed since the prologue of The Sin Within ended. It had an interesting premise full of promises.

Even though lust is a repeating theme in the industry, it was the first time that it was that life-changing, making you wonder how the characters will get affected by Lust existence. The others sins made it full of prospect at how much influence they'll have and how their interactions will be. Lust being the Mc, he stopped being a push-over, its path changing to a funky ride. The chara-design, though uncanny, added even more personality to the game, making it special to the player used to the typical Honey Select 2 visual novel.
That being said, the prologue end with a sandbox. The game being already a trip of some hours of pure vn, having such a break of pace was disconcerting. Sandboxes can be good, though really scarce, and the fact the dev putted that much work into his creation was a good omen that he would think on how to make it right.
We just had to wait.

So, after 2 years, did The Sin Within pull it off as grandiose as its prologue promise to be?
... No. It may actually be one of the worst sandbox that I have seen to this day.

Sandboxes are a grind trap. That how they work.
The ones that are actually good use a vn variant, putting big events once enough of the small ones are collected, they would be here as chapter in an actual vn. They also use average events along the way that follow each others, use the small ones as a way to imitate freedom without making it actually impacting the main flow or the contrary but just being of import in the actual "chapter".
At the source, they are fragmented stories with leisure time at the side. That how they keep the dynamic of their main story events, though they do not make it continuous.

That taken care of, let's go back to The Sin Within.
The dev puts in efforts to not make the interactions with the characters simply grind of points but actual small events with often branching path. The first of the kind that I do see and want to praise the effort but the fact is that you only gain points from those, making the whole event nothing more than a filler, an utter loss of time with absolutely no impact toward the characters and the story.
The point system is here to level up the character, a common practice to eat your time in sandboxes, but they are originally short and go to the main event that makes you grow closer to them. In The Sin Within, they are not only filler but the actual event just doesn't happen. It'll happen, that what the system say, but the fact is that 2 years have gone since then and even though the family (the 3 main Li) have plenty of events, more than two thirds of the events being them and even more that they just appear in, they have absolutely no progression since the level up event just doesn't exist.
Obviously, the story too didn't progress in 2 years. It is exactly at the same point that it was at the end of the prologue.

As a result, the sandbox completely breaks the pace and doesn't bring anything to the player. Or the story. You just get game time.

Onto the sex, I could have ignored it but the Mc is Lust and plenty of the events are of sexual connotation. I'm sure you're getting the meaning, those have no sex, they just have the vibe.
I have already mentioned that the family, and the others actually, have no level up event so no progress. This is the reason that all of their events are just sexual without acts again and again. The Mc is proactive at many instances, but he stops as if a invisible boundary was here every time. Because the characters didn't level up, he just can't do anything actually meaningful to them. And you get into the spiral of the stretching out the same step of character development again and again for almost all the game time.
He can also peek at people, because why not. Again, a useless act with absolutely no progress at all toward the character that just eat the player time.
You do have the sneaking in your sleep variant too. Again, time-eating fillers.

There is no sex in The Sin Within. You just make girls cum again and again while being cockblocked.

The character design, though unique, is really weird. I already called it uncanny, and it is a fact that they are deformed in a weird way.
The characters aren't appealing, with awkward facial bone proportion. Lower-bodies are fat. Even the "petite" kind are so, making an unbalance really off-putting. Lately, the Mc was able to grow his mother even fatter, the belly actually growing, because this is his power it seems, which is again another step toward disproportion.

Making you wonder: will the proportions worsen going on?
Probably.

Last, many of the events have been written to be made slower than they should be.
They are scripted with "fade with dissolve" and "[cpc=x0]". The first making the pictures fading out slower, the second making the text showing up slower. Those make the game a real pain to play, forcing events to be at least three times slower than what they should be. Or to make you delete those parts from the script.
Irony is that it takes time to write those into the script, making it slower for the dev himself.

Writing it all, I can finally see the pattern here.
Sandbox full of events without impact, written to be display slower. Point system without next step even though already having hours of contents with the characters. Story completely forgotten. The second update being on the workplace, which was completely unimpactful.
It is obvious and feel actually dumb to not have seen it before: the purpose is just to eat time.
I do not know if the dev simply didn't think anything beyond the prologue but being such a time-eating worm is a game-design.
And game-design doesn't happen. It is a choice.

Fucking text simulator. Just blocks and blocks of text. Dont know why this is tagged sandbox.

Dialogue is cheesy and doesnt make much sense
Corruption very fake. Every girl wants to fuck you straight away no sight of corruption.

Would not recomend at all unless u like kinetic novels

New take on the seven deadly sins and even newer take on bodacious beautiful babes 11/10 . This has the makings to be one of the greats. If it does not already top your list of Adult visual novels, it will soon

One of the games to most firmly grip my attention over the past few years. I love the characters, the art, and the premise. The general setting is a 'typical guy gets a sex superpower' story, however it is given what I think is an interesting spin. Keep up to good work, Cigar Rex!

I think it's good at the moment, though there's not really too much corruption moments or events yet in the game. Interesting plot but not much to do besides a couple scenes here and there(no full on sex scenes yet with main cast and no access to certain areas like the school, which is a little strange). Waiting to see what the future/final product looks like.

Review update: The game now has some non default animations and a fair bit of content. It's now been updated to 3/5.

The concept of being lust isnt unique but this game does it pretty well. Unfortunately there's still almost 0 actual sex scenes. Models are also basically just vanilla honey select so not too interesting to look at. All you really get is sandbox stuff and a lot of dialogue. Would not recommend

A sandbox game which is not annoying. The main theme is the corruption of the girls and boy oh boy does the game really flesh it out. They don't rush thing up, and it's really hot seeing them LIs fall over MC. 9/10

So, I think I played through most of the content available so far. Here is my review of it, including pros, cons:

Pros:

-Great character design for the girls. Some of it is a bit exaggerated, like very big eyes or proportions, but it makes each girl feel unique in a sea of similar HS designs.
-Mc has an interesting corruption power but it is not to the point where the girls just become mindless(most of the time).
-Excellent selection of fetishes, tags and content.
-Despite being a sandbox the gameplay loop isn't grindy. At most you will have to sell some blood everyday for the first few days, but other than that you will progress by playing the game normally.
-Good art, animation and scene direction.
-The comedy in the game is actually funny.

Now to the cons:
-A lot of the characters from the prologue are not yet accessible due to the way the dev decided to release the locations (one location at a time with many events instead of full map and adding events slowly). But this should be fixed with time.
-Partially because of the last point there aren't many characters you can have real sex interactions with other than some less relevant side characters. Most of the nude scenes in the game are sexy but there is little actual sex or even foreplay with important characters.
-MC can change character's proportions, which is fine as one-offs, but some of the latest events have me worried of making some of these changes permanent. I really hope the dev doesn't ruin the character designs by making everyone have giants tits and ass by the end.
-Slow-ish release schedule, but this is off-set by a beefy amount of content on each release.

Final veredict:

I would say this game is between a 4 and a 5, it is not perfect but it is really good. Since most of my issues with it should be solved with time I'm giving it a 5. I will post some suggestions I have for the game in the thread later but that is outside of the scope of this review. Anyway, definitely worth playing for anyone that likes corruption or incest games.

Loved the prologue. Not a fan of sandboxes. I don't really like the grind and I don't like repeating conversations. Really takes me out of the immersion.
I stopped on the weekend of my first sandbox week. I was surprised the school and night club weren't in. Especially the school since that's a big part of the MC's daily grind.
Maybe I'll try again when there is more content, and even if not, I'll probably play it through once it's finished. I loved the story and concept though.
Will update rating when it's done.

An interesting game that starts off pretty linear, but eventually opens up to a nice sandbox. The writing is great, and the characters are all unique and compelling.

I'm not usually a fan of the linear style for games like this that have a million characters to keep track of, since it just feels like no individual character gets enough attention before moving to another. But even for me this game does a good job of keeping the player interested in it's dozens of female characters.

The one flaw of the game for me is how it forces you to choose to pursue one character over another a few times in the linear section, but that's kind of an inherent flaw of the linear style, and it's only a temporary issue given how the game shifts to a sandbox later on. Plus you can easily unlock the scenes you missed once the sandbox starts, and it doesn't seem that you miss any content after that regardless of what girls you chose in the linear part, so it's an easy flaw to overlook.

Once the sandbox opened up and I could focus down one girl at a time, the game was solidified as one of the greats for me; there are a decent amount of scenes so far in the sandbox, and they're all fun and unique, rather than every character's progression feeling samey. For now it's mostly low-corruption-level stuff, so it looks like it'll be a while before you can really get into the meat and potatoes of the corruption genre with any of the characters. Still, the game does a great job of setting itself up for good scenes later down the line; the framework is all there, and it's just a matter of time before this game gets fleshed out with what I'm confident will be quality corruption content.

Do you like corruption games? Do you like humor, decent writing and good renders? Well you've got that here and the potential for more, while the content is still fairly on the light side, there's also plenty to unpack and plenty of hints as to where the game will go. I'd say hang on for the ride because so far so good.

My rating is an average between the amazing prologue (5/5 hands down) and the sandbox (1 star and only due to the scenes).

I have had the same problem as several others with this game. I started playing it and I was hooked and greatly surprised. The VN have an interesting pace, the story, dialogues and characters were well written, and I quickly became fond of it. But then you plummet in to the sandbox. What a dump. It is true I personally do not like sandboxes, especially the grindy kind, however due to the hype I got from the prologue I keep giving it an opportunity. I now think this was a mistake, even if the sandbox is not to a complete grind fest, it completely breaks the flow of the story to the point that there is no more story, although when you talk with the characters they give the illusion there would be in the future. Furthermore, it is focused on characters that I personally do not give a dam about. Instead of focusing on the main Lis (family) and friends (School) it focusses on the Moms coworkers. Additionally, in order to watch some scenes of the family and events you have to level all the family members, this did not happened during the prologue. I personally do not care about the muscled busty Japanese big sister bully, but is necessary to interact with her several times in order to go to the beach.

So to sum up, congratulations to the developers for the great prologue. I really wish you would have continued in the same direction. And best of luck in the future.