VN - Ren'Py - Completed - The Soul Needs Freedom [Season 1][StateOfMind]

What was this game? I felt so damn sleepy.. Filled with sex scenes only. There has to be a story which has some excitement as well.. Actors and models used were all good but the story element was not there. Every option with every girl somehow only led to sex scene. C'mon, if that is what was required then one can use any porn tubes online, why take extra effort to download a game. The curve of excitement should be there with story telling. The hard work for sex should be there. Every girl introduced in the game throwing themselves at you without a single effort and story is not really a game, its porn. This game could have been another level and super impressive but lack of story and adventure killed it.

First off, I am not really a huge fan of real porn games but this is only one of maybe two or three that I keep coming back to. The following are the pros and cons of the game, or rather what I enjoy or dislike about it:

PROS
1) Models/Actresses are hot - There is a variety in the models that may suit almost everyone's tastes. Besides the main stars, the sometimes additional supporting cast are not too bad either.
2) No grinding - I like the simple gameplay where there's no important stats to keep track of. I also like how the "action" is constant and frequent , with not too much text in between the scenes.
3) Built-in walkthrough and gallery - While not really necessary as the choices in the game were fairly obvious, the built-in walkthrough is an added bonus. And I personally always believe that galleries should be included in every game.

CONS
1) Inconsistent MC - Pretty sure someone else already highlighted this but it does seem weird to have a different MC in each of the scenes. I doubt that anything much can really be done about it but just wanna highlight it as a minor annoyance to me.
2) Too much of a good thing - I mentioned at point 2 above that having many scenes is good but 6-7 in a "day" is absolute overkill. Might want to consider cutting down to half that. I mean how does the MC have that much stamina anyways?
3) File size too big - And the point above is probably why the file size of the game is enormous. If it wasn't split into 2 I probably would have given up on it. Can the developer do something about it, pretty please?

after receiving a warning about a negative review that was getting a lot of support from the community, i noticed that none of my reviews strictly adheres to the site rules of reviews as outlined by the trial moderator who messaged me regarding the warning.

i asked for instruction as to how to remove all my reviews, in order to comply with the rules and firstly received a speedy response telling me that a warning is only to highlight that i must change the rule breaking review.
except that the review in question had been removed in its entirety and was no longer available to change, making complicity impossible.

as no further requested instruction was given as to how i may conform with the site rules and remove all rule breaking reviews of negative and positive support, i kindly ask a viewing staff member to remove this

i apologise to all developers who may be effected by my loss of support

also worth noting that no positive review non-complicit to site rules for the same game have been removed which is rather curious

The biggest problem with this game is that you spend 90% of your playtime just watching a porn video. Like, I could literally replicate the experience of playing this game by reading some (poor) erotica, then visiting a pornsite and watching a video. Except, every few minutes the video stops and asks you to click a button to proceed. Now, you may think, cool, so I can skip it when I want to get to the story? And the answer is no. There is only one thing you can click. And it takes you to the next part of the video. It's a very frustrating game, because you could do SO MUCH MORE with games that use "real-porn"; without the need to 'create' original assets and art, you're free to focus on the story and writing. But there is very little of that here, and it feels extremely lazy.

The idea of having a Ren'Py game with porn videos and real porn used is incredible. The dev deserves all the praise for doing that. But the execution leave a ton to be desired.

Sex scenes are divided into small clips that you need to select a dialogue option to skip. If each scene had 3 or 5 parts, I don't think it would be much of an issue. But we're talking about 10 to 15 parts each scene. Watching porn having to constantly click a dialogue box in order to progress with the scene really sucks.

The rules forbid me to mention another "game" we have around that adds interactivity to porn scenes. There's a whole website and brand dedicated to that thing. I am not a fan, I think interaction is pointless and your input changes shit in the story. But even that "game" has more interaction (and better interaction) than this one. This is way too linear and sex scenes have absolutely no variety. In that other one you could at least make some choices during scenes that would affect how they'd play out.

I really think the core idea of this game is great. But the dev needs to make this more like a game and less like a compilation of porn clips.

The dev has an extreme aversion to any curvy women apparently and has a very particular taste in young small chested brunette women, not to mention most if not all the women look basically the same.

The game itself is... meh. No dialog during sex scenes and extremely drawn out scenes of the same act with unneeded "click to continue" buttons makes it pretty dull. I'm also not a fan of the whole "Theme Park/Story on Rails" game genre but that's more of a subjective opinion.

It's a beautiful made game, the scenes are beautifully made. The game is just boring an linear, the story is meh and it's basically wrong answer or right answer.

I hoped for more when I downloaded it.

Oh also, it's huge! Almost 4gb, not suprising with the content, but still.

I liked this one. The set up and writing is a bit silly but I enjoyed it and there aren't any noticeably bad spelling/grammar errors. The girls are all hot and the videos/animation is high quality. Looking forward to further updates!

[Rev @ Ep.3]

Bit dull but not hopeless.

Art's real photos borrowed from around the web, many with watermarks still present. Chosen girls are range from 'cute' to 'pretty' with no dropdead gorgeous nor dropdead fugly; good enough for me with my girl-next-door kink.

Writing is bad. Scenario's trite, voice is weak and offputting, narrative is a feeble excuse to chain together whatever TGP images were lying around. Characterization is so thin I had trouble keeping track of what a given set of tits was supposedly named and what relationship they bore with the MC. It undermines the tension buildup if I neither understand nor care what's going on.

Porn was... fine? I deliberately avoid the appropriately named Late Night Creepy Uncle options and choose to play as a responsible perv, and that limits the porn encountered and also the possibility of being squicked hard. I applaud the presence of the Decent Human Being options but note that they have little to no noticeable impact of their own and presumably result in getting less porn out of a porn game.

TLDR: There's potential here, but at the moment you can hold the Skip Dialog button and hit the first option at each prompt and not miss much.

As of Ep.1:

Just another poor "game" in pseudo-VN-format
using soulless merged real porn pics & vids presenting...

• a boring, inconsequential story (if there is a story at all!)
• nonsensical sequences of video clips that could easily be consumed much better on porn sites
• up to 10! longer videos in a row of a blowjob scene without a chance to skip parts or fast-forward (no player functions!)
• dummy dialogues and socalled choices
• soulless characters based on well-known porn "actresses" again only as placeholders for a clip-fest
• a MC who is a master of shapeshifting
  (well, the old familiar issue when using real porn where
  all characters change their looks in seconds...)
• minor mistakes as to confuse "Emily" with "Ashley" in a direct conversation or the mentioned day/night issue in the first review below

Well, at least suitable for a fap, but one you may have quicker on a porn site... Not really more than 2 stars for that - as there are much worse one's out there!
So if your "Soul needs Freedom" - choose another "game"

So far very good! Story is written pretty well. It's got a good content for first version. Would like to see more Milf types and possibly curvy along with some variety of fetishes. Not Transformation or dick girls no offense to those that are into that stuff. Overall great start!

This has potential for sure.

The girls are great, but you might want to add different sizes to make different people happy. I am however very happy with these girls.

The story is decent, is not too fastpaced and having to make the right choices is a good mechanic imo.

Maybe make it into more of a dating sim, where you can keep track of the attitude the girls have towards you (which changes depending on the choices you make). Maybe even have a character sheet with hints on what they are like to make it easier to make the right choices, instead of just basically guessing it.

But yea, this can be great, you just have to keep going and adding more contect in the very near future. Don't keep it at this for a long time, because right now it's a very short game.

Finally a real porn game that doesn't go 0 to 80 on the sex for the important characters. It isn't slowpaced by any means, there are already multiple sex scenes in the game, but it sets a proper tempo across the few important characters, in a way that makes sense.

While the game needs a few improvement in term of game design (mostly scene transitions) and image quality could be improved, it is definitely above the usual real porn game for a v0.1

TL;DR: Low quality work, no decent story or characters; only for those who want to watch some mediocre porn with those models.

(Ep.1)
Some pretty boring porn taken from elsewhere and rather poorly packed in a VN format. For instance, after late evening pictures of traffic there are daylight pictures of meeting with Molly, even though exactly 10 minutes have passed.