Ren'Py - The Spinney [v0.22] [Dannot Games]

The grind on this one was really painful. I mean, a little bit of work to earn an LI's attention is fine, but this just went on and on.
I'd be giving it one star, but it deserves some credit for using Real Porn better than most (though that bar is pretty low).

Started off pretty strong but it gets way, WAY too grindy. You end up getting like 10 different girls and they all have similar names like Alina, Ariana, Vina, Vanna etc and it makes keeping up with them a pain in the fucking ass. Also, you CONSTANTLY have to manage texts all throughout the day in addition to navigating around to all these areas that waste your time with pointless grindy busy work. Why the fuck do I have to manage food and water levels, texts, chopping wood, gathering berries, fishing, managing traps and all of this other shit in a supposed harem game? 90% of the game is pointless busy work. Not to mention that even though the phone technically has hints on what to do, often times it's just dumb stuff like improve your relations with a girl which of course is more grind. You have to manage relations too on top of everything because of course, and SOME options even REDUCE your relations with a girl, so what is the point of even having it in the first place? Another huge problem here is that the writing is quite bad. All these girls are like I want you to destroy me and your beta ass MC is w-well I need to think about this first! Or he is just ummm i'm not sure that's a good idea! Why are you making a harem game where the MC is a beta bitch and you can't even do what you are supposed to be doing in a harem game? Also, all of the girls all have small boobs and they all look the same. You also can't choose in how you pursue any of the girls, there's no type of corruption or love route or something it's just linear unlocks behind massive amounts of grinding. As you unlock more and more girls, the grind becomes just too much. I gave it a very strong chance, getting to like day 250 or something before I just said fuck it and gave up. What's the point of grinding all these fake points and systems when you can just go watch the full scene of the girls online right now? This game should have zero grind in it and be all about the girls, but it's the complete opposite here. Honestly, just a massive dissapointment.

Pros
+ Very good girl selection, some of my absolute favs. Bonus points for having Vina Sky as the "main" girl.
+ Excellent corruption stages and progression.
+ A lot of scenes and the dev actually did the work to find real scenes that somewhat match the events in the game.
+ Very active sandbox, a lot of repeatable scenes that occur outside the storylines.
+ Regular release schedule with consistent amount of content.

Neutral
~ Can be grindy especially at the beginning with the first half of girls, feels like the dev fixed the grind on girls added later.
~ The game has "hidden" scenes within events that trigger with specific stats that I wouldn't have known about without the walkthrough.
~ Some videos don't have audio or the sex is just in pictures. Large majority are full audio videos but when a random video doesn't have audio it kind of ruins the scene for me.

Cons
- I never felt like I fully understood the resource management systems. Luckily the included cheats eliminate doing it manually but still the system itself is a negative to me.
- A lot of sandbox scenes really require the walkthrough to know how to trigger them.
- Many Vina sandbox events are disabled when Kyler and Haley move in. I understand the logic for it in the story but it's lasted a bit too long.

TLDR: The best real porn game you'll find, a great cast with a lot of sex but some grind is required at the start.

I’ve already read reviews about this game, mentioning that even those who aren’t fans of Ren'Py games with real images enjoyed it. I’m one of them. Usually, I find this style unattractive and lacking in interest because it’s often just cut-out scenes that are poorly executed. But this game is amazing! There’s real effort and a very good use of Ren'Py—simple but effective. It fixes the flaws of others. Even though the story is quite basic, the models are pretty, and the image selection is excellent. The X scenes are great, both animated and still, though I personally prefer the stills. The problem with videos is the guy... I hate the presence of the guy, even though it's close to a POV perspective. I prefer full POV, and especially, hearing the guy is awful; it ruins the scene.

The sandbox aspect is perfect for me. You just have to understand that you don’t need to be in the location where the girls are to trigger events, which is great. My only critique is that it’s sometimes a bit slow—not because accessing scenes takes time, since the teasing part is done well, and honestly, the girls "loosen up" very quickly—but in the sense that you have to click “go back” too often. Some shortcuts would improve the flow without disrupting anything in the game.

Aside from these two minor flaws (back and forth clicking + the men's sounds in the videos), the game is engaging, packed with content that keeps players hooked and wanting to continue. The freedom to go wherever you want and take scenes and events in whichever order you like is a level of mastery you don’t usually see in Ren'Py games. Even though you’re free to go wherever you want, there’s no chronological error; the scenes are in good order and make sense. For example, usually, you might find a scene where a girl refuses to let you look at her in the shower even though you’ve been with her 20 times already... Here, that doesn’t happen; it’s well done and logical. Bravo, it’s a real surprise. Now, I’m only looking for games like this, but I can’t find any...

im not a fan of real porn games but this is an exception. this game uses a mix of real porn/ai to create a really well made sandbox lewd game. theres gradual corruption, management and a load of scenes. i honestly couldnt ask for much more

more of a 4.5.
Great sandbox game.
Fantastic choice of models, vids and pics. (aidra fox, ariana marie etc. ..
No milfs so far but that's fine by me.)
Text can be a bit rough but it's enjoyable contextual text, i hardly ever find my self skiping the text (or the vids).
the corruption idéa is fun, starts as an undertone before getting revealed.

Small cons:
highly reliant on the hints or you ll be stumbling around blindly.
some parts can feel a tad grindy.

Pros: I love sandbox style games where you can be at many different places and not only does this game have it, it has vast potential to increase the places, and the beautiful women in it.
I like to harem style of games too and this one ticks all the boxes.
The main story is good and keeps you engaged with a little mystery.
The girls take time to warm up to you as you have to try hard to level them up, and that's great!
You also need to increase other life-skills other than hitting on women, so there's that distraction.
There's a helpful walkthrough when you're stuck.
Cons: I'm not a fan of skinny girls. When the story had just Kenzie and Vina I was quite disappointed. But that's not the fault of the developer so I don't have the heart to reduce any stars for personal preferences. All of it changed after Ariana, Lacy, and others joined in! So all's forgiven.

Can't wait to complete the game!

• Ren'Py✔
• Real porn✔
• Engaging Story✔
• Sences and Pictures cut to fit the narrative✔
• 10 girls ✔

My only complaint is that the up the relationship process gets boring after awhile cuz you have to go throght the same senarios over and over again to grind it. And I wanted some ebony or brown pussies.

Best real porn game on here with surprisingly good polish, lots of content and surprisingly decent writing. A passion project that actually feels like passion.

The girl roster could be a bit more diversfied but the dev is planning that for chapter 2 and looks to finish chapter 1 first.

As the developer is asking for feedback, here it is.

I enjoyed the game a lot, not finished content as of 0.16 and not sure how much there is, but I will download 0.17 for sure. When I saw the girls first, I thought they were not of my taste, but after playing I have to recognize I had to search more content around, so I think they are greatly inserted.

On the bad side, it is true that it is grindy but I did not mind it. And true that the survival aspect does not add much apart from the context and story.

The most annoying thing for me was finding the girls within all the rooms in a house. It will be great to have an icon or message showing where she is when you enter a house. <-- Not sure on which version was added, but you can see the portraits now

[Reviewed v0.15 but didn't finish available content]

There's something here, but I find myself wanting to like this game more than I do. It's overall too slow and grindy, but the set-up, story and game mechanics are somewhat enjoyable. For a game that relies on "canned" porn imagery, it does well with the cards it has.

The Good ()

• Enjoyable story and setting
• Good use of pre-shot images (from porn)
• Dev does a good job "mapping" the images to the story components

The Not-So-Good ()

• The sandbox and game mechanics are a little clunky and can be grindy -- you feel like you need to use the walkthrough but even that is overwhelming
• Everything is reliant on the quality / content on the images used

I appreciate what it is, but after 2-3 hours of playing (including following a walkthrough), there's just not enough here for me to revisit.

The Spinney Review - (reviewing v 0.16)

This game is one of the few AVN games using real porn actresses that is a Ren'Py game (not HTML or QSP).

Some of the models are stunning, (Vina (adorable, sexy, hot), Ariana (beautiful, stunning body, hot), and Alina (gorgeous and hot). Others, like Kenzie and Jillian, really do not do much for me.

Everyone has different tastes, and they are all either hot or above average. That is not the issue with this game..

There are just a lot of problems with the whole game. One is the glaring lack of proofreading of sentences, this is annoying but a minor issue. Lots of misspelled words and sentences that are written incorrectly.

The elephant in the room is the management system, especially for water, but the planting system causes this entire game to be a huge grind fest. The planting is annoying and becomes more of the game than exploring and being with the girls to get level up with them to get scenes.

You got x days to do so much work on your plants. If you miss 1 day, the plant fails to grow. Do this a few times and the game is basically over because there is no food left. The water system is even worse and universally panned.

These games are supposed to be fun, not a grind and there is nothing fun about it. It detracts from the rest of the game and ends up being a chore and more prominent than the story or girls. It is boring, repetitive, and adds nothing to the story or experience other than detracting from it.

You can just wing it, or follow the hint system. Most events and ways to level up, or find, new girls requires you to be in the right location at the right time. The issue is, it is often so diffuse in the hints that it is basically useless. "You need to level up with Kenzie (up her lust). This can cause you to bring her to the beach many times, keep repeating scenes just to slowly build her relationship with you, and/or lust for you.

This is another flaw that makes the game repetitive, and often lost what to do or where to go to do what you need to accomplish to progress.

Another glaring issue is the porn scenes themselves. They use real porn actresses and actors, the big issue is there are watermarks on a large amount of the videos from various porn sites. They detract from the scene and make you feel like you would be better off foregoing the game and just looking up the porn models themselves on those sites. Dannot Games even uses the actual porn models names, some are more well known than others.

Another issue is the coding. The phone does not always show you you have waiting messages, and you have to constantly check it to see if you have messages because there is no indication with the phone (unless you go into the phone itself) that you have messages waiting for you.

Without the grind, a little proofreading of the sentences, the watermarks, and a better hint system, this game would be an easy 3.5-4 star game or better. The concept is great, story is fairly well done, but the execution and grind make this a game annoying rather than fun or hot.

As of this version, the grind totally destroys the fun of the game, disrupts the story, and adds nothing but repetition and takes way too much of the game time. The water system is even worse,

The models are hot, the scenes are real video and real porn with real actresses and actors, which is awesome and pretty unique. Totally reworking this game would make this one of the best games, the real actresses being the best part and the hot scenes.

The Spinney is a survival-style time-management game based in a pseudo-apocalypse and featuring plenty of fucking.

To start with, a "spinney" is apparently a small area of trees and bushes according to the dictionary.

With that out of the way, the game is a little bit of a mixed bag for me. I enjoy the porn and am at least mildly interested in the story. I'm very disappointed with the gameplay.

The porn presentation is pretty good and runs something of a corruption arc for each girl for mostly story reasons. Generally you get your typical progression of stripping, handjob, blowjob, fucking. It's certainly nothing ground breaking, but the chosen scenes are pretty solid and the models are great in my opinion. It can definitely feel like the scenes are shoehorned in the game because the porn exists though. I also feel like there's a LOT of messy blowjob content if that's your thing.

Unfortunately, the girls weren't really provided with much in the way of personality. They have roles, but they're extremely one dimensional otherwise. I wish they at least aided you in the whole survival aspect because currently they're just a less than glorified harem.

The story is reasonably interesting, but mostly only insofar as it exists. I appreciate a game that at least tries not to just hand-wave an apocalypse into existence and The Spinney actually presents a cause that the MC is investigating. This is fortunate because...

The gameplay is basically trash. First off, the actual survival portion of the game is comically easy. In order to fail, you'd have to do it intentionally. As long as you're farming you have plenty of food and that's the only important resource for many hours of the game. There's a handful of structures to build, but they're extraneous. The survival portion of this game is extremely low effort.

In addition, navigating the story is a pain in the ass. Advancing the main quest and character quests requires you to be at a certain place at a certain time. Typically, you are not told where this place and time is. As such, you need to either check every location at every time or frequently open the menu and have it tell you. It's just so fucking many unnecessary clicks. Add a drop-down quest menu to the main screen or something.

Overall, I feel like The Spinney is just a lesson in not enough. Not enough story, not interesting enough characters, not enough survival gameplay, not a good enough UI. If even one or two of these things were executed better, this could be a four or five star game. Unfortunately, it's just very average instead.

The grind on this game is terrible. The time management and resource management systems don't add to the game and worse still the game gets more grindy as it progresses not less.

The lewd progression is so fucking stupid. It is so stupid it violated the game's own canon. First girls tease you, then girls take off more clothing, then they blow you, then they fuck you. And all the while you are grinding lust and relationship points. Women don't behave like this once an ADULT woman decides she wants to have sex with you she doesn't parse it out in childish stages like this. Also these women are suffering from increased sex drive they want release and giving a man a BJ isn't providing them release but sex will. So the canon of the game should have these women fucking you a LOT faster than this grind.

Grinding isn't content!

Excellent game. The story actually makes sense, the girls take a bit of work to get them to undress.

There is a fair amount of teasing before the sex, but the girls keep having new videos pop up from time to time.

Well done

Extremly well done, the game is fluid, has enough hours that i can invest, i cant say im the best person to ask since I think this game is similar to "the forest" (i think that how its called) with all dew respect, i hope this game keeps resieving updates until the developer marks it as done.

Pretty good game! Only a couple of thoughts to make it better:

-When looking for scenes, sometimes there is scenes in a room where the girl isn't, it would be nice if the little picture of the girl lines up with where the next scene is.
-The porn site watermarks is a turn off, if possible blur those
-Also, it would be nice to change the names of the girls to help with the immersion. Kenzie Reeves is well known I think, it would be better if her name and others was different, or if the user can change them individually.

Thank you for your hard work the game is pretty fun!

I'm invested in the story ... yeah, I know, the "cliche" but still, I am. Porn is everywhere, but good stories are not so I tend to get stuck in those games that have a bit of an interesting story, and here I am.

It's not a terrible game. What ruins it for me is, all the adult content is literally straight off porn websites (it will even say "pornhub" and shit like that watermarked over the content.) And it's not at all amateurish content (read: the porn most people gravitate towards nowadays) - oh no, this is like straight up 1990s style OH BABY OH FUCK MY PUSSY SO GOOD OH YEAH YOU LIKE THAT YOU LIKE THAT AAARRRRUUUGGHHHHH OHHHHH YEAH BABY OH! OH! OH! - like real bad cheesy stuff.

When I first started playing, I was enjoying the game. But as soon as I started getting to the point where sexual stuff happens, the porn content just completely evaporated any interest I had in playing further.

Also, the preview images on the first post are really misleading. None of those look super pornstar-y. But the actual content I experienced in the game, was. I originally saw this and thought oh shit, did this guy do something really innovative and hire a couple of amateur actresses to take some photos to align with the content in the game, and maybe shoot a few custom videos and that is what makes up the sex scenes? Yeah, no, it seems like they just wrote the game story around aligning with what content was available on porn sites.

Nice Story with very good deapth.
Beautiful Girls!
Good Connection of the storylines with more possibilities for further gameplay!
There is always a new scene you suddenly get even if you thought this path is already completely done! Nice surprisings!

I hope you continue the work on this Game so I stay tuned!
In my opinion the best "real porn" Game i have ever player so far.