VN - Ren'Py - Abandoned - This Time [v2306] [ApocalypseToday]

This Time v0.20 Review

I feel like this game should be way more popular.
Writing is good, girls and overall story are interesting. No stiff, unnatural conversations and right amount of inner monologue. Pacing is good, while it is not a long game yet, i finished it in one go. Didnt get bored didnt feel rushed.
Visuals.
Renders are good. They do the job well, no issues here. But there is always room for improvement.
Girls are likeble, especialy two damsels in distress( my favorite trope in porn lol). I get the feeling thats its gonna be semi harem thing because some interactions with girls are mutualy exclusive.

There is some mini games and free roam quest like puzzles sections. They are not long. Would the game be better without ? I dont know. I felt a little nostalgia for old school quests. Minor critique: second quest segment (gym) was kinda overly complicated for a pron game i feel like. And the thing that you can carry one thing at a time was illogical (barrel is one thing, but paper cup, scissors and a book sound doable).

Maybe 5 stars is overdoing it, but i feel the need to compensate for some unjustified 1 star reviews. But still its a solid B+ game.

Update after playing through chapter 3: Dev still going strong. Game is still realy enjoyable.

v.0.20 - Mostly suggestions for ApocalypseToday

I really like the fact you can choose different stories and that your choices actually matter later on. The models are gorgeous and there are various angles during the interactions between characters, which make it more engaging.

I've mostly come here for the Mind Control aspect and the Stop Watch, which is used from time to time, but not enough in my opinion. So many time I wish there were a stop time option and I guess it would easily be achievable to integrate it in future updates.

It seems the Main Character is "Good", but it'd be interesting to have an "Evil" route option like stopping time after using the remote control on Chelsea and take a peak or play with her, take advantage of Sarah's emotional state and Annie's financial state and blackmail them.

I really like that Lisa mini game, which I think should be used more in late updates. The fact you could see the numb face from different angles when time was stop was perfect.

Looking forward to new updates!

Review of v0.20

After the Dev fixed the initial release (NTR) I hoped the game would be good but I’m very disappointed by this update.

The good:
The renders and animations are great and I like the main girls but this is where the positive things stop.

The bad
The sandbox/freeroam sections are annoying and the minigames are not better.
The game is supposed to be a harem game but because of the branching paths, the player can’t get max points with LIs.
Too hard to get enough points to unlock scenes.
The game punished the player for going for the sex scene by losing points with the LIs as all sex scenes (for now) are with non-LI/side characters.
A bad guy killing female characters.

Wow, this game is a hidden gem. It's crazy what this Dev delivered with such tiny support on Patreon. The story is beautiful, the renders amazing, the animations are good but can be a little bit better, the music is great and the female models are excellent. I read that minigames are annoying but I actually enjoyed them, especially the one with Lisa. I also didn't find the free roams annoying either, maybe because I'm used to them cause I have played a lot of free roam-type games. It's overall an amazing game and you Dev, you have a great game on your hands mate, you can take this to another level, good luck!

This Time [v0.20] review -
PROS-
Amazing story
Nice renders
Beautiful female models
Decent and likeable Main character
Nice romance developing between MC and female characters and planned Harem
Excellent writing
Animated sex scenes and sound effects / Music
Lewd games were awesome
CONS-
Annoying free roams and trojan games / puzzles .

In the end wonderful game the only negative in this game is the free roam and puzzle games I hope they will be reduced or given with an option to skip in the next versions . But looking forward to future updates and added this game to my watchlist for the story and for the characters .

As of version 0.2
Excellent story @apocalypsetoday , loved every minute of the story and loved the cliffhanger at the end . Renders are great and female models look amazing . Male character past story and use of stopwatch in some areas of the game was nice . Music and sex animations are great . Harem is one of the planned tags of this game , I hope one of the endings will be an harem where we won't have to choose between one girl . Only drawback in the game is free roam and mini games are annoying with no hints to where to go next or what to do . Overall it is a great game , I hope it gets the attention it requires and gets frequent updates looking forward to next one .

This is a fun game with a nice story and suspense. I enjoyed it a lot, even if it is a bit short in this release [0.12] (I think that should be 0.1.2?)

1. Short, but suspenseful story.
   Spoiler: Story

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2. The characters are well-made. Right now there are three girls, but we only have proper interaction with just two of them, but it's not like you can expect more from a game that takes less than half an hour to finish. The first girl we meet has a lot to tell us, despite the fact we just met her for the first time, which is a bit weird, like can you imagine dumping your problems to some stranger you just met? Other than that she's a nice character, and this is the only time the game has such a weird info-dump for the player, presented in such an unrealistic way. The second girl is a woman working at a bar we seem to attend a bit too often. She's nice to us, but there isn't much of a relationship between her and MC, as we just tell her about our backstory when at the bar. The third character we meet is our good friend, who we met just after moving in to this city. I like interactions with her, the way that she and MC act with each other like good bros and there's nothing they're ashamed of telling each other. This is the kind of relationship I wish more games portrayed, as that's something that really shows the time people have known each other for, and it's not like just same gender relationship can reach this level. Nice characters, solid B+.
3. This game doesn't look unique. The character models look good, but there isn't anything spectacular about them. They don't look memorable, and I'd even say they're generic. At least the render quality is good, and that's something that many games simply fuck up. At times the facial expressions look weird, like in the first scene, where Annie appears. The animation for her is nice, but the face at the end looks, like she was just about to blink, and the dev stopped the animation right there. Her facial expression remains that way for the entire sequence before the door. Same for the second animation with Chelsea. The animation itself and the render look good, but her facial expression looks a bit empty. Still, I enjoy the graphics and the quality, even if they're "just ok", since that's already so much better than many games you can find on this website.
4. Everything else is good. The UI, the sound (just music), and the mechanics themselves are all good. There isn't anything weird happening with the game after taking unexpected choices or rewinding time. The only problem is some amount of grammatical errors, especially noticeable in the bar. Other than that, there aren't any problems.

So is this a good game? Yes, even if not outstanding in any way. This is a very solid early release and many interesting things can happen to it in the future, like creating a unique and memorable story, with fun characters and interesting word; or getting abandoned, like majority of 0.1.x games here. I hope it's not the latter, as I'd really like to see where this is going. I recommend everyone to play this, just because it's so short it's hard to feel like you wasted your time even if you didn't enjoy it.

★ An interesting game with a good original story.

+ Likeable MC
+ Attractive Female Characters
+ Great Renders
+ Gripping plot
+ Good amount of Choices

- Writing could be better
- Few typing errors

Overall, I think its a great game from a new dev and deserves more attention.

As of v0.12

I absolutely loved this VN , every part of it . It has an unique story with some mystery about a disappearance of a young women and added to it MC has a magical stopwatch .

The renders are amazing and the characters are nice and changed to make them better and lovable when compared to the first release.

And when I look at the planned tags with Harem / romance which I love , I think this has potential to be a great game .Really looking forward to the next update .

Overall it is a fantastic game with unique story , highly recommended and try it for yourself and if possible support it .

Version Reviewed: v0.1

Overview: A woman is missing and all you have is your magical time stopping watch.

Story: You are a firefighter fed up with the paperwork so you quit your job to become a, well, something. One day a person from your hometown gives you a magical stopwatch and asks you to find a missing girl. Obviously the MC declines the quest because he doesn't know a damn thing about the girl or finding people, but the girl insists on giving him the stopwatch anyway. He figures out he can momentarily stop time but v0.1 ends pretty soon after that. There is also a side story of a girl who has turned to prostituion to make ends meet. Also, completely out of the blue there is a sex cult/sorority that makes you sexually assault an initiate. I'm guessing there is more planned with them, but in this version it's just wham bam thank you mam.
This first version is very short. Even reading everything you can finish in about 15-20 minutes.

Gameplay: It is a VN, but there are some stats for each girl you can raise or lower with your choices.

Sex content: A sexy cheerleader with multiple options and the weird borderline NC hazing thing is it. But that's a lot more than most 0.1 games.

Graphics: (Caveat: I played the compressed version). They seemed pretty well done. There is of course that park bench next to a tunnel that is clearly a default asset, as well as the cafe and so on. The characters aren't terribly memorable yet, but since the story was so short this may improve with time. I have no complaints.

File size: I don't normally talk about this, but the developer's release of this game is nearly 3.5GB and contains all of 20 minutes of VN. This is not sustainable. A compressed version is less than 5% of the size and still looks fine. Shipping oversized poorly compressed assets is a rookie mistake.

Conclusion: It's a bit too early to form an opinion about this game, but it has potential. The time stop thing could be a lot of fun. It's also quite generous with the sexy stuff. I wavered between 4 and 5 stars but decided to be generous because the game didn't waste my time with pointless filler.