Ren'Py - Completed - TP: The Class Next Door [v0.12.1] [9thCrux]

First, I did not finish the game until the end. I gave up after two hours trying some combinations of navigations exploring empty rooms looking for cogwheels that are hard to see on screen.

I was getting annoyed by the navigation system and feeling overwhelmed by the strange mechanic (cloister of dreams) that I did not understand the point in the game at all. Thought it was important in the story (with a big reveal maybe) but until then it felt weird and confusing on top of the weird navigation system trying to find which location is the correct one, everytime, at everyplace, to progress the story?

After some time I got fed up, and used the walkthrough called "Nisha's report" attached on the front page. Boy, if you just start with the walkthrough, everything is simpler, and even then you quickly realize how clunky is the navigation. The game is slow not because the story is made to be "slow" as a "slow burn", but because you lose way more time navigating (and guessing, without a walkthrough) than actually progressing the story or "slow burn"-ing yourself into some big reveal/events or whatever.

Since I don't know the game, I don't know if there's something at the end that is worth pursuing (probably not given the level of confusion).
The initial supernatural setting is interesting and kept me intrigued until giving up. I gave it two stars because of the story setting and the nice renders. And maybe I am being nice, given how god awful the current mechanics are.

My advice on how to "salvage" the game mechanic wise, and let people enjoy the "slow burn" if the story is really that:
- If you want to make a sandbox, at least give clues on where to explore and what to do (like at the beginning, when "Self" asks you to buy a drink, even though it is not clear what the payoff is except in the walkthrough), and make it easy to reach there with less than 2-3 clicks total. It requires more than that to go from your morning to the classroom, and that's AN EVERYDAY MANDATORY PATTERN. Not that "Self" giving you a message should leave a permanent mark somewhere in case the player forgets: make a journal or something.
- In a sandbox/exploratory game, I advise for giving definitive clues when a location is no longer useful to explore, or have nothing new or worthwhile to do until some new trigger happens. Simple colored markers to show locations of new unseen/events, and clear hints on how to unlock them if they are locked, should be there. This is not a RPG with stuff to farm/evolve/modify, going to a "non-story-progression" location is not gonna do anything except frustrating the player, especially since early-on in the story you get a LOT of useless locations.
- Skipping time should be a one-click button from anywhere. For a player that just want to skip days to see if anything new pops-up or just interact with a particular daytime because he has an idea about the story, it is currently a clicking nightmare.

Over the years I have played so many games from F95 and this is honestly one of the most terrible experiences I've had. Not in the sense that the images quality or girls are bad (in fact they are infuriatingly quite attractive), but because of the clunkiness of the UI and the lack of direction with each of the girls. Never have I seen navigation arrows this bad in a game where I could not for the life of me figure out where the hell I am going with each click and why each room needs 4 different, zoomed-in angles which only serve to disorient the player whilst adding nothing that is interactable. Not to mention the game makes you click so many arrows (cogs) but as expected from a brainless developer like this the center hole of all navigation cogs are UNCLICKABLE!!

Having recently stopped playing Diablo 4, I thought I could really unwind by beating my meat but instead I'm find myself beating another dead horse of a game. Half of the buttons don't do anything in this game but you are forced to trudge on through day by day until maybe a random story event pops that strings you along for a little longer like a carrot on a stick. There is this odd route mechanic that makes you select one girl at a time and once selected there are long cutscene 'dreams' that get repeated every night when sleeping. Then repeat this for the 10+ girls there are. Still, after all of this you will get barely any scenes, insignificant character/relationship progression and weird and confusing plotline developments.

Like me you'll be sat here, dick in hand (it crawled back in after being bored to death), wondering why all your life choices culminated in downloading this rubbish. But fear not, hopefully this review will convince you enough to save you an evening or two.

The story is not a slow burn, it's pace is glacial as you get a new scene every fourth or fifth day, you have a bunch of stuff to buy that do nothing, there are several areas with cogs with red lines that do nothing, even on MC's own house, you can only "skip" or more like flashforward on the dream sequences, the everyday/same daily scenes cannot be skipped, apparently the dream sequences cannot be turned off since they're interwined to the "path"/route and you have to frecuently switch camera angles in the house.

This is somehow recreates the same feeling of those stories where the dev needs to describe everything, including what the characters are constantly thinking without actually doing that, when you reach the story parts you're so zooned out that you tend to not pay attention, I had to load back a few times because I just missed route options, a lot of areas where you can access yet have no content at all.

You are free to disagree and like this story but from my perspective the dev decided to needlessly stretch the run-time way past it's welcome for the sake of it.
Mind you I'm currently at the point where the daughter gets the cat.

It is rare that I ever bother to review a game on F95. The game has to be exceptionally good or gone horribly wrong. This one fits the latter. I have not even passed the third day yet and already I was looking to comment on the review forum. All the bloody clicks, why would you add that to a game? I've played games with navigation arrows before, but this one's gears are absurd. It's pretty near impossible to quickly transition about the M/C's home. All I know so far about the storyline is that the M/C had a heart attack and ended up in a parallel universe with his 18 year old daughter as a LI. He's come across several other potential LI's in the past few days, but what's with having to click at night to "choose" a path? I'm guessing the idea, since it's a sandbox, is you activate an LI path and work it until it's run its course then go back and run another path clicking gears until it's 2050 and you have lost your bloody mind. It looked promising from the synopsis, but hard pass on this one. I gave two stars because of the nice models without that I would give it zero stars if that was an option.

Weird and confusing Game.... AND does not look Completed!
I found myself constantly wondering "what to do next" and the "Walkthrough" and tutorials did not help in any way! The entire thing with parallel universes and romances is not at ANY point get explain how it works or the differences it makes for the game play, I never got the fealing atleast. I felt lost and confused the playthough that I tried

I was interested in this until I started playing, the movement interface is such a headache to use that I just couldn't deal with it. I'd love to see that changed in the future, maybe I'd give it a try then. But for now, it's nearly impossible to play.

It's really aweful. Nonsense sandbox, tedious click through your daily routine just to see a few events on the week. I've been playing one hour and I'm just sad I'll never have that time back. I has some good ideas, but I think the developer is really trying to grasp too much.

Started strong, then design choices destroyed the game. Unnecessary sandbox means its a chore just to get to where you were able to get to before its implementation. In fact after an hours grind I feel Im still on the content that was in 0.1 version and NOTHING seems to be progressing.

The game is a mess. Endless sandbox click games. (Driving to school with the daughter in the morning and returning in the evening and sleeping.) It couldn't be more boring. The game is an absolute waste of time. There is no hint system. ;an spins in an endless loop and clicks itself to death. The models are good, but gameplay and gamemechanics...oh my god...

Ruined by pointless Sandbox

This game isnt original, however wasnt without its charm. Decent MC, nice varied LIs however it is a horror show to play.

The sandbox is clunky, confusing to navigate and basically ruins the game.

I tried, and got that frustrated with the interface that i quickly exited and deleted the game.

I am not a fan of sandbox anyway but do play them if they are done well... This one, unfortunately isnt. The sandbox completly ruins the experience

I don't like leaving bad reviews, but this game is a stinky one.

I will however be lenient to the dev seeing how it seems to be his first ever game.

First of all the good :

The art is good, not exceptional or revolutionary but enjoyable nonetheless.

Now that I'm done with the positives, let's tackle the main issues :

- To me, the project lacked direction frome the get-go.
- The story is confused and therefore confusing to the player.
- The characters and plot are bland, uninteresting and most are just unimportant.
- The gameplay was made worse midway starting from a lackluster visual novel to a completely empty and meaningless sandbox game.
- The coding could be improved as there were lots of errors with each release and multiple times where the infamous "old saves don't work" have been written in a changelog.
- Sticking to your guns and improving something in an unexpected direction can be a good thing sometimes. However, when the entirety of your playerbase is telling you that you're making mistakes and should take a step back, maybe you should listen instead of being stubborn like a mule. The desertification of this game's public speaks for itself and I hope it is a lesson for this developper.

Overall, I felt as if the dev was all over the place, not keeping a clear schedule and long term plan for his game and kind of winging it from start to finish.
I even doubt there was a plan established to begin with.

This game turned out really terrible but in the end, I sincerly hope the developper is more successful in his next endeavour by taking it more seriously and I wish him the best.

Dev wasn't joking with slow burn
It's to slow

Don't mind slow burn games but not a game where it takes forever
For me the problem is 12 woman is to much and make the slow burn even slower .You have mini map wich doesn't help to tell you if there is a event but it's easy to get to a location
There are two stats friendship and romance you can switch path in cloister
Story feels not really like a incest game more like a daddy daughter family friendship no romance relationship
No bugs
i saw there was a cheat mod but that was abandoned

So I played the game before the Dev decided to make it an "Open World Game"... Boy oh boy was that a bad decision. Open World Games are pretty much the hardest style of games because it's so hard to not make the world empty as F*** and exactly that is what happened. A more "linear" game with some branches like it was in the beginning would have been better and even if it was a slow burn, there was story and potential there. But that went all to hell and the idea of creating this Reaper for the different "routes" was not a great addition either. It really didn't need anything supernatural to be honest. Now it's all in there and nothing of value is left sadly. I can just hope the second game fixes all those problems but somehow I'm doubtful.

This game may be good, but unfortunately its borderline unplayable. The system to get around and pass days is ridiculously tedious and kills any sense of momentum, or interest, or will to live. Its a complete non starter.

One of the worst game ive played on F95. I cant say how bad this game or i will get another warning from the peanut gallery. Just avoid this game like you life depended on it. Badly written nothing but sex in you dreams. dreams to the point i didnt know what the mc had did or didnt do. Totaly not worth play.

This game used to be fun, unfortunately the developer changed to gameplay to an awful sandbox game.

This game is the perfect example of what to never do with sandbox gameplay.

I prefer by far the slow burn games with good story and it used to be one but slow burn doesn’t mean multiplication of pointless sandbox sessions.

The game promised a lot, very beautiful characters but the changes ruined absolutely everything, it is impossible to get around, the worst thing is that I have read that the developer is selfish and does not pay attention to the suggestions of the community, it is sad that I stayed looking forward to seeing a good story.

Renders look quite good, but something is a bit off about the lighting or models making it look a bit antique. Biggest problem is the game direction- slow burn should not mean empty or repetitive. Further, the writing is of questionable quality- the worldbuilding and characters are extremely flat or one-dimensional, with most of the conversations feeling incredibly artificial.

God this game is probably one of the worst gameplay that ever exist on this platform, the navigation are confusing as hell and its really giving me a headache by playing it for just 10 minutes, why would the developers created such a torturous gameplay such as this?

RSI: The Game

It takes something like 15-46 clicks per action with the worst, most insane navigation system you have ever encountered, designed by somebody with zero spatial awareness (or common sense)

Nothing ever happens. Or maybe stuff happens but you dont see it because it would have taken 82 extra clicks, who knows? not me and I suggest you dont try to find out either.

Note: I PREFER sandbox games, but UI like this is why many people don't