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

v0.3.1:
My previous rating was "Excellent".
I didn't care that actual sex scenes were scarce and dialogs' phrases were a bit bland and repetitive, etc.
There were interesting and somehow realistic (well kinda) situations between the teacher and the girls. And those girls are cute!

But since 9thCrux decided to turn the game into a sandbox (after ver. 0.23 or 0.24?), it became an unplayable free-roaming hell.

I hope he will eventually repair the gameplay, though his idea of having repeatable events there is horrible.
Still, in its present state TCND:EX is unplayable.

* * *

My previous review (v0.16.1):

This is one of the best VNs I ever seen, very realistic, emotional, rich and entertaining. 20/20!

Hugely underrated, just because some people only look for a bunch of sex scenes ("quick fap"). Well, then play brothel simulators, guys.

This game is not a quest to bang everyone around. It's a story of a person who remains a decent man, a teacher, and doesn't want to harm his daughter or his students; at the same time, he accepts his male impulses and desires. It's a long and tempting unfolding of love, care and tenderness. It's a realistic psychological exploration of relationships of a handsome teacher and his beautiful female students.

And not a moment there is boring. Playing The Class Next Door, I know: that girl will be mine; only when? how? Would our relationship lead to a scandal? Or could we avoid that? And my daughter is almost constantly around me, jealously watching, torn apart between wishing to see me happy and fearing to be abandoned or rejected; so keeping and improving all the set of relationships becomes even more challenging and intriguing.

Hence, it's not about quick satisfaction of animal desires, it's a unique game of let's say global sexual strategy (a paragon of the genre!), 4f (Fuel interest, Flirt without being stigmated as pervert, Form relationships, Fuck properly). A strategy with personal, psychological, social life layers...

The dreams are a great idea, allowing more sex content since the very beginning, without rushing relationships too fast. Those dreams also add a layer of mystery: does black magic exist? What kind of creatures are Eleonore and Cleo? What supernatural events await ahead? Or was all that just my fantasy and paranoia, nothing supernatural, and everything is as simple as it seems?

Practically all the girls are beautiful, with good realistic graphics, which improves even more in the course of the game.

Though sex scenes happen not very often, they all are well prepared and engaging. And they are balanced with lots of mild erotics: beautiful eyes, smiles, legs, shoulders, sexy poses etc. For me it's much more interesting than if there would be just some set of mechanical copulation scenes. All those erotic visuals create a special atmosphere, some kind of paradise, where beautiful girls compete for my attention, try to seduce me or to explore romantic sides of life with me.

With current version 0.16.1, the amount of content is very good, and I'm breathtakingly anticipating more and more.

Thank you so much, 9thCrux! Keep up this uniquely special good work!

If you want a game that will be a “quick fap”, you’ve come to the wrong place. It says those exact words on the download page, and they’re not wrong. Instead of focusing on exorbitant amounts of sex scenes, this game chooses to focus on story instead.

Many harem games I’ve played throw you into the protagonist’s shoes and briefly introduce the characters just for the MC to have sex with them 10 minutes later. Of course, for some people that’s what they want, but this game instead spends its time on developing the characters and making them feel realistic.

I understand that it’s frustrating to have to wait for updates just to get to the sex scenes, and if you have little patience, this game isn’t for you. Although, this game feels different to the various games I have played, as it fits the description “visual novel” far better. It may not focus on making your Bratwurst moist but it does captivate you with its story, which I appreciate.

There are far too many ratings that follow the same template: “This game is too slow!!!”. What these people don’t realize is that you don’t need tons of sex scenes to make a good VN. Story is the most important aspect, as it’s a novel, not a short story.

I strongly believe this game deserves far more than the 2.5 stars it currently has and appreciate the work this game creator has done. I patiently await future updates, and the story progression that accompanies them. Keep up the good work!

My five-star review is now a one-star review due to poor decisions made by the developer unrequited by former fans or supporters of the game. TP: The Class Next Door had a shit ton of potential that I was excited for at one point, but like similar games of it's kind this game has gone absolutely nowhere. I consider this game ABANDONED and not completed.

I'm adding a star because the renders are good. This game attempts to be a slow burn but playing it is like watching ice melt. Almost zero progress with any LIs except for dreams.. which is bogus. The ex-wife is an emotionless jerk whom you could care less about. She's worse than irrelevant. She's annoying to the point that you groan whenever her name comes up. The dialog is an exercise in exploring details that nobody cares about and add nothing to the story. Some games can get away with this overly detailed writing style because the subject matter (or the characters) are interesting. Not the case here. The dev needs to either step on the gas with the romantic progressions or cut bait and abandon the game altogether.

An example of a slow burn game done wrong. Slow burn can be good if they have enticing stories and manage to lure you in with teasing and flirtatious banter. This game is so mundane that it is boring. Banter feels like it was written by a robot, or an automated machine. Most of the dialogue feels stiff and uninspired. Models are good, although they do not stand out in their own. Overall I cannot help but to think how playing this MC is just so boring, the MC does nothing but do mundane conversation then goes home to daydream.

Not for people 'looking for quick fap' as it was stated. After playing this game I would dare to say this is not for people loving romance or complicated plot either. Story is bad because, simply, nothing really happens most of the time and when it does, it comes our of nowhere. The majority of conversations between characters are shallow greetings and talking generalities (example: Alice girl says she was named after play her parents both attended; reaction of MC - oh so you were named after that play huh'). It seems more like aliens trying to imitate real people talking than anything resembling reality.
Then dev suddenly remembered it is erotic game and we have every of MCs students being attracted to him to the point of one declaration of love (or something like that) and a party where girls are dressing up for their teacher (you). How? When? Just happens. Girls just decide that easily as going to shop for milk, without any build up or reason-consequence storytelling chain.
Shame of a game really since models are quite attractive. Almost as if they came first in production and story was just an afterthought.

Game has been out for a while nothing but dreams and teases. The game has better graphics than most other games on this site but like i mentioned earlier no real sex content just dreams, kind of reminds me of some other unsavory game developers to be perfectly honest...

Review v. 0.15.1 - Episode-12

So the gane is in ep.12 now and it still feels like it is in the introduction phase.
Still waiting until the story begins, if there is any, as so far nothing happens, the plot moves nowhere.
The most interesting part of the story was the introduction of the MC/daughter and their background.

If the dev want to make a slice of life game, he should show the interesting parts and leaving out the boring ones...well we have the opposite here, i think i never saw more boring ''partys'' than in this game (including non erotic games) and those partys are the good parts.

The writing/dialogue is really bad, when the girls where introduced, u where bombarded with their whole lifestorys (meanwhile long forgotten).
Now the dialogue consists of 2/3 thirds greetings/goodbyes/thanks for this and that (no joke, that took longer/more lines of text than the whole rest of the latest party), the other 1/3 third is mostly unimportant smalltalk or unnecessary/stupid comments and banter.

There is no romantic/erotic build-up and in terms of portraying a romantic relationship between MC/daughter, the game fails completely.

With the exception of 4 scenes, 2 with the daughter (max points needed) and 2 with Marjory, all erotic content is in dreams, which are completley unneeded and feel out of place, when they suddenly have a sci fi or a viking setting. Most of these dreams are interrupted midway, which makes them a complete waste.

As far as i understood this is not a harem game, yet we have 12 LI's, 1 not introduced yet, the half of them had barely any screen time, add slow burn and the plot moving nowhere, it will probably take an other 12 episodes until it is established that all LI's have a romantic interest in the MC.
As for the MC, he seems to have no interest in the girls, everything comes from the LI side and even then he shows close to no interest.

Also i wouldn't call this game a slow burn, there is simply no progress story/ character wise and that for long time.
The only 4 erotic scenes came out of nowhere, felt completly anticlimactic, had no build up and afterwards their relationship continues as if nothing had happend.

The game had promise, but after over 1 year and 12 ep's i doubt we will ever see it.

If you like great games that take you on a long twisting romance/erotic story then this game is not for you. Not worth the time to download. Not a slow burn.

Initial play-through of this game gave me some hope that it would be a slow burn romance but after several updates and some interesting choices by the developer it has become a slow sizzle and now is just a disappointment. I don't waist my time with bad reviews but this developer really made me feel bad for them by removing the reader from immersion in the game. 3/10 SAD

I was excited about this game at the start it looked promising. There has been ZERO action besides dream sequences in this VN. You have little to no choices. The whole ex wife dialogue is just WEIRD, It does not make logical sense. the daughter is the biggest c*ck block I've ever seen. The other girls in the game are HUGE C*ck teases. I'm one to not mind a slow burn or build up if the story is good, makes sense and keeps me engaged. This story does not and I just find myself skipping because I'm bored. I think the ideas where good but the execution was POOR at best. Take the last update for example there was absolutely nothing of substance in the update period. It was all pointless filler that added NOTHING to the story besides the phone call with the ex that made ZERO sense, and even then a LI walked in on you in the shower and guess what NOTHING happened (*((((SHOCKED)))))*) IMO this story needs a complete overhaul and some direction because it's going nowhere fast. If that is the dev's intent then GG and slow clap. I've heard talk of a sandbox switch and let me say now have fun wandering around clicking everything for hours for a scene that includes weird dialogue zero substance and blue balls, then wandering around again for hours doing nothing again looking for the good stuff LOL. This whole mess is just a LOL from me.

The 2 stars are for the animations alone as are some of the best on the site sadly the same cannot be said for the stories pacing, it gets pretty tedious when there is little choice in your interations with others, the game is so slow to go anywhere too.

Its all dream sequences that lead NOWHERE thanks to you're brat daughter keeps waking you up, she is a c*ck blocker even in your dreams & as far as I can see there's no action taking place in the Protagonists when he's awake so yeah, the game sucks in that regard I'm sorry to say

Countering the butthurt thin blue line haters leaving 1 stars

As for the game itself I am relieved to see another slow burn title. Most games here are straight fuck fests and its tiring. You may as well just watch porn. These games are supposed to be VN's Visual NOVELS, aka reading. Its nice when the dev doesnt forget that.

Boring, boring, boring... even more not being able to...
Nothing ever happens, there are no decisions to be made...
No erotic or pornographic scenes...
There is no plot to follow...
There are no animated scenes...
Dialogues are stupidly repeated, like for example, going to bed, waking up or going to school, who,is driving the car... what pajamas they wear...
All the students in love with the teacher, please, something more intelligent than this...
And if they want it to be a sandbox in the end, they haven't laid enough foundations to be interesting
It's a real waste of time to play this game.

thin blue line stuff is unnecessary and aeems to make the game weirdly politcial- i doubt you'd ever find a group of girls wearing those in real life;, story has some weird pacing issues, long periods of time with no choices in the story

Everything looks really good.
Writing is good, storytelling also, and the use of music, at least for the first hour of gameplay. The side stories and sidecharacters and the absense of cringy pervy foreshadowing is a plus for me. But that has a downside. The MC seems to show no interest in anything

So the game progresses and in addition to the lack in sexual interactions or events theres also a lack of support or background for the few events that take place.

Uneventful Days pass by and those "sex" encounters just happen with no buildup, no foreplay, almost no dialogue and a nd only consist on a couple of images. You asume thye happen a deep love connection and certain attraction exists between the 2 mains.

But that premise has little to no support cause other than speaking nice to each other, they rarely cuddle while watchin movies, they dont hug or kiss, they dont cuddle while sleeping. Its the coldest show of love and attraction ever, so the relationships kind of loses meaning.

In this dvelopment state side characters also are pointless, they only eat up render times and lines of dialogue to distract and slow down the main relationship of the game, and they have almost no content.

Lets see if it gets fixed in the future cause this afternoon i thought this was gonna be my favourite game ever.

Last edit:
TLDR:
Great potential turned into a blueball fest of subverted expectations and very lucid dreams. (I want to have dreams like those)
As a recommendation play the main Li part, and skip the rest. Still a blueball fest mostly, but at least you get something.

The game advertises itself as a slow burn.
The only problem is that it burns you out slowly.

The game feels like a fever dream with nonsensical events, a whole shitton of pointless undeveloped characters with sexual scenes thrown in haphazardly.

A good chunk of the dialog is completely unnecessary( characters greeting each other again and again, stating who's going to drive ).

The last drop in the cup for me was the following piece of dialog:
- I want to kiss you!
- The truth is that I want to kiss you too.
- Great! That would be reassuring for me and sweet.

Please do yourselves a favor and play something better.

Nah. Sorry. But this is just ridiculous!

I know this is supposed to be a slow burn. That is why I didn't wonder, when I didn't get to see anything. But then the game was suddenly over. And apart from those interrupted dreams, there was no action whatsoever. So I checked...

This game is RIDDLED with moronic choices, that EACH can break your progress. I, for example, didn't get to see anything, because in the very beginning of the game, my MC THOUGHT that his new boss is hot.
And most of these choices are ridiculous. Like, in one instance, whether you receive points for Tiffany is decided in a choice between saying "I'm OK" or "Doing fine". One will grant points. The other won't.
For most of those choices, it looks like the Dev went to the Fallout4-School of making Dialogue-Labels. Even if those two choices seem to be the same, what the MC then actually says differs quite a bit. And as I wrote before.... ONE wrong choice, and your game is done. Start over. No chance of recovery.
Later Events need progressingly more points. If you lacked points for a scene at ANY time in the game, you won't catch up later on.
So your only chance is to check the stats before each choice, remember the numbers for every character that could be influenced by that choice, and then check those numbers after clicking something. If the numbers didn't increase, rollback. Go with the other option.
Now, to be fair, that is something other games do too. But normally you get a visual aid. You say something stupid, the character you talk to stops smiling. You say something nice, the smile widens. Something like that. This game doesn't do that. There is a single render for the scene that doesn't change. It entirely relies on you constantly checking numbers. And getting numbers for one characters can mean no points for another. Like the "do you think your new boss is attractive"-Choice. If you think "yes", you get points for the boss. If you think "She's my BOSS!" you get points for Tiffany.

And you better choose the right girl from the beginning. Because after ..what? ... 11 months of developement and seven major content-updates, the pinnacle of sexy-time in this game is a handjob from Tiffany. That's it. If you choose a different girl... well... there is no sexy content for any other girl yet. Apart from the interrupted dreams of course.

But the worst of it all: None of the choices actually matter!
As I wrote, my MC didn't get ANY action. But I still got to read dialogues about it. Between Tiffany and her "Self" about her Daddy-Komplex. Between the MC and his "Self" about him having dreams involving Tiffany. Them getting too close. Doing perverted things. But NONE OF THAT HAPPENED! Because my MC thought his new Boss was attractive. Didn't act on it. Didn't show it. Just thought it. But that was enough. Those stupid choices are simply checkpoints in the game to determine whether or not you get to SEE the sexy-times. But according to the dialogues they happened in the story regardless.

The story is lovely.
The renders are awesome.
But the game-design is HORRIBLE and kills all the fun.

And if I understand the Epilogue correctly, the Dev is planning to proceed with a Sandbox-Mode. Yeah... because that usually goes so well.

This is a real shame...What we have is a very admirable attempt at story telling. The characters and story are enjoyable, the game is a complete mess!

Pointless, mundane "choices" can basically destroy your playthrough. The developer is a solid enough storyteller who has absolutely no idea how to make a VN/game out of his story.

BE WARNED: You have to be PERFECT to progress with anyone...and you can only pick one girl anyway, but make one mistake (like saying "Hi" instead of "Hello" or Thinking....yes, THINKING about another character) and your playthrough is completely worseless and you can not progress with any of the girls. I'm not joking...there is a scene when you meet a female coworker while you are with your daughter. If you even THINK your female coworker is attractive (Not outloud mind you...in your head) you don't get points with your daughter for that scene...and since you need MAX points to progress and get anywhere with the girls, you can't progress with your daughter.

The Developer expects people to have a dozen different saves going on so you can see content with each of the possible girls, but each save MUST be perfect. Make ONE tiny "mistake" (again...like saying "Hi" instead of "Hello") and your save is worthless and you have to start over again.

Hopefully one day the developer realizes he's ruining his own game with piss poor implementation and ridiculous choices that make absolutely no sense. If he does...we have have a winner here, but in it's current form it's unplayable.

Ep. 8 v0.11.1: 11 months of development and the grand total relationship development is getting to grope and get a handjob from the daughter, and being flashed, kissed and getting to grope a single student.

So far the story seems to be boiling down to a bunch of damaged girls/women attending/working at a collage, the MC is the nice guy that helps them and therefore gets to have sex with them. (not that you are likely to see a sex scene that isn't just the MC dreaming for the next few years if current development is anything to go by)

Currently all the game has to offer is a harem style single storyline with choices that earn you points with different girls, these choices pop up at completely arbitrary times, rarely related to how you are dealing with different characters, and worst of all, often the choices are two ways to say the same thing, so you have to guess which way the writer thought was better (or check the points and roll back). My personal favorite here is when saying "Hello there" gets you points, saying "Hi" doesn't. Oh and don't forget that choices related to thinking about one character can influence the points, not just of that character, but of other characters as well.

The writer has made it clear that the game isn't a harem game, yet with 11 female characters to build relationships with, a 12th waiting in the wings and 5 (not sexually involved) female side characters you constantly have to deal with as well, that just doesn't work. It would even be hard to pull off right in a harem/polyamory game.

To make the previous point worse, the game is a slow burn, so it ends up being slow as molasses because every character has to get their 'set up time' showing why they are interested in the MC but not interested enough to actually do anything about it.

Now, as usual with a slow burn, it needs some cop-out sexual content in a vain hope of keeping people interested (and paying the monthly cost for updates), and this game went for the cheapest possible option... dreams... these dreams slow down the game even further, and always get interrupted on top of that, so you don't even get prober dream sex.

All in all it's a huge shame, because the characters seems interesting enough (at least most of the ones that have gotten screen-time so far seem interesting), but they are drowning in all the bad decisions the developer has made.



TL : DR: badly designed game, too many characters, all the action happens in dreams not related to the story.

This is a storybook with 5 choices that will change how it looks, other than that I was reading for 30 mins or more. At a certain point I was wondering why you needed me to look at the screen, ah to click the mouse and read some more. I'm good, this book you made is just not for me, but thanks for the effort.