Ren'Py - Welcome to the Friendship Club! [v0.13] [ZorniteB]

I am not too sure where to begin but I think gameplay is a good start. The primary things you will be doing will be spending time with the girls and making maybe a few dialogue choices or wasting time with riddles and knowledge checks which is entirely optional. I played through part of version 13 for transparency and this has got to be one of the worst feeling progression systems I've ever had. All you do is spend 1 point each day with a single girl, one extra girl on the weekends. An entire day is wasted which feels incredibly wasteful when either: a character's points don't go up because you need to trigger an event or the point does go up but there's really no point because at this point in build that character has nothing extensive outside of a handful of events compared to other characters.
In terms of romantic interests, the only one I kind of liked was Clara, who was fine in terms of writing and quite normal looking compared to the rest of the cast. Who ranged from mildly amusing at best to excruciatingly annoying with no in-between. Which is intentional to get across the strong personalities you have to deal with early on. But that does not hold up so well when it suffers from a lot of millennial writing.
Side note: It isn't present at the time of writing but nowhere does it say here that it includes both Yaoi and Yuri content. I wish the tags were at least a bit more transparent in that regard.
Jin is easily one of the worst protagonists I've had the displeasure of experiencing. I get that he's a very tired, apathetic and traumatized guy but much of the time he's a complete asshole who barely deserves to be with these girls if I'm honest, except Hazel they deserve each other. Like for instance he doesn't even try to comfort or understand Oriana in one event which... when I experienced it became absolute whiplash when I could still increase my points with her the following day. The ludonarrative dissonance is strong and it makes Jin look even worse than he already is. It's one thing if he and myself agree that Iris' various riddles and trivia are tiresome, but it's another problem when I felt like it was something I could never figure out by normal means with no reward for it. More insulting when I get something wrong and it repeats from the very beginning instead of giving us another shot to get it right and letting us fail. No instead if by some mistake you've decided to try to get to know Iris through these ridiculous prompts, you're stuck there until you get it right. If someone had not given away the answer here on the forums I'd never progress because of my choice to try and see what Iris' whole deal is. As far as I've looked there really isn't anything at this point in time worthwhile to spend time with Iris unless absolutely necessary to progress. There is nothing present that makes Iris a compelling character to pursue let alone befriend. Which reminds me to step back a little and talk about the points again, answering a certain way, aside from just moving Iris aside ONCE, your choices do not give you extra points. Like... doing something as sweet as pointing to Bella when talking about what star you want to claim adds... 1 point. That's it. Only when encountering Iris with the "optional" choice to engage with her constant quizzes that gives you a negative drop down to 0 points. No other character is like this and there is so far no reward for it which disappointed me. Sae is the stereotype gamer girl who at first I thought was faking it when she began to crack in some places. But amongst the girls she is I think the most normal experience... which isn't saying much when most of the time she is hampered by lamp shading and the constant reminder she's a "gamer girl" TM. She also has to my knowledge the fattest amount of text that isn't Iris. Yuka was the most painful character in this entire thing because of how I misinterpreted of her behavior. I thought she was going to just be the tomboy who was shy when it came to her true feelings which was partially true and then it turned out she had been crushing on another female character. It's a preference thing but lesbians do not interest me when it comes to stuff like this. And looking further into the events so far... Yuka just continues to treat Jin the same way the day they started training, a punching bag. Sure he does eventually support Yuka in her struggles but the realization sunk my heart and soured any good will I would have afforded this game. That and Maria disappointed me harder than any of the girls present. She thinks Jin is cute and the only female thus far that has admitted such to my knowledge. And yet picking her over a scene with Hazel... rewards you getting knocked out by Maria in football practice. I did not expect you'd get a scene with her like you would Hazel but... all you get is 1 point for having done so and a kick to the nuts for making that choice. Again I get that Jin is a terrible protagonist but at the very least as apathetic as he is, let that apathy be informed by what players choose to do to help him overcome what is potentially holding him back from being a decent human being. I get being cold toward Oriana being a journalist, but for all the intrigue that is attempted to display she has almost nothing going on as far as I've looked. She's kinda cute but you get nothing with her by spending time getting to know her so it feels like a waste just as it is with Kanoi. Kanoi could be an interesting character but from what I did reach, I didn't get to know much else about her than she's sheltered and Hazel accused Jin of calling her retarded when frankly I am not so sure what to make of Kanoi since even if she were somewhere on the spectrum, I feel like her character is complete in terms of where she will be directed much later. Even if she does have a nice ass it means nothing just as it does with Alice. Much as I'd like to go much further on and ramble about certain events and scenes here is what I can surmise in a few set of words: Don't play this mess. The condition it is in for its first chapter is not only bloated to the brim but general expressions are grammatically incorrect or the wrong is used to describe something. There is more punishment than reward for interacting with the girls who currently don't have anything going on.

My feedback to the developer. This was a bad experience and please understand that while I do have a bias there are a few things you can improve upon with what is currently present. I list them as such:
1. Friendship Points. I think it would be better if the choices you make during the events would give extra points based on how well Jin responds to the context. I understand some already exist but I feel it is far too scarce to reasonably build up to which will only be compounded as the game further develops. It is complete agony that only on the weekend can you increase friendship points with 2 of the four girls available at the moment. Heck even Debby who fixes your phone gives an ample opportunity to increase points even faster than just hanging out like you normally can.
2. Database Transparency. I haven't mentioned it but the Database does not do a good job informing the player the available events that are story related and content related. I was flabbergasted to learn that Oriana doesn't have anything going on as does Maria and Yuka especially hurt. Meanwhile Hazel is baked up with even a whole animation while the other girls are left to dry.
3. Grammar and Bloat. There are many fixable grammatical errors, even if Iris is intended to speak ostentatiously I feel like it can done in a manner that does not insult out intelligence, especially so with how the third quiz was handled being way too cryptic. You can make a character seem overly excited to talk like with how Sae's first handful of events play without eating up so much text. Sae especially could've been better handled and I hope you do find a solution to this sooner than later when you've got more text than a grammarly subscription can handle.
4. Riddles and Quizzes. Even if it is entirely optional and there is no reward currently (as of version 0.13), I feel like there needs to be some sort of revamp done. The first one is mostly fine and the second one wasn't too hard but I feel in general these riddles and quizzes ought to be more centered and themed around past events and the city itself. But PLEASE. At least let the player choose to fail or retry the ones they got wrong instead. It doesn't make sense for Iris to repeat what she's asked before. Heck, make it so that you can retry some of these riddles in the classroom for extra points toward her friendship.
5. (Optional) Turn off the Yaoi/Yuri content. Something simple in the preferences menu would be more than enough to lock away those event scenes.

This is about as far as I go. Sure Jin could be better written, the girls could be better explored or integrated but this is just chapter 1 there's plenty of room for that sort of development to unfold much later once the game is finished. I cannot guide much further than that as right now it's quite dry in the issues that are present. I really liked Clara but it took way too long to get anywhere near the good stuff and a lot of the characters so far being a bit too one-note and the horror aspect really disrupting rather than naturally heightening the experience because it's so disconnected and disjointed from Jin's ability to connect further with the girls. Even if Jin himself is probably one of the worst protagonists I've played so far. I think if you know what you're doing you can make Jin into an interesting character even if he is not redeemable in any sense. It is far too indulgent for my taste and gets high off itself to a degree that there is only suffering for those who carry high expectations of this project.

For all of the negatives I have to list, I do wish you luck in finished this game.

I have to be honest — the game starts off very slowly. At first, the story is pretty mediocre, with just a few nice moments. But over time, it picks up quite well. To be fair, it's clearly one of those games where the story matters more than the sex scenes. But I think that if you enjoy games like Lessons in Love, you'll probably enjoy this one too.

Reviewed v0.12p2

I think it's time to write a review for Zornite's Friendship Club (ZFC, lol).
Some may say that the characters are too grotesque, the idea of mixing a school setting with denpa isn't very original, and the graphics are overloaded with color. That there's neither careful attention to detail nor anything big that's worth rushing for. But after spending 10 days playing it, I have zero regrets.

This game is a real slow burner. Grotesque characters feel more human as you get to know them. The plot is an actual plot, not just exposition stretched over several chapters. And yes, you can actually move the story forward before introducing all the characters. The graphics? They do their job really well, both complementing the narrative and setting the scene's vibe. The same goes for the music. This game is a big lesson in what you need to write a good VN — and what you don't.

9/10, pretty solid

Reviewed as of v0.11:

In the devs own words: "Is it just a matter of quantity over quality?" Yes.

• Even with the massive volume of text in this game, the number of grammatical, spelling, and usage errors is higher by percentage than most games on this site. And that's saying something.
• Density is being substituted for content.
• A team of proofreaders and editors would be a worthwhile investment for the dev.
  
  
  
  Notes:
  The dev clearly has a style and tone they are going for. However, they very much give the vibe of someone trying to prove they have mastery of the english language without actually being able to use it properly. I have tried several times to make it through the full content of the game, but each time I am unable to face the density of the error laden prose on display here for more than 10-20 minutes at a time.
  
  Bottom line:
  Please for the sake of your end users, get a proofreading and editing team to help you winnow this down.

I don't mind 18+ VN's that are more heavy on the VN than the 18+ part. As long as it's keeps me hooked on the writing.
Glad to say this is a well written VN. The characters are unique and interesting. The dialogue is funny, and the characters have unique looks.
It is clear as the scenes progress the Dev gets better at lighting and staging, so it certainly looked prettier near the end of my playthrough.

The 'Sandbox' part is just like many other games of this genre. A menu to pick places to see characters, it's nothing groundbreaking. It's very much in line with a few other games in that regard. Menu/Scene replay/ segmented character events, you know the drill. Still, it's unique enough in other areas that I let it pass.

There is some editing that needs to be done in terms of grammar and spelling, but nothing too noticeable for me to get annoyed about.

Overall, I've had a lot of fun playing this game, and I look forward to the next updates.

And, uh, Sae sex when?

I tried liking this game, I really did but it's just too much talking without much of any action. Like I get there's a thing as slow burn games, but man they're really stingy on H scenes. there's only 1 scene that involves actual penetration of a girl riding you and it's a a dream scene so it didn't happen so I can't enjoy it. The rest of the H scenes are just oral or handjobs or just seeing a girls tits and nothing more and out of all of them I only enjoyed hazels eating out scene because you could actually see her tits and not have it be a dream. Speaking of which FAVOR HAZELS SIDE in the friendship quiz, she actually gives you an H scene, I looked at maria's events and the only thing she uses her favor for is to chuck more balls at you, nothing more.

Like I feel hazel is the only thing keeping me playing this because I like her body and model, sae being my 2nd favorite and there hasn't been any actual lewd content of her unless you count seeing her briefly naked in the beach dream. That and sometimes there's some funny dialogue occasionally. But there is just SO much pointless exposition and oooo spooky scenes because apparently school koikatsu games need something unsettling to stand out, though I will give it it's no where as bad as lessons in love in trying to be edgy for the sake of it.

Also there is the fact that they try to make it a sandbox, but oops still have to go through EVERYONES events, the illusion of choice and all that, you can't just pick your favorites, you gotta find everyones events before moving on unless I'm missing something, only thing you change is what order you see a certain group of events in. Just make it linear at this point, stop lying about it being a sandbox.

TLDR: Don't bother touching this game if you want good H scenes, there's barely any after so much time and the ones you do get are so lack luster.

This isn't going to be my usual novel of a review as I can't be bothered to waste more time on this game than this game has already put me through. I'm so tired of all the games that are made this way. Whoever started this, or is teaching people to make sandboxes this way is a blight on game development everywhere. This version of a sandbox is made to be as menial and tedious as possible. It's as if it's trying to milk you for play time like some crap mobile game. Which makes no sense. You click on an area and HOPE there's an event that will trigger, but they never do. You're missing some unspoken, arbitrary number of empty interactions with some unrelated character, you're not allowed to advance the story because fuck you that's why. Not only that, but to see the events and stuff, you have to open the pause menu. You have to actively stop playing instead of adding a screen to just see what you might need to do next. It's infuriating. On top of that it's THE SAME STORY AS THE OTHER GAMES THAT ARE MADE THIS EXACT SAME WAY.

"MC mysteriously goes to a college of mostly females and is suddenly in charge. You interact with them once a day to get one updoot of love points until an event happens. The story is everyone's sad/depressed/isolated it's up to MC's dick to solve the problems. Only... What's that? Existential dread or a poorly made KK jumpscare that pops up mid conversations because subversion of expectations!~"

Stop remaking this game. There are at LEAST 5 other games doing the exact same thing and, spoiler alert, none of them are any good. There is exactly one decent character in this and the rest are tropey and boring. I know for a fact someone will say "You just didn't get to their exposition" and to that I say "I KNOW! I can't because there's no rhyme or reason as to how I'm supposed to see events." And it's not like seeing a freeze frame of MC and the girl talking as it cuts to black to say "You interacted with [XXX]. It was fun, you really shoulda been there!" is fun. That's not compelling gameplay or conducive to storytelling or, god forbid, immersion. By the time I get to the next events my eyes have glazed over and I forgot who the characters even were.

This needs serious refactoring. Outside of the 15 people that like playing this same game over and over, no one will enjoy this. I'm sorry. The in-between scenes need to be more than "Time passed and you gained a point" There needs to be some sort of direction given to the player. Not just "Here's a default renpy menu, click an option to have a throwaway interaction and MAYBE you'll see an event." And I'm dead tired of: MC is so depressed and everyone's depressed and they're all so tortured and this choice won't even tell you what it's for good luck! Unless your fetish is crippling depression, specialization to the point of autism, and/or clicking the same 4 renpy menus over and over and over and over and over again, this is not for you.

A solid foundation. what's currently here is entertaining and worthwhile to play, whilst the story and characters are interesting enough for me to stick around and see how it develops. a far step above the majority of the trash that gets uploaded to this website.

This is a nice visual novel. There's a distinct focus on story content and the visuals and audio are also pretty solid.

The writing is ambitious but well thought out especially when measured against similar games. However there's quite a bit of errors grammatical errors and typos that leads me to believe it could do with a quick pass of editing. It delivers the story but it could be better. I feel like some of the BGM tracks could loop better but the sound track is at least there. The UI is pretty basic but functional, which is important. I'll take bland but reliable over eye catching but experimental any day.

The characters are quirky the content is quite pleasant but it's a little rough. I hope as it progresses the author will get settled into a comfortable dev cycle and improvements will happen.

If you're into existential dread mixed with some humor and cute girls it's off to a good start.

Tentative 4 star for delivering a fully functioning (though rough) visual novel. Looking forward to more updates.

EDIT: adjusted for clarity. Also thanks ZorniteB for the steady updates!

There is no way this game would have come out just a few years ago.

This is not a compliment saying that technology finally allowed this dev to tell their story its a statement of fact that this is a "guy goes to new school/has memory loss, INEXPLICABLY is an authority figure for a handful of tropes (sporty girl, nerd girl, and various deres), you do events that's overall impact is minimized because they have to be able to be played in any order (sandbox)

I could not even make it to the first animation as the writing was that hard for me to get through however some of the preview pics show that the animations could be much worse.
However the writing could not be much worse while still being competent English. The entire week I played every single event played out the exact same, and when the MC isn't having cookie cutter dialog he is often making very long unfunny jokes that can take multiple clicks to read......in his own head to nobody......

From what little bit of the "story" I encountered the premise is very rote at this point, and the overall mystery seems to be the butt of jokes more than an actual mystery (MC often saying he'll figure it out sooooon enough) as for the character stories I never did not make it far enough in any to see anything beyond the copy and paste intro but the fact that all their events are the same and the overall quality of the set up I doubt they would be anything not seen in other games.

Another issue that pushes towards the idea that this game "falls short" is that every single choice/interaction is done via a renpy menu. No map, no free roam, no seeing characters in various locations you get a few choices with words like (library, gym, etc) and I hope you can remember where people are across updates because there is no indication made in the choice menu you are forced to use.

I believe the previous points show how this game is below average (overall and in its "subgenre" but my final point will be that as of the third update this game has very little to do with "friendship" and instead is just your cookie cutter "weirdo gets student harem but spooooky sometimes". If you changed the name of the club from friendship (love/wholesome/romance) to skinship club (lust/horny/just sex) very little would need to change in game which means it's pretty irrelevant to the plot despite being the "titular pull"

It's very early stages. A lot of potential in that the writing and renders are quite excellent. I do worry about the plot since it frontloads a lot of meandering introspection out of the gate long before I have any real attachment to the world being set up.

+ Writing
+ Renders
+ Sex

- Gameplay
- Plot (so far)

The intro is far too long with too much explanation for the premise being as standard as it is.

Guy is, through luck, introduced to a situation where he has to spend time with a lot of new girls, meanwhile there's the usual meta, 4th wall rocking mystery with the MC. We've seen it before. Not to say the game wont go anywhere interesting with it, and like I said the writing is very good, but it's not unique enough to spend as much time as it does meandering before we really know any of the characters.

It's also very disappointing considering how good the game looks that it's just a location click grinder. I wish these games would just ignore a relationship point system entirely (or have just one repeatable event placeholder between events) and just let you see a new event every time you make a choice of where to spend time. I get that it would seem really short, but that's a preferable alternative to an arbitrarily long grind where there is no actual gameplay in between. Did you click a certain location enough times? Great.

Anyways this does get a 4 instead of a 3 because the potential is there and the good elements do outweigh the bad. I will definitely check out future updates to see where it goes and how much it can improve.

The game is good game and it is well made with good renders and interesting girls, so far I like this game. I can't wait to see how the story plays out as the game becomes better it has a lot of potential.