VN - Ren'Py - Where the Heart Is [S1 Rev1] [CheekyGimp]

[as of Ep. 20]
I want to preface this review by saying that I have been playing adult games on and off for a long time. I have been a member of this website since 2018, before that, I used to get all of my adult games from /aco/ on 4chan. In all of my time playing adult games, there has never been a game that I liked or loved more than this game.
I recently discovered this game and completed it for the first time last weekend. I have to say that I am blown away. I love reading but I think nobody here would disagree if I say that a vast majority of games here have a very poor storyline and worse writing. I used to read every single bit of text in my early days of adult gaming but as I played more and more, I got bored of the redundant bullshit that the devs spun and it has become a habit of mine lately to spam ctrl and select skip all messages to skim through every new game that I play. This gives me the idea of the storyline and if the story seems intriguing, I go back and start from the beginning and do a careful playthrough. The same was the case with this game, and the only difference being that I was hooked very early on.
Let's talk about the story. The story is not Pulitzer winning but it's not bad either. In my opinion it one of the very best that this site has to offer. I played with DrAddy's Incest/Walkthrough mod so I consider Monica as Mom and Katie and Jenna as Sisters to be canon.
Usually, for most of the games that I play, I only like one character and ignore the rest. Many times no character in the game is eyecatching and everyone has bland and shitty dialogues but in this game, all of the characters are so unique and cleverly written that I can't help getting attached to each one of them. Not at any point while I was playing that I got bored and wanted to skip dialogue. Each girl has a completely separate and consistent personality and it seemed to me that the writer had figured them out completely before writing the story.
Now some words about the suspense and the twists. After playing the game it seems to me that every girl that we meet except the two virgin sisters (Katie and Jenna) has been fucked or at least tried to fuck by MC's dad. Nothing is said openly but it is hinted at often. Here are a few examples: a) Monica (ex-wife) b) Elaine (GF) c) Angel hints at being with a guy like MC's dad d) Jolina hints at something similar e) Zarah hints at being made a pass at by some like him f) Theresa is hinted to one of them too g) Bella tells MC that his dad made a pass at her too. These are all the ones that I can remember off the top of my head.
Also, Elaine was so heavily implied to be the villain in the beginning and throughout the story that I was almost sure that the writer was trying to through us off the scent of the real villain and there would be a twist in the end but in the last episode we got the picture of Elaine entering the coffee shop so I guess I was wrong. I was beginning to like Elaine so much that after the golden trio (Mom and Sisters), she was my most favorite character but I guess she really likes money and is gonna fuck us over in the end anyway.
I have read in the thread that there will be no Harem route and that makes a lot of sense and I appreciate that the dev decided to not ruin his game by forcing a harem route on this game. Although I would have liked to have an ending with [the golden trio] or maybe [Katie and her friends] or [Jenna and Jolina] or [Elaine and Bella] or [Monica and Elaine and Dizzy] etc. What I'm trying to say is that instead of a complete harem we could get small groups of twos and threes making the story a lot more fun.
The absence of a harem route gives the game a lot of replayability value. I don't usually replay adult games but I will definitely be replaying this one a lot.
And finally the models and character design. I love the character models so much in this game and even though they aren't the best or most high quality that you can find on this website, they complement the story nicely and I wouldn't change them if given the choice.
In conclusion, this is my all-time favorite game on this website and I am eagerly looking forward to its completion. Good luck to the dev and his team. I end this review with a request, and that is please add pregnancy, birth, and some time after the birth in the game too, before the end as to give some closure to us as a player. Don't just end on "and they lived happily ever after". I want to see their happily ever after. This is an adult game and here we get everything that we desire, right? all of our fetishes? so seeing their happily ever after is my fetish. Thanks and Good day.

5/5 in everything. Perfect.

It's not that great. Some LIs are attractive some are not, all have absurd proportions. Both the art and the writing is a 3/5 but there is a lot of content. After a while I ended up just fast forwarding parts of the story because I got bored.

I think this game is significantly underrated. The story is quite basic. But, it let's the player decide how the story pans out. Unlike most games this game has used amazing storytelling, while building up tension and giving the player a really good experience. Overall the game is unique in it's own way. Instead of relying on the overused stepmother and two stepsisters format, this uses it's own spin on the same concept(which is done really well, btw) and gives player the option to play out the storyline of a character and move on to a different character of the players choice. It already has quite a lot of content and I'm exited to see where it leads to.

I played and re-played this game more than 10 times (against my will, due to factors external to the game)

The song "Estilo Cachorro" by Racionais MC's sums up this game well, as in the lyrics the only dilemma in the game is "Woman and money, money and woman", for a while it is cool, but then it gets repetitive, an excellent The point in this work is that choices have consequences, the style of art is satisfactory, sometimes it made you want to skip some dialogues, there is a lot of dialogue that is only there "to fill sausage", since the information given by the player had already assumed it to be true ... The animations are average, because they all have a robotic movement and sometimes... I always play with volume 0, so I don't know if they have sound effects or if they're good, this item is kind of irrelevant to me.

For each category the highest score is 10:
Graphics: 9.0;
Character development: 9.0;
History: 8.5;
Plot: 9;

Note: I didn't find any bugs.
Note 2: I don't speak English fluently, so the text may have connotation errors.

Verdict: It is worth taking a chance, the project is good.

The good:
Some LIs are reasonably interesting and attractive. Lots of contents.

The mediocre:
Writing ins OK but nothing special. Art is OK but nothing special.

The bad:
All male characters other than the MC are gay or assholes and have small dicks (as opposed to the MC with the usual horse cock).
Every single female character seems to never have met a nice male before meeting the MC, and immediately falls for him, as he is not only very fit and cute etc but supposedly is not an asshole (which is not entirely convincing giving his behavior). Not only they want to have a sexual relationship with MC, but many of them immediately stress that they are happy with MC fucking other people too. Choices seem so far restricted to "do you want to add X to your harem or are you not interested" (Maybe later on these choices will boil down to some meaningful story development, but I somehow doubt it).

What can i say about this perfection that havent being said yet ?
The characters depth are in the top 5 of all time.
You dont have to like em , just bear with em and you are on for a trip.....
The renders mean alot in this kind of games and i only can say that they add to the whole perfection. Just some minor rendering faults but this is expected from the humongus size of this game.
I could say this and im serious : You can very well inspire a movie !
I know there are some 'fetish issues involved' but hey we are in 2021 for crying out loud...
10/10
keep it up devs !

Every girl you meet wants a relationship with mc
Problem is keeping these relations a secret I feel like this game wants you to have a relationship with every girl But if you do someone sure gonna find out and not gonna be happy Also what are these woman in the household No patch means they are not family right ?
This game needs a harem option
there is no way to know who you can date while also dating someone else
Or who you can cheat on with another girl

There are quite a few different women to romance and their personalities are clearly different. And I quite enjoy that the different storylines, although obviously a bit silly, actually involve seduction and romance and are actually kind of sweet at times.
It's always great to see something different to the usual 'women can't resist your huge d*ck'.
The renders and animations are decent and don't use the choice dialogue box when there is no choice, i.e. 'click to penetrate' which is a pet peeve of mine.
All in all, I'd say this is one of the better games of this type that I have played.

Been following this game for a while and hadn't realized I never reviewed it. Keep it short. Great characters, great scenes. REALLY going above and beyond with the choice of 4some3somesolo with the girls from chapter 19. Dev has found a lot more support lately but the quality of updates has not gone down.

Excellent, indeed. All-round a great game. Solid writing, style is easy to read, straightforward and engaging. Story is interesting, if not very original, but that works to its advantege imo, it's cliche but in a good way. Art is great, some of the best around. Plenty of characters, all unique and attractive in their own ways, with believable motives/motivations.. Sex scenes are plentyfull and have proper buildup/follow up. Decent number of different fetishes, all done very tastefully. Also, you can define your relationships pretty much however you want, with a few exceptions. Yea, it's just that good. Lots of content, regular updates, quality seems to be improving every update. Serious dev, serious talent.

Color me a fan. 5/5. Awesome.

It is a good game. with excellent animation and development in each of the characters and i like so much the way the story has been made. On the other hand the updates go out regularly and they often show us the progress

"Where The Heart Is" is an adult visual novel. Its got a lot more content than others and it's one of the best in the genre. You go to stay with a friend of your mother's and her 2 daughters who you used to live with years ago. The building up of the relationships is done really well. It's a really good game.

Fantastic! Just FANTASTIC! I expected it to be a game, but it turned out to be a great work of art! At first, I was upset that the sex scenes were old-fashioned, but I continued to play for girls with great looks and great characters. And I don't regret continuing, because in subsequent episodes, the sex scenes were developed and became perfect. I also encountered more sexy girls than I expected from a game, and as I kept moving forward, their numbers increased. Some of the factors that make the game a work of art are its great script and Jokes. Now all I expect from the game is the a harem ending where I can take all the girls. If you have not yet downloaded and played the game, I recommend you to play it. You won't regret it!

really fun game, and the different routes are fun. I do wish there was some separation on the routes for each girl so that you could pass up on opportunities without feeling like you are just skipping content, but the women are all interesting and have their perks, and it does have plenty of fun and enjoyable scenes. 8/10

Easy 5 out of 5. Good enough story to keep you intrigued about things and well built with multiple branches and flexibility on you playthroughs. Renders are high quality with good variation among possible LIs. Love that they have added the possibility to start at any episode with different setting, not forcing you to skim lots of scenes or use someone elses saves just to try different things.

Easily one of the best adult games of all times. It has fun interesting characters. It's not buggy, and coded properly. The characters are well developed. Nice build up and pacing. Original story well written. The characters are ealistic. It has some funny humerus points. If you are stuck someone made a walkthrough mod. There is different paths, and it has replay value. Lots of content.

PROS
- I gotta say, this is one of the most well written games I've ever played. Each character has a different personality and their dialogues stick true to their character.
- I initially disliked that infamous 'frame-by-frame' animation as they look terrible and dated but thankfully its only restricted to the older episodes. I planned on this point being a 'con' but I won't criticize something the dev has fixed.
- No blueballing with the sexual content (at least in the latter episodes). And they don't throw sex scenes around just for the sake of it. Each one has meaning to it and sufficient buildup behind it.
- Usually a game either has a good story with no NSFW content or lots of sex with a terrible plot. This is one of those few games that successfully does both. I'm really engaged in the story and the plots devices such as finding out who is the gold-digger is or Jenna's transformation where she comes out of her shell. I find myself looking forward to how the plot will develop.
- The characters here look realistic. You know, like actual people. Not pornstars or supermodels. The older women also look true to their age. None of that '20 year old looking milfs' that we see so often

CONS
- This game initially did not have harem. However, the harem fans demanded its inclusion and now the author is trying to shoehorn it in at this late stage in the game. The problem with this is that it leads to several plot inconsistencies. The game has set-up various potential polyamorous relationships with 'Jolina and Jenna' and 'Zarah and Monica'. However, lets take Katie's example since that harem is already set-up. Katie's character is someone that did not want to share her boyfriend with anyone. She is quite frequently depicted as a jealous and possessive character. Even labelled the MC's dick as a sole belonging of hers. She is never gonna be okay if the MC sleeps with someone else, right? In quite literally the next episode, she allows all her friends to sleep with him. Breaking her character development and the game's realistic tone. I have no problem with the act of sleeping with multiple women at once, its just disappointing when its done while sacrificing a character's identity just to provide fanservice.
- No music or sound effects.

In conclusion, its a pretty solid game and I recommend checking it out.

I kept seeing other players post things like, "Looking for games like 'Where the Heart is'" on various forums so I decided to give this game a try. My expectations where a bit too high coming into it but I enjoyed the game very much once I stuck with it.

Pros

• Good to Excellent renders
• Excellent characters with unique personalities
• Excellent character development
• Excellent variety of clothing that looks real and not painted on
• Excellent humor and banter between the characters
• Very long game with lots of hours of content - the longest game I've played on this site

Cons

• The dialog is quite verbose and it takes a while for it to lead anywhere. There is too much unmeaningful dialog that could be skipped or condensed in my opinion. All the characters in the game have long conversations that can get tiring after a while. I never did skip through the dialog but I was tempted to quite often.
• I was bothered that nearly all of the girls in the game have a potty or gutter mouth, meaning that they freely swear like a sailor, including the shy and innocent Jenna. This is one area where some of the characters break immersion for me.
• The first eight episodes of the game were a learning curve for the developer. Nearly everything is improved in later episodes of the game, especially the animations and some renders. The animations in the first eight episodes are done poorly using only a couple of frames so it is really rough and primitive. It really ruined the sex scenes for me but was fixed in later episodes.
• This is largely a kinetic novel, meaning that most choices are made for the character. The player gets to choose who he wants to romance and is often given a dialog choice for responses to the characters in the game, some being better than others. There are no sandbox or "free roam" elements in this game. It is 100% story driven.
• I don't care for the character models of Monica and Zarah. They are unattractive to me and have little appeal.
• The game kind of sets up the player for failure as it allows and often encourages you to romance every girl in the game like a harem but the author claims it isn't a harem game. It also goes to the extent of hardly any of the girls knowing you are romancing six other girls at the same time and the few that do find out tell you that they are OK with it (Jenna and Jolina for example). As of episode 19, you can literally romance every girl in the game with no consequences. This is going to be quite the feat for the author to resolve in later episodes if there truly isn't a harem ending. Instead of forcing the player to choose, he allows you to romance everyone at the same time. I have six girlfriends in the game. That is a lot to resolve and it will be hard to blame it all on the player when the game kind of encourages it and allows it.
• Some of the sex scenes are done really well but most are average. Many authors struggle with making the H scenes erotic, sensual, and meaningful and this is sometimes the case here. I've learned that it takes an entirely different skillset to pull this off well.
• Even in later episodes with better animation, the penetration animations (oral, vaginal, anal) don't have enough back and forth movement. Most of the penetration scenes only move back and forth one to two inches. Since the MC has a large dick it looks funny.

Final Thoughts

Despite the cons, the game is quite enjoyable if you get past the first eight episodes.

You'll find many of the common tropes in this game and the story is engaging but not really unique.

The unique personalities of all the girls and the excellent character development are really what make the game shine! The humor and banter between the various characters in the game is a near masterpiece!

In most games I wish there was more content. This is not the case here. There is tons of content and it has so much that it has as much content as three or four other games combined.

I really enjoyed the game overall and recommend that players give it a try!

In a few words the game is good, but has some flows. One of the problems is that it is just a bit too long. There is enough material there to make 2 or 3 separate games with different stories, models and everything. In fact, you can see how the graphics and animation improve in later episodes. Episodes 1 and 19 look very different. Another problem is that despite all the variety you don't really have any choice. Moreover, some girls will almost harass you if you are not interested in them, which feels quite unnatural even for a sex game. Additionally, you can proclaim your love and be a boyfriend to all the girls simultaneously without any repercussions. However, this is still an enjoyable game worthy of attention.

Art is poor.
Dialogues so similar and boooooring.
Unrealistic girls' and stupid MS's behaviour
There is a bunch of girls but I didn't like a single one
Sex scenes bad
This game was boring and disappointing for me.