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

[ename144]

Now, Dev might change mind, but thi way you are supposed to hit a bad ending.

Eh, I think like Katie, the devs' bark is a bit worse than their bite. There won't be a full harem, but there are going to be a lot of smaller combos. The last few episodes have made it pretty clear Katie can come around on the idea of sharing the MC (as long as he lies about it properly). The only thing that's still unclear to me is if Jenna can join in on the Katie sub-harem or if she would need a separate time-share arrangement with Katie alone.

My money is on it being separate, but we'll have to see what happens.

EDIT:

So is this worth playing? The renders don't look that great and it looks like music isn't a thing until chapter 23. That's a long trudge to get to all the way from ch 1.

If you like character interactions and story, yes it's definitely worth playing. The renders improve throughout the course of the game, too.

 

[Jacowboy]

Read ACEWINZ comment about relationships


I don't see possibility of any pairing other than Jenna/Katie/Lily/Debbie with 3 or more girls.

Exactly... A harem is basically when you can "catch them all" and marry them and all that... a poly relation is not the same... The only "larger than 3" poly relation I see viable right now is with those 4... mind you, I haven't played all routes (it's a looong game) but not all groupings make sense. What other viable larger than 3 poly options are there?



Regarding Katie: Katie is part of the "main girls" group and as such there is a character arc for her, much like for Jenna... Jenna's character development arc is getting out of her shell and dealing with her physical insecurities, which she has mostly completed at this point... Katie's arc is also about dealing with her insecurities (which are more emotional/psychological in nature) and she's been extremely stubborn up to this point.

While it's possible that she won't ever change, it'd be kinda lame if she never did because that would mean an incomplete character arc, and I just don't see that happening, since the writing is actually quite good.

 

[Jacowboy]

Eh, I think like Katie, the devs' bark is a bit worse than their bite. There won't be a full harem, but there are going to be a lot of smaller combos. The last few episodes have made it pretty clear Katie can come around on the idea of sharing the MC (as long as he lies about it properly). The only thing that's still unclear to me is if Jenna can join in on the Katie sub-harem or if she would need a separate time-share arrangement with Katie alone.

My money is on it being separate, but we'll have to see what happens.

EDIT:

If you like character interactions and story, yes it's definitely worth playing. The renders improve throughout the course of the game, too.

Yeah, that's basically my question... but I'm hoping it'll be possible.

It's true that Jenna basically has no story beats with Lily/Debbie but they do know each other... Lily and Debbie are always at Monica's from what we've seen, and Jenna knows them quite well even if they don't hang together... so it's not as much of a stretch as say, I dunno, Angel or Wanda or the carnie chick joining that group out of nowhere. But I have to concede that it's more likely that Jenna ends up either in a throuple with Katie or with Jo.

However I don't see Katie accepting anyone else outside of the people she knows and loves, so that's Lily, Debbie, Jenna and Monica at most. She'd obviously never agree with Bella, Angel, Wanda, Natasha, etc... even with Jolene since she just doesn't even know her.

Speaking of Monica, I haven't romanced her, I've ignored the milfs so far, so I don't even know if you can romance her and the 2 daughters at the same time... something tells me that doesn't work, buuut who knows, it might be possible, has anyone tried?

 

[Jacowboy]

So is this worth playing? The renders don't look that great and it looks like music isn't a thing until chapter 23. That's a long trudge to get to all the way from ch 1.

Not gonna sugar coat it, the first 10 chapters or so are quite rough in terms of renders and animations, but it progressively gets better. I don't really understand the point of adding music as late as ch23, so consider this as an AVN without music I guess. Maybe they'll go back and add music for the earlier chapters before steam release...

That said, yes, it's worth playing it... it might be one of the more complex AVNs I've played in terms of relationship paths and options, and the story is quite solid too.

 

[DaimonFey]

What other viable larger than 3 poly options are there?

There are none(my opinion) at least at the moment. I can see few relationships with 2 girls at once but that's all.

 

[acewinz]

Not gonna sugar coat it, the first 10 chapters or so are quite rough in terms of renders and animations, but it progressively gets better. I don't really understand the point of adding music as late as ch23, so consider this as an AVN without music I guess. Maybe they'll go back and add music for the earlier chapters before steam release...

That said, yes, it's worth playing it... it might be one of the more complex AVNs I've played in terms of relationship paths and options, and the story is quite solid too.

When we finish the game, we are going to update the earlier parts to the same quality of the final episodes. This includes music, sfx, later generation models, more animations etc. We just want to finish the game first rather than make the patreons pay for us to redo things they have already seen/paid for.

This also shouldn't take us as long as some games seem to take when they "revamp". Cheeky was smart enough to save the .duf files aka scene setups for nearly everything done in the game (only exception being some outside contracted work). So loading up the older work, updating the models or in some cases houses, and tweaking the render and re-rendering it shouldn't take that long, even for our game (plus not everything needs updating, some models and most scenes will stay the same).

In fact... When we were just testing how this would go, it was pretty smooth and as something of an easter egg and teaser... there are 5 images in the intro montage that are from that test, and include updated versions of earlier scenes that may make it to the final version, but are otherwise nowhere else in the actual game yet. I was actually kinda sad nobody seemed to notice or mention it to be honest.

 

[Jacowboy]

When we finish the game, we are going to update the earlier parts to the same quality of the final episodes. This includes music, sfx, later generation models, more animations etc. We just want to finish the game first rather than make the patreons pay for us to redo things they have already seen/paid for.

This also shouldn't take us as long as some games seem to take when they "revamp". Cheeky was smart enough to save the .duf files aka scene setups for nearly everything done in the game (only exception being some outside contracted work). So loading up the older work, updating the models or in some cases houses, and tweaking the render and re-rendering it shouldn't take that long, even for our game (plus not everything needs updating, some models and most scenes will stay the same).

In fact... When we were just testing how this would go, it was pretty smooth and as something of an easter egg and teaser... there are 5 images in the intro montage that are from that test, and include updated versions of earlier scenes that may make it to the final version, but are otherwise nowhere else in the actual game yet. I was actually kinda sad nobody seemed to notice or mention it to be honest.

Oh nice!!! All of that is great news! You guys might want to consider also redesigning the UI and maybe adding a gallery and that kind of thing, but it's really cool that some retroactive work is planned, the game deserves it.

Also, regarding the intro montage: sadly it crashed for me, so I didn't even see it (probably happened for a lot of people, hence the lack of feedback?) but I'll try to find a fix for it and give it a go! Thanks for the heads up!

 

[LionHeart 95]

When we finish the game, we are going to update the earlier parts to the same quality of the final episodes. This includes music, sfx, later generation models, more animations etc. We just want to finish the game first rather than make the patreons pay for us to redo things they have already seen/paid for.

This also shouldn't take us as long as some games seem to take when they "revamp". Cheeky was smart enough to save the .duf files aka scene setups for nearly everything done in the game (only exception being some outside contracted work). So loading up the older work, updating the models or in some cases houses, and tweaking the render and re-rendering it shouldn't take that long, even for our game (plus not everything needs updating, some models and most scenes will stay the same).

In fact... When we were just testing how this would go, it was pretty smooth and as something of an easter egg and teaser... there are 5 images in the intro montage that are from that test, and include updated versions of earlier scenes that may make it to the final version, but are otherwise nowhere else in the actual game yet. I was actually kinda sad nobody seemed to notice or mention it to be honest.

To be honest Acewinz ,I thought they were out of place images the only one that seemed liked it fit to the game was the last one with the Mc. was not sure it was beach house or a better first visit to Monica's home. the others seemed more like a green screen images that were like after the game Location shots. Especially Katie, not to be too critical but her face even seems pasted over an image of a old rendered model that was pasted on a greenscreen background. it might be because the olive oil bottle's are fake plastic images compared to your normal images how they all fit as if one scene not as overlays. so yea I noticed them but the easter egg for me failed. it would have been better of things to come, not redoes that change the visual so much from the past.

 

[acewinz]

To be honest Acewinz ,I thought they were out of place images the only one that seemed liked it fit to the game was the last one with the Mc. was not sure it was beach house or a better first visit to Monica's home. the others seemed more like a green screen images that were like after the game Location shots. Especially Katie, not to be too critical but her face even seems pasted over an image of a old rendered model that was pasted on a greenscreen background. it might be because the olive oil bottle's are fake plastic images compared to your normal images how they all fit as if one scene not as overlays. so yea I noticed them but the easter egg for me failed. it would have been better of things to come, not redoes that change the visual so much from the past.

I wouldn't be too quick to judge. I've seen a model of the new Monica house and it is a lot better than the old one.

 

[kino2]

so Bella is evil huh?

 

[babaex]

Was a bug in an old version. Been fixed awhile though. (although if you played after getting it without fixing, your a bit borked).


Yeah, the new renpy version broke some strange things we had to track down. Hot-fixed in our patreon version.

Sorry to bother but it seems that the new renpy version "misplaced" and broke old saves. What I mean is that the early episodes saves are loaded from different place not the saved moment and the middle episodes saves are completely broken for episode 23 (they cannot be loaded and traceback point at renpy/common/00action_file.rpy). Fortunately late episopodes saves are OK I mean around the foursome. I keep a lot of saves as some sort of gallery and at big decisions. If I may I have 2 questions:
If I "repair" the saves, will they be OK in the next episode if they are made without the patreon hotfix?
Any idea if the saves will be loadable in this episode if the hotfix is applied?

 

[Garrettino]

Anyone know where the song used in this game called "Bounce" is from?
Artist and other info etc....
1:35 in duration.

 

[Zerorox]

so Bella is evil huh?

Ofc not, MC's evil

 

[BillyPlums]

Ofc not, MC's evil

My MC is not evil, but all of those young hotties, and some MILFs kept trying to trick me into lending them my dick. My dick is reserved for MoMica and MoMica alone. [Insert Deity] on a crutch, with some of them, even beating them off with a club didn't work, but I remained true.

 

[JaxMan]

Finally made it to chpt 23.

Not sure if it was intentional or just a mix up because their names sound similar, but there's a quote in that chapter about "getting to know the real person by holding someone over a volcano" that you attribute to Sun Tzu, the Chinese author of "The Art of War". It is actually from the TV show Firefly attributed to Shan Yu the pychotic dictator and poet mentioned in one of the episodes.

 

[Zerorox]

My MC is not evil, but all of those young hotties, and some MILFs kept trying to trick me into lending them my dick. My dick is reserved for MoMica and MoMica alone. [Insert Deity] on a crutch, with some of them, even beating them off with a club didn't work, but I remained true.

I'm laughing... but for example in "Summer's gone" MC is really that way, only difference his dick is reserved to himself))

 

[indio68]

it's really really a pity MC can't be with all the family members Mom and the 2 daughters...dev should at least add this choice. it's heartbreaking have to choose from 1 of them... i would gladly give up to the inheritance to be with all of them. i fooled with all characters and now choose 1 and break heart to the other isn't fair..i would prefer not having the possibility to begin with instead if things are as are.

 

[zaqrwe]

it's really really a pity MC can't be with all the family members Mom and the 2 daughters...dev should at least add this choice. it's heartbreaking have to choose from 1 of them... i would gladly give up to the inheritance to be with all of them. i fooled with all characters and now choose 1 and break heart to the other isn't fair..i would prefer not having the possibility to begin with instead if things are as are.

We can't know for sure, but episode 23 was hinting on multiple partners very strongly. Like Kate and Jenna know about each other and Jenna is convincing her to share. And at least the previous 2 chapters were also hiting, just not by that much as latest one. EP23 was practicaly hitting me in the face with those possibilities Also, if after all of this, after 23 episodes of basically being able to fuck them all without consequences and multiple hints on polyamorous relationships, there really be only single choice in the end, I'm gonna be extremally dissapointed. It just wouldn't make sense.

 

[Deleted member 1701353]

is that a sandbox

 

[felicemastronzo]

Yeah, that's basically my question... but I'm hoping it'll be possible.

It's true that Jenna basically has no story beats with Lily/Debbie but they do know each other... Lily and Debbie are always at Monica's from what we've seen, and Jenna knows them quite well even if they don't hang together... so it's not as much of a stretch as say, I dunno, Angel or Wanda or the carnie chick joining that group out of nowhere. But I have to concede that it's more likely that Jenna ends up either in a throuple with Katie or with Jo.

However I don't see Katie accepting anyone else outside of the people she knows and loves, so that's Lily, Debbie, Jenna and Monica at most. She'd obviously never agree with Bella, Angel, Wanda, Natasha, etc... even with Jolene since she just doesn't even know her.

Speaking of Monica, I haven't romanced her, I've ignored the milfs so far, so I don't even know if you can romance her and the 2 daughters at the same time... something tells me that doesn't work, buuut who knows, it might be possible, has anyone tried?

they may know each other but they practically never talk about each other

how many times does Jenna mention Jolina? at every opportunity, even the least appropriate ones
How often does she mention Lily or Debbie? never.

while for example the "sexual" hints between Katie and Jenna have always been there, am so promising, but they had been there before

this could be a clue

then for charity if we find it under the tree at Christmas we will unwrap it