Ren'Py - Harvesting Corruption [v0.05] [JuicyGenieGames]

tl;dr: Heavy undisclosed use of AI, everything looks airbrushed like an ugly girl's Tinder profile. The only thing missing is an instagram dog filter on every girl.

I'm assuming there's a base made in Daz to design all the characters and pose all the scenes, but then for whatever reason it's got heavy AI filtering on top for worthless detail. The AI animations in the OP look extremely uncanny and are just plain garbage.

Seriously, get rid of the AI and it could be a compelling game. Right now it just looks like something someone made by prompting in Stable Diffusion for a few hours. And why would I play that when I can do it myself? Can't comment on how the game plays because I lost all interest after 5 minutes.

Very promising for an introductory release. The renders are really nice and the models are cute. They are clearly not made by an incel or some barely 20 something who thinks that all the characters must have ginormous asses and breasts and that everyone wants that. To each his or her own, but these models at least have some variety. They look really good.
The scenery and map are a bit different than what is saturating right now so that's fresh. The story is something the dev has obviously put some time and thought into because the writing is good, the grammar is right, and there are complete sentences. This sounds like a low standard but we all know that says a lot with these games. In addition, the story seems to have some direction that isn't too overdone and there is some creative writing too.
I saw some talk about bugs, but honestly, I didn't really come across anything other than incomplete things because it's a new release.
All in all, not too much to review but I am doing it at this phase because the dev seems to really care about what they are making and not for all the losers out here that just want to bitch about everything and pretend they are the internet gods of adult games. Also, the characters are cute, and it made me look forward to some more, so that is a good start in my book.

Edited for a spelling error.

This is what i imagine a game would look like before pre pre alpha. Skip any kind of text bam you're in the main menu. You click any location that's not ready(this has no indication that it's not ready) bam main menu. This has got to be one of the worst 1st release i have ever played.

It's like walking trough a minefield and one wrong click and progress is over you're in the main menu.

Excellent start, i can t wait to see next uptade
Corruption female MC games like this are awesome but this is especially high quality, looking forward to many future updates for this.
Good Luck with the rest of the game!

It's very early days for this game, but it's already making an impression on me. The main character Annika is my spirit animal and she had me at hello - I'm also weirdly attracted to the nerdy kid, Elliot. The dev has done a great job of building a believable world, and unique characters with their own quirks and personality traits - which is so important before we can enjoy anything naughty later on.

Absolutely love it! Can't wait to see where it goes.

v0.03

UI is incredibly awkward i.e. I finish in the cabin and go out, I click on another cabin and a message pops up it's coming in a future update, I am then immediately taken back to the main menu, making me at first believe that is it for content.
I rollback to cabin and explore, literally... The map needs a list of locations or something. I don't think it's just me that's tired of the hidden location markers that appear when hovering over.

Also after dinner scene I get a message that 'that' is the end of content for now and to enjoy free roam, again making me think there is no more to see... Is there?

Art is... Not my cup of tea, I think I'd have preferredthe images before PS and AI filters but idk.

Writing is... passable. Annika does not strike me as anything other than a stereotypical american girl and I've not seen much of the other characters to form an opinion.

Sound/Music... It's there

Story... We'll see I guess.

Not a great first playthrough for me imho. Having "dead ends" that take me back to the menu for clicking on works in progress instead of rolling back automatically just tricks me into thinking that the game has no content.

I don't want to use more time on it tbh, to see if there is more content like the changelog says there is.

I see a lot of potential in this first release

Pro's
Beautiful MC
Interesting Story
Nice polish to the Renpy's UI
Love the AI enhancement

Cons
Small first release
Sandbox but that's personal opinion

game simply doesnt work.

you have the starting intro, which is AI generated, which i dont mind. but it needs that tag.

then you get to the house, and the game opens up. cant click on anything, as its either "coming soon", or i get an exception when trying to sleep. so suffice to say legit all there is to this game is the bus intro. id of probably waited until you had something resembling a game

VERSION:0.1
SUMMARY: Interesting start, not sure yet what to expect, but going to keep an eye on it. Currently not enough here to bother with it IMO.
RATINGS: (out of 5):

1. Models: 4
2. Animations: 5
3. General Visuals: 4
4. Characters: 3
5. Story: 3
6. Writing: 4
7. UI & Gameplay: 2
8. Content (amount): 2
9. Sound & Music: 4
10. Fetish & kinks: 4 (potentially)

Average: 35 of 50 possible points giving a 70% rating i.e. 3-4 stars.

PROS:

1. Models look good, MC character is fairly good looking
2. Animations are very impressive, cinematics are good.
3. Overall visual and audio is pretty good.
4. Writing is decent and well structured
5. Voiced narrator, think its AI, but not bad at all. Intro cinematic confirmed AI use.
6. Choices seem to matter, but can't tell yet based on the little bit of content here at the moment.

CONS:

1. Characters are not really interesting (yet), at least the MC seems to come across as a bratty/slutty skank (my initial impression, choice based system may see that changes later) so I am not overly excited about the MC, apart from the fact that the player can kinda dictate what path she takes. *claps hands, fun times
2. Amount of content currently is very little, giving a decent review is difficult.
3. I am not too much of a fan of the placeholders for content that is not available, or even the save game placeholders.
4. No quick navigation options, another shit thing that I don't like about sandbox style VNs, sandbox by themselves are IMO highly annoying, but if you at least do it right to not be a pain in the ass for the player then great.
5. Game breaking bug for me early on trying to advance time or sleep. So can't progress (if there is anything beyond this point)

FINAL THOUGHTS & SUGGESTIONS:

• Not 100% which of the voiced sections are actually people and actually AI, could all be AI, as it doesn't have a professional feel to it, not that its horrible, but kinda amateurish by the sound of it, though I don't expect a Hollywood production either, just an observation, still well done considering...
• While the voiced narration is actually pretty good, its something that I do not particularly care for or need, its slower to listen than to just read and also I think I am bit too old for "story time". This is purely a gimmick and nice to have feature that emphasizes the uses of technology like AI etc, but doesn't add much value to the game IMO. You can mute this, but as mentioned, its just an extra feature.
• Clearly a good amount of tech, design and effort went into this games development, I am curious to see where the game goes, how often and what amount of content we can expect.
• I am no prude have pretty much seen it all, but the placeholders are to me personally a little in your face and portrays a "fuck you" attitude, which I would rather choose for my MC than have the developer choose for me. Not sure if I am making sense with this, but its kinda annoying to have 95% of the free roam throw you a fuck you sign when you click an option that not currently available.
• Very bare bones still, whats here is a framework that does not give the player much indication of what to expect, apart from the tags in the description. Honestly this is a poor release and should have been worked on longer to provide more and decent content to give a proper review and evaluation of the game and its quality. Disappointing, maybe come back in a few updates.