VN - Ren'Py - Dual Family [v1.22.1ce] [Gumdrop Games]

This is a rating for the overall game - parts 1 and 2. Starts well, but loses its way and becomes rather incoherent. A shame as the characters are quite nice (as in both nice-looking, and people you could care about).

Would like to see this shelved, then rebooted, keeping the best parts of the original but with a bit of rigour applied to the narrative structure.

Wow, I feel like this should be 2 different pages and requires 2 full reviews...

I quite like PART 1, it is very very very slow burn and quite the teaser. The general idea is quite cool though, where you can play 2 story lines with a 'general' overlapping story but where you'll see 2 sides of the same coin. Very cool.

Models are alright for a game that started out some years ago.
The free roam is OK, never really my thing anyway, but seems unnecessary to me. Anyway, doesn't disturb either...

Overall, I'd say to try it out,.

Now for 'PART 2'... Not sure what the dev was thinking there... It looks to me like a development environment where dev is practicing his animations. The 'story', if you could call it that at this point, is very unclear to me. To the point that I'm not sure if this is some kind of side-story or if this is really part 2, following the main game.

There is music in this part, and to be fair, the animations are top notch, but a bit worthless at this moment. Since it's full of animations, the game is also over 6 GB.

In my opinion, part 2 should be restarted. Nonetheless, I think most of the animations can be salvaged, not sure about the ones of the island and planes and sh*t though...
It started out a VN and now became a sandbox type of game, I personally prefer a VN though not sure the patreon community agrees with that...

I still give 4 stars because I liked part 1, I'll just pretend part 2 doesn't exist.

PS: @Dev, stop teasing and start the game where you left the previous one off!

Love the game!

But its biggest problem is the lack of save slots, making very hard to play aka making decisions according to the time of playtime, it's such a shame the story and writing is top notch!

Please make a bigger save slot! It's required ASAP
Thank you and hope your endeavor is successful and give you monetary stability!

I've started this game for both sides (Dad and Son), and did not manage to properly read through neither of those. At some point I was just spamming enter or LMB to just proceed further and see what's there in the end (nothing).

What's good?
- models.
- some scenes (if you are lucky to encounter any).
- setting as is and (still) a huge room for improvement.

Disappointments:
- Slow burn beyond any reasonable limits. If you are looking for some good actions and sexual intercourses, this game is not about it. You will fall asleep before you see at least a nude pair of tits or a naked ass.
- Literally walls of text you cannot even skip. It's not a bad thing itself, but literally hours of endless reading between something relatively close to sex scenes, in a porn VN? Lmao.
- For the game which is strongly biased to plot and drama, dialogues and progression are ridiculously lame. Scenes end selves at some random point, characters speak to you about things you did not actually do (like they were meant as a reference to some missed scene), there is no common sense in how affection meter moves forward (I mean, some scenes should be boosting it but they do not, and vice versa).
this results in what happened to me several times I tried to play this - at some point you just lose the grasp of what's going on in the game, as plot twists to the state of random episodes very remotedly connected to each other.
- From the affection bar filling trials I can tell the bitter truth - you either go for a designated end and see almost no sex scenes, or go for sex scenes, but completely ruin and twist the plot. Which means the VN can be either a sequence of random sex scenes with plot and affection completely ruined and not important, and nothing in the end, or a long, steadily annoying, unskippable reading with almost no action, and yes - nothing in the end! Reminds me of Freeloading family a little, they have that 26th update which ruined all the hard successful previous work, except this game is different to the worse - it does not really have much to be ruined, but still dissolves even that tiny trace of excitement you might be having from all those seldom, often pretty half-assed intimate actions.

I do not say this VN is beyond fixing, but it needs a truly grand polishing and remodelling to become seriously appealing. As it is now, the game has a really great potential, but without it being properly arranged the game is very inconsistent and poorly tuned.

Idk, maybe I'll try it one prolly last time after some updates or it being finished eventually, for now, I think I will find more gameplay-balanced and entertaining ones.

Cannot recomment it to anyone at the current state it is now, unless you like reading some random porn-related stories...

Marked with 2 stars for really nice models, good animations (they are present, just very rare to encounter) and author actually trying to make this game work. Too bad his trying was absolutely not enough to make a good use of the great potential the game still has. Good luck to him to rething and remake (or not).

This game may feel like a cock tease and isn't for everyone, but if you like soap opras then you'll love this.

The game starts off really slow and is very dialogue heavy. It has somewhat cliche games to receive rather tame hidden items, but it is very clear that the intent of the game is to tell a story, and I think they achieve this goal quite splendedly.

This is for those that enjoy the journey and don't care about the destination.

I really love this game, 9/10...The gameplay is quite unique and the female arts (especially milf) are so hot beautiful. Eagerly waiting for part 2 and hope have more erotic story and art. The 3 mini games came right after dual family part 1 and unable to skip unread dialogs, is kinda let down. Hope wont be the same for part 2. Overall, the creator did some great job. Hats off dude!!!

This part 2 is an absolute waste of bandwith and time. Cleaning up dog poo is more entertaining then having to sit trough this mess. It's not even a game anymore nor a VN. It's just random scenes clustered together with no rhyme or rythm.

At least part 1 had some story going for it with proper english sentences.

Chapter I-X was good. A well made story with beautiful renders that promised interesting developments.
Then Part 2 came and the acid dropped. While it is fascinating to see what it has become in a certain sense, as some avant garde art piece, it is not a 'game' any longer.
It is not really a VN either, just a collection of seemingly lweird-effort cg's and animations skirting nudity to focus on an abstract representation of emotional trauma.

If that's your thing, dive in. Otherwise give it a pass.

Random scenes without logical link. Without a story, it's just porn pictures and there are many better porn pictures than those here. Don't waste your team "playing" this. It's not a game and it shouldn't be continued nor trapping new players. Let it die.

One of the worst games I have played here and that is saying something. The plot makes absolutely no sense and there is almost 0 content . This game has gone on for years. The renders are ok-ish but most of them are random images of everyday stuff and not actually from any sexual content...

not entirely sure what this is supposed to be...some modern art kind of thing? a showreel showing off 3d planes?
A drug infused tripping thing?

is this supposed to be a game or some student modern art film?

I think this needs to be a bit more defined as to what this is supposed to be.

Pros:

• Good models
• Slow burn story
• Love the concept of playing the story from two different perspectives

Cons:

• Story is so "slow burn" that I played for over 6 hours without encountering a single sex scene.
• Some scenes just... end? Example: Your daughter says that she needs to tell you something. You ask her what's wrong. She responds "I... I'm..." and then BOOM, new scene, new setting. Crap like this happens a lot.
• Game breaks its own rules. Example: There's a stat for Relationship Status. It starts on "Platonic." Cool. Except one character is so full of lust for you that she literally sexually assaults you every single time she sees you and her status is also set to "Platonic." What's the point of introducing a mechanic that the game doesn't even use?
• Game is very very long and very very slow. Like I said above, I went through six full hours of it before giving up without encountering a single sex scene. So why is this bullet point different than the first Con bullet point? Because there is no skip function. Holding down Ctrl does nothing. You have to click through every. God. Damned. Scene. Of. Dialogue.
• Dream sequences are a hacky overused trope. If you have written a dream sequence within the last 30 years, you are a bad writer. Full stop, bar none. Dream sequences in fiction are a crutch for writers who are incapable of showing subconscious desire through literally any other method. I am so sick of them that from this point forward I will deduct a full star from any game that uses dream sequences as a plot device.

it's just terrible, once it was a top game, and now the delirium of a drug addict ((At least someone serious took up its continuation. mom's model turned out great.. and the style of playing for two is interesting!

This game oozes pretentiousness and endlessly eludes to a pay off that after hours of playing never comes. It's just never ending "psychological" navel gazing. The dev's idea of an adult game is essays on philosophy from a first year college student with occasional blurry tits in the background. and apparently it took YEARS and tens of thousands to come to this point, what a colossal waste of my time.

EDIT It used to be my opinion that Part 1 was a potentially great game being dragged down by being linked to Part 2.

But with the last series of updates it seems that the creator of the game seems intent in turning it into the same nonsensical weirdness of Part 2. Perhaps they are trying to address just how destructive something like incest can be in real life, but doing this is what started out as a fairly promising sex game (and it is still described as such here and elsewhere as one) really seems at the very least bait and switch.

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

Part I of game has huge potential. It has an engrossing, slow burn story with a slightly off kilter atmosphere (both of which are things I love). Sometimes you want the characters to jump into bed almost immediately, but I've always found a slow burn more satisfying. And the multiple viewpoint concept is handled very well

The husband and son characters feel a bit blank slate but they at least have well established back stories. The mother and daughter are fleshed out better, the mother best IMO, she really feels like someone stuck in a loveless marriage. Generally speaking the writing for Part I is pretty good for an adult visual novel

The character designs feel a quite realistic the mother especially, she looks and feels like a housewife in her early 40's with a troubled marriage. The other important characters are less unique, but not generic DAZ at least.

However the environments feel a bit generic DAZ 3D store content.

Unlike some I have had no issues with highly customised UI this uses, it's still possible to use most of the familiar features of RenPy .

However to talk about this game, you have to mention Part II. Part II, is just weird,. It feels like an interactive art project that just happens to share a name, some assests and a few characters with Part I.

The other problem with this game is the slow rate of progress on Part I The creator definitely seems more interested in Part 2 and for a while it seemed that he had abandoned Part I and only fairly recently started paying attention to Part 1 again. IMO it would have been far better to not attempt to link this to Part I and develop it as a totally separate project.

Separately, Part I is probably 4 to 4 1/2 out of 5, Part II however as an AVN, is unfortunately is only a 1/2. In its own right as one of those art games over on Itch.io it would probably be worth more.

ED more thoughts, spelling

Simply horrible in every points of view.
1) Luck of sex scenes
2) Long dialogs you can't skip.
3)Greedy Dev who love to milk people.
4)Unconfortable interface.
5)ITo many bus n his to long history .
This game had a lot of potential, all wasted becasuse the greedy dev.

UX is nearly impossible to understand, and just like the 1st part there's practically no sex. The mother and the niece's hair is all kinds of ugly. It'd be nice if the VN patterned its user interface after a standard Ren'py VN instead of creating some whole new "Paintings that don't mean anything out in a field arranged around a tree" metaphor.

As of v1.0.4ce (daughter route), I am so disappointed with this game. After 2 years of no update, the dev returned and released this update. So I expected at least a descent amount of new content.

There is not much new content except for meaningless roaming, irrelevant thoughts, and dreaming. I could understand this kind of update if this was early update of the game but it doesn't make any sense at v1.0.4. It's just pathetic for dev to bring up dreaming again without any actual LI relationship progress, not to mention no sexual activity, at this phase of the story. Its 3D arts look OK as before, but after 2 years, I have seen games with a lot better arts. But the writing is really bad and didn't improve at all. I am not sure how much I could tolerate with so frequent "..." and unfinished sentences.

I lost my hope in this game. If dev still considers his fans as teasing target to earn quick money, he will see the results of his mistakes soon, if not already.

This game has had a real troubled development cycle.

I personally don't know much about the lore behind who fucked over who and how long this game has been on hiatus for either.

What I can say truthfully, is that part 2 is trippy as fuck and is what I can only describe as a Lynchian deconstruction of the incest renpy narrative tropes in a really creative manner.

At this point, the game series feels more like an interactive art piece.

For those looking for porn, you will probably not find what you are looking for.

If you are looking for a wild experience that will leave you honestly wanting to see whats next, this is for you.

Even the comic has more action than the part one of this game, don't bother.
And Part 2 must be awesome if you're super high because that's a colorful trip.
Other than that both games are a waste of time.