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

The mother is really well designed and her body, in my opinion, is incredible. For me, she looks like a real mother. Her tits....oh my God....and her full hairy bush...ohhhhh my God !!! I am in love ! Haha
The story is exceptional, a slow pace, but a lot of evolution in the proximity between characters. Like in the real life.
I really like the puzzles with the images of the game. Its make the game different from others that are really similar in incest story. It add something but you are not obliged to do them.
To be better, be faster on the new episodes, and a little bit more action in them. But action will come with time. Epic game.

Very compelling story and characters are very realistic. The pacing is pretty slow, but I would much prefer it slower than too fast. People may hate on the speed, but I'm always happy to see an update no matter how long or short it is.

This could have easily been the best Adult Game in the market. This could have easily bested the existing prominent games such as Dreams of Desire, Summertime Saga, etc but no. Gumdrop chose to approach his game in a tedious quest of trying to portray a believable incest story which he relatively fails at.

Dual Family has the BEST rendered images available in the market, THE BEST. The premise and its approach is outstanding. This game has so much potential. Sadly, it's ruined with:

1. God-awful story-telling. Misses key-points and beforehand information especially in the prologue. Why did the parents decided to separate?
2. Pacing and characterization. EVERYONE IS DEPRESSED. Mom never smiles for porn's sake.
3. Dialogue. One-dimensional characters: Mom's a bitch, son's horny, Dad has a consistent, confused boner.
4. Nude scenes available through horrible angles, dutch angles.
5. Progress, painstakingly slow.
6. Unnecessary fillers such as playing guitar, psychopathic projection through skeleton conversations.
7. Unrealistic approach to resolve a dispute through rape without justifying the reason why it's available as an option.
8. Scene inconsistency.
10. Transition of one scene to the next. It's either to abrupt, no build-up nor has any good content.
11. Abnormal amount of unnecessary frames where the player is forced to stare at furnitures and sceneries.
12. Developer's consistent failures to deliver and finish projects on time.
13. Developer's obvious milking business strategy by teasing players and painting their balls blue.
14. Inconsequential outcome from player's choices.
15. The only significant sexual contents are posed as dream sequences. What's worse is all of it are cliff-hangers.

To sum it all up, it virtually has no content. This is supposed to be an adult game, not an image construct from some horrible erotica.

I'm really disappointed, this game is one of the worst out there and the problem is that it is bad because of its virtues. The graphics are great, probably the best, and the story and dialogues well written BUT this obsession with dark, weird angles (like a 60s Polish film) although they can be erotic, after a few minutes of gameplay become frustrating. Actually I fell of my chair laughing with the niece's bj scene. Really? You create a game full of innuendos and little peeks and when you go to a sex scene you present us with shadows? Can someone be more pretentious? The story goes the same way, I'm sure the dev thinks he's the Tolstoy of porn games but actually he isn't. It makes me a little angry that people pay him good money to be conned every month with an update that will be full of bulshit dilogues and "artistic" blurry images.

I can't rate this better than 2 stars.
This game had so much potential, but then the dev became enamored with his own writing, thinking he was this brilliant portrayer of humans emotional struggle and forgot that his plan was to make an adult game.

It's getting harder each update to read through, as you spent another half hour per route on nothing happening, just endless emotional turmoil of characters that only think and talk and do nothing.


Edit: I had to change my rating to 1 star.
This game is the very definition of blueballs, but I would be willing to suffer that, if the story had any redeeming qualities, but it is a prime example for someone trying to write something beyond the scope of his abilities.

The quality of renders (weird angles notwithstanding doesn't make up for any of the failings anymore).

Dual Family had everything to be an excellent game, but ended up being a disappointment due to the development of the story and the lack of erotic content after several updates. The only good thing about this game is the proof that it is not enough to have a good idea and create good renderings if there is no content.

I'm surprised that after 8 months people continue to support this trash...

I like the body model for the mother and the dual story lines. It gives the game a good level of replay-ability. There's also a good mixture of different body types so there's something for most people.

The following review is based off my personal experience with playing this Game/Visual Novel... I try to be as brutally honest and detailed as I can, and these are my own opinions and thoughts, from one or more play throughs...

(01/03/2018 - Original Review - v0.91)

I have a lot to say about this visual novel/game... Please forgive this long review...

The visuals of the characters are excellent... The backdrops, for the most part are really good as well... I do wish that all the characters didn't always looked so darn depressed though... There are also some over-dark scenes, even though I understand they were probably meant to be that way... The save games screen is not bad, and I like how you can have separate saves for both sides of the story... Just wish going from one page to another was more obvious, as at first I couldn't figure it out, but I eventually did... Perhaps numbering the boxes might help... The camera angles, motion of other characters moving through scenes during the story telling, and lots of other fun and creative ideas were used in this Visual Novel/Game and I have to give two thumbs up for that...

The script for the most part had very few proofreading errors... I did see some misspelled words, missing words/names, and some text going off the edge of the text window, so you didn't see the whole sentence, but those moments happened more near the last few game days... This story is very much a member of the overly used Family Sex theme, even though not much actual sex really occurs in this VN/game... The story in this Visual Novel/Game is told from two separate points of view, the father protagonist and the son protagonist... But instead of being told together, they are told as two completely separate stories, yet following the same time line as one another...

The concept of seeing the story from two different angles, was a VERY creative idea... And for the most part, it seemed to work as intended... There were some moments now and then throughout the story, on both sides, where it seemed as though some story was missing or had jumped ahead slightly... I couldn't tell if it was a bug at first, but when I went back to replay those moments, they still persisted... They were nothing game breaking, but I felt some slight confusion when they did happen... I know it has got to be a monumental task to write the story from the two sides, and keep everything going smoothly without making either story feel like they had story holes...

I was hooked into the story of this VN/Game, as I'm a sucker for love stories... But it became clear after a long while, that this VN/Game is complex and a bit of a tease... You get a lot of dream sequences, and a lot of moments where some characters seem almost thrown at the protagonists, in attempts to sway them from the primary story, or at least to corrupt their path... Now do not get me wrong, the writing for the story is very good, and with all the creative elements for both the visuals as well as complex choice paths, it is fun for the most part... But I also felt like the author/s were taking the relationship growth between the protagonist and the characters, and making it sometimes unnecessarily long and drawn out... As an example, obviously the primary focus of the father story is his daughter... He keeps doing as much as he can, saying as much as he can, being teased by erotic dreams, etc, all centered on what appears to be romantic and/or sexual feelings, for his daughter... And yet no matter all that, there doesn't appear to be much in the way of reciprocation, of that same level of love and/or desire... It is all these other characters, that either seem to be instantly attracted to, or devilishly try to corrupt, the father, that keep being thrown into the mix, either as temptations or as distractions, in what feels like attempts to cause the fathers primary goal to fail and/or falter, if not just slow it down... Same kind of stuff happens on the son side...

This is only Act 1, and based on the version number it is almost done... And there is an epic amount of content already in this version, especially with it basically being two stories in one... With all the teasing of the main story, it makes all these distractions, hints at future story twists, and everything else just frustrate the hell out of you as the reader... And you can tell there are lots of teased story twists, like with the sister-in-law, she pretty much is either coming on to the daughter, with all her touching and fondling, or just teasing the father with how she knows about his true feelings, for his daughter... It's all the things like that, with all the sexual teasing, story teasing, and all this information overload with the side-story distractions, and other characters behavior towards the protagonists... It begins to distract from the main plot, and it just kept getting worse and worse... I really started to feel, that most of that stuff was just filler, without any real purpose other then to tease me into reading more, with out any end in site, or further story growth... No minor story resolutions, just dozens of these never ending small story lines following along side the main story...

Overall, even though I really love the creativity of this visual novel, and the story telling for the most part is awesome, there is just too much teasing, too many distractions, and so on... That I almost feel like this game's purpose, with all these side attractions, is to stop you from getting anywhere with the primary characters of each path, and keep it moving very slowly... Or at the least, to tempt you off the path, or at a minimum, they are just there to satisfy the erotic theme, and nothing else... It's hard to tell... And there is little meaningful progression, just lots of inner-monologue by the protagonists, dream teasing (sometimes the dream sequences were a bit misleading), story twists that didn't go anywhere (yet), and so on and so forth, that moved the story along at a snails pace, the further you get into the story... I can obviously tell where there is a lot of sub-plot teasing, or possible future content teasing... But as I said, not a huge amount of primary plot movement, for the protagonists and their primary focus characters...

How many Acts do we see for this VN/Game? Is it just a cash cow that's being milked for all it's worth? Will the story go in a fun and entertaining direction, or will we be strung along until suddenly the twists all come together into an epic fail, leaving us all very disappointed or worse, raging? I dunno... It's hard to tell at this point... But obviously Act one is nearing it's completion, so we'll have to wait and see what the future holds... Right now I feel kind of empty, strung along, with no idea where the story is really going...

(03/31/2018 - Review Update - v0.98 CE)

Well, it's been almost 3 months since I last played this visual novel/game, and since it finally had an update I decided to give it a revisit... To see if it's improved or not... There were a few spelling/grammar errors in the new content...

Again, the new content moves very slowly, with lots of pauses, which I assume the pauses are attempts at dramatic effect... But it really slows down the stories movement... It is already a very lengthy story for only being Act 1... It still feels like this entire VN/Game is just stringing the reader along, with content where the characters just do not evolve barely at all... Characters should always evolve over time, through new experiences, showing some sort of emotional/spiritual/behavioral growth and present themselves to the reader/player in both visuals and story text, as the story progresses... But this game still shows barely any growth at all, for most characters...

The daughter in this new content still acts like she's naïve, still acts like she has mixed inner thoughts, she shows very little sign of any actual feelings for the father protagonist outside of normal love for her daddy... The visuals over and over and over again in this new content tease that perhaps something might be about to happen, and then nothing... It shows some semi-sexy camera shots and/or angles but nothing really happens... It's one huge tease, trying to make it appear as though maybe something might be about to happen, and then nothing happens, at least not in any sexual way, not even lip to lip kissing, the most basic of love/romance/sexual desires... The only actual sexual content you get at all, with regards to the daughter and fathers possible growing love/romance is the fathers erotic dream sequences, yet again...

Then we come to the Aunt, as it appears she has feelings for the Father protagonist, but even when you select to not reciprocate her feelings, she takes advantage of him sexually in this new content... Even though the developers try to mask it somewhat with him having flashbacks of their original sexual escapades when they were younger... Regardless if he lets it happen or tries to leave, she has sex with him... We all know it happened... You can even see how she seems ashamed almost of what she's done (which was a nice visual tough), but still want's more from him, as she still is either in love with him or is infatuated with him... Who knows... But technically, the sex scene is then a covered up rape scene, if you selected to leave and she still goes after him... I began to wonder, was he either too drunk to remember or perhaps was he drugged? You only see him take like a few sips, and didn't talk all that long, so not sure how he might of been drunk enough for what happened...

Then we come to the Cousin/Niece... Based on choices, if you decide to keep trying to help her and even proclaim love for her over the daughter, she begins to come on to him... She has deep feelings for him and is jealous of the daughter... Even when she practically throws herself at him, after he's told her he loves her, still nothing happens... It's just another sexual teasing moment, just like practically everything else in this VN/Game...

I don't normally complain about sex content missing from a VN/Game, but this is supposed to be an Adult/Erotic Visual Novel/Game... There should be some consensual sex of some level at some point, here and there, usually with more as the story progresses... But a majority of this VN/Game is just dialogue/monologue/inner monologue/hundreds of pauses mixed with tons of visual teasing... And what I mean by visual teasing, is camera shots from various angles of either body shots, over head views of cleavage, shots of various body parts like leg shots or butt shots or chest shots (mostly when the character is clothed in some way), facial shots of primarily depressed or longing looks from the female character (there are rarely any smiles or signs of joy from any characters), overhead shots of the tops of characters heads when snuggling/hugging/cuddling, and so on and so forth...

It truly feels like these developers are just stringing us all along on a snails paced train ride through a beautiful green, forested mountain landscape, with rivers and lakes... But it's just a train ride, no stops, just watching but no touching... And you have to ask yourself, was this latest ride (newest version content) worth the $30,000.00+ ticket for 3 months worth of development?

Overall, even though the visuals are consistent and decent looking, I don't feel like there is all that much story/plot progression... Sure, some new things occur, but that doesn't mean the plot is moving all that much, or that characters are developing far beyond how they started as, or that the protagonists are getting all that much further then they were in the beginning... Perhaps a tiny little bit with the Cousin/Niece on the father story line, and that was just if you went with the choices that she was the one the protagonist loved the most and then decided to stay... Only then, does it feel like some progress MIGHT have actually been made with that character and the protagonist... But even then, it was again mostly just a tease...

When are we ever going to be truly rewarded for the time and effort of being strung along for such a long period of time with something other then yet another meaningless dream sequence, and a semi-forced sex scene you barely even get to experience, because it gets covered up by very dark flashback visuals? I'm very disappointed in how the developers are making it appear as though they are just milking their Patreon fan base for more DONATIONS to put out a snails pace story, filled mostly with lots of tease visuals, the occasional slight actual plot movement, rarely any real character development, way more meaningless pauses then I've ever seen in any other visual novel, and so on...

I do wish the developers the best of luck, and I'm sure that $10k a month means they can just keep doing what their doing and don't have to listen much to folks like myself or others, who have caught on to their money scheme... Somehow convincing those donating fans, that it's somehow worth the 10 thousand dollars a month, their dishing out... But I really feel like this is the sort of stuff that is one of the main contributors to why this industry has such an influx of low quality stuff, with newer developers just wanting to jump on the gold rush train, of subscription based patron websites... Will I revisit this VN/Game again? I really doubt it, as the insane number of story pauses and extremely slow plot/character growth is not improving with each update, so why bother...

Author seems to want to do the DMD thing, but the "getting to know you" bits between a father and daughter don't make sense if they spent the daughter's entire life living in the same house. If the daughter was going to be attracted to her Dad, it would have been when she hit puberty, not when she's close to 20.

It is pretty good. Even though I would have preferred to have one protagonist so the gameplay time is not cut by half I think I really like the characters. their models are pretty good and I think the writing of this game is pretty good too. The author does a good enough job to keep things going. Even though there are problems. mostly that sometimes the narrative is abrupted or your character falls asleep out of nowhere and enter a dream without it being made clear.

It's so sad that I have to give one star to one of the best milfs I specially waited from rating this thread to give him one more chance, and another... and the last update was...

The creator completely forget that this is adult game... The story is going to nowhere, it's even going backwards! From touching, spying and trying to kiss to just hugging.... MAYBE! This game will be playable for about 1-2 years, for now everyone should pass on it. ;(

By far the shittiest game i have ever played...this game has been in a standstill from the very first episode with its lacklustre updates, currently Act I - Part VIII rolled out and little to no adult content have been implemented. Its just an ocean of texts and some images once here and there to keep the players in the immersion that it is still an adult game but not a god damn erotica.

I like how blatantly the dev posts nude pinups of the fine ladies of the game when the game is far from reaching that point. Trust is the cornerstone of a healthy relationship between a dev and his audience, but this guy breaks it every month prior the release deadline he drops his usual infamous bomb called "DELAY". There has never been once when this guy delivered this game on time. I wonder what takes so much time for him compared to the other devs who are diligent enough to deliver on time each month, not that his game have any massive library of images, nor does the images particularly stick out to be very high quality renders. I don't know how after enduring all this bullshit and drama, he gets away with it without a scratch or backlash from his patrons is beyond my comprehension.

It baffles me even after all this atrocity, how GumdropGames is able to pull over 9k for this trash!

This game has decent art but that's it. The dev can never get an update on time and the characters have no real substance to them. This game could be good if the dev actually tried to deliver something and had some real passion for this project. There is no real development of the relationships which should exist between the mom and son, as well as between the father and daughter. The dev decided to remaster a game that has little content and puts more effort into making crappy puzzles than progressing the story.

Hopefully something will happen that causes this dev to take this seriously and change the trajectory of this game.

The pictures are beautiful is realistic, the breasts of the mother falls it is forty, next to the girl has the area of the teenager, it does not make hard cock, but it's fine anyway. The crossed story is too short. But what an odd thing to do to two parallel stories in the same game. With fewer disabilities, many authors do less well.

Dual Family is a game that could be but isn't, great concept with poor execution, decent writing with bad orientation...It's hard to explain, it's like a talented poet who doesn't know how to write & read. I skipped the game for months just to feel the change but there was none to notice, in it's current version 0.8 there is little hope that it will drastically improve but one can only hope it will end well for it's fanbase deserve that at least, Visually it isn't bad at all though the angles can be awkward sometimes, and that's the only thing that keeps this game floating at this point in my opinion, I would give it 2/5 but for it's uniqueness I'll add another star.

Played through both father & son thinking the holes in one questline would be filled by the other, but that was not the case.
Choices did not seem to matter at all, or at least never moved the relationship bar closer to romance with either mother/wife or sister/daughter.
The dual viewpoint is a good concept that is poorly executed ... and there ... is way ... too much ... of this ... between scenes ... which causes ... the player to ... miss dialogue ... because they ... are clicking ... to get ... through them.
Dialogue and characters are decent but not great, alot of needless, repetitive soul searching about morality. MC is conflicted...we get it.
Much better choices out there.

[v0.8--Father route played only, for now] Where the falls short on delivering pornography, it surprises with relatively good drama writing. Add on top good models and decent secret-finding mini-games, and seems good.

What do you call a porn game almost 7 months in with no porn? A VN? What do you call a VN with no plot? Trash.

Good looking renders but thats about it but only a couple of nudes a potential BJ which pretty much is rape and a game then penalizes you everytime you try and get handsy.

Here's some advice for Devs instead of creating games where the only good content is related to game overs or bad ends. How about creating games where you get content for you know saying the right things and otherwise the content is skipped.

I'm not sure when the developer actually plans on adding adult content, or if they intend to at all. Currently at version 0.8 and literally nothing happens.

The game is practically just dialogue and random shots of the characters.

No sexual content, no plot progression, no satisfying filler scenes, just a sequence of depressing conversations.

This game overrates its writing by thinking it can get away with merely decent dialogue which doesn't advance the plot or the relations between characters. It might have worked for the first few updates, but now it's just destroying the pacing of the game.

Lastly, the drama, which is basically the only content so far, is far too shallow right now. The personalities are also starting to become way too unrealistic with everyone lashing out at each other for the most trivial reasons (like an adult woman being reprimanded for dressing a little provocatively, or the father describing his niece as if she had eaten a baby alive for being a little more extroverted than his ultraconservative daughter, or the mom randomly being mad at the son, or the sister disliking the cousin for no reason either).