VN - Ren'Py - Completed - Freeloading Family [v0.32] [FFCreations]

Pros:
All the dialogue is well written.
The renders are great.
For most of the story, the characters are likeable.

Cons:
Hard to define this as a multimedia project. Little to no animation, no real interactivity beyond some small dialogue choices, and worst of all complete lack of sfx and music. Only one somber melody on repeat, and no sfx whatsoever.

The emotional killer:
The game could maybe scrape it's way into 4 stars if it wasn't for the ending of the game. The Leah ending is just awful.
Insane rant incoming:


And Leahs ending is just the worst offender. Is Karina's ending any better? Hell nah.


Finally, we have melody's ending. At the time of writing, I haven't even played it yet. I can't make myself suffer through another dissapointment. I probably will eventually, I've wasted this much time on the game already, so why not. Just not yet.

**Edit. Pulled myself together and played melody ending.

It's by a distance the best ending this far in my opinion, but could still be better.


The obvious choice of Alice and/or Harem isn't out yet. Not really holding out hope that it will be well done though.

The writers seem very good at writing dialogue, but clueless on writing the bigger-scope developments of characters and plot.

I don't know what else to say. TLDR: it's a decent game, but the ultra-disappointing endings, makes me wish I never invested the time.

Most of the game is really good. The pace is nice. There is always some action not too far away. I would have rated this higher if it wasn't for how the game fell apart after the MC's parents come home. Most of the action dries up and it just turns into a story with a quick wrap up on who you want to end up with and a future sex scene with that LI. Although the part where the son is telling the story to his dad is creepy. I do feel like there could have been a lot more content before the parents get home and the game suddenly ends. I was hoping for more action with the aunt. If it wasn't for how the game came to a conclusion I would have rated it higher.

Pretty good stuff! Likeable characters for the most part, all but one grew on me over the course of the game. Most character designs were pretty neat too! Many sweet and tender moments throughout the game. Definitely worth the time to check out! I don't have too many points to detract from the score.

The single piece in the soundtrack gets repetetive real fast to the point where it might as well have not been there at all.

It seemed, to me, that there is a few discrepancies between what goes on in the main story and in the endings. Characters in one ending talking about about a future problem that was already resolved in the main story and such. Not many of these issues though.

It is the fifth time that I have played this game since the beginning, but only now I decided to do a review.

Do you know what his biggest problem is? Moral choices are illusory, that is, no matter what you choose, 95% of the choices will keep exactly the same chain of events without relevant changes and with the only difference of showing or omitting scenes that do not impact the story as much in relation to the others opposite choices, honestly it makes everything suck, do you know why? It is as if I were reading a book, the only difference is that I decide some irrelevant things for the protagonist without almost impact until near the end, at the end of the game it is the only moment where choices matter. Besides, there is not much to be said, images "OK" and grammar "OK".

Below are my grade for each category (10 is grade max):

Graphics: 10;
History: 9;
Plot: 9;
Character development: 8.7;

Verdict: This game is practically finished and different from the defects I pointed out, it is good and I probably will not change this review anymore ... It is worth playing.

Came for the quality CGs, stayed for the feels. In seriousness, some of the best writing of any game I've played from this site; the characters are well-rounded and interact like people. My gripes are petty: There's a few typos that need another pass, Hailey is underutilized, and the framing device of the endings is an...odd, somewhat off-putting choice. Looking forward to seeing the last of the endings, and to more from these developers!

I'm really wanted to give this game a higher grade, but I can’t. It’s with a heavy heart that I’m rating as it is. It started great, but it fizzles off and slowly burns itself out

Graphically, the game has really nice renders, but wastes some potential on having too little images on sex scenes. There are some animations, but variety could really help spice things up.

The story is witty, with a lot of banter. While some interactions feel forced, they do smooth themselves as the writing even improves during the chapters.

That is, until halfway there the story was pretty nice, with cast having a good chemistry and character having their own quirks and oddities.

Sound wise, there are no SFX and only one (melancholic) song during the course of the whole game, on an eternal loop.

However, after a certain point, we start to get time skips; first from hours, but as the chapters go, these time skips began taking weeks and even spanning months.

After chapter 23+ or so, the pacing just takes a hard nose dive.

It feels like if the writers knew where they want to end up, but not how to get from point A to B.

So they inserted a time skips and announced “B!” in a confident tone, often following up with some vague comments about what had happened (mostly, not even that).



Quoting This Is Spinal Tap, “There is a fine line between clever and stupid”.

The introduction of the character mentioned on the spoilers above as well as the horrible framing device of the endings as it they are right now pushed this otherwise witty and funny VN sailing across that line quoted above.

I just hope the other pending endings can somehow salvage the mess that the latter parts of the game became.

-----

Addendum as of 20th of June, 2021:

Alice's ending has been released.

It didn't deliver.

Played this awhile back and stopped cuz i thought it would end soon, then I retry it again didn't know I was missing out on so much, I love it. I love the variety of woman and especially the incest. Good stuff. I'd pay for another like this

Actually that one was pretty good or awesome? I took enjoy from that game and waiting for updates in patience. I hope they complete the game in early time. But it can be more choicefull or more interactive. But still i love the game.

Two stars instead of one because it takes skill to fuck up this badly at the finish line.

No but really the game was fairly solid if a bit of a slow burn initially, hit all of my sweet spots. Then come the v0.20+ updates and you could tell he was getting tired of the game and wanted to finish it, but he still kept the quality okay. Then the endings came and it just became a clusterfuck, with only three (as far as most of us are aware) endings left I don't see how he salvages it. I don't think anything short of rewriting/expanding the endings (like how My Sister, My Roommate did) would make it better.

The strong point of this game is the writing. The whole story is not something very special and it has some inconsistencies and some gaps. Also some parts of the story I think that should be developed further. But aside of that the story is okay and better than many other games out there. Now if we go to text and dialogues, they are really very good. It is not exactly the same feeling as when you read an actual novel (especially a good one) but it is close to that or at least much closer than most of other adult VN I have played so far. Most of the games here have the "Visual Novel" tag but only few of them are actually worthy to have the "Novel" tag. Many devs are not even capable to make a decent writing. So if you are looking for an adult game with hot girls but you also want to experience some of the feeling of an actual novel then this game is definitely for you.

But I can't give 5 stars or even 4 stars because the game is not as good to the "Visual" part and I am not talking technically about the quality of the images that exist on the game. I am talking about the images or other elements that don't exist at all. I deduct 2 stars for the following 2 reasons:

1) There aren't any animations or any sounds. If we were back to 2016 this wouldn't be so much of a problem but as we are close to 2021 and so many games out there has animations and sounds I can't ignore it.

2) A lot of scenes don't have enough images. Although this problem is general, it is most annoying at the erotic/sex scenes. I will give an example with a sex scene with Melody but there are many other similar examples with other scenes. The whole scene with Melody had only 4 images. One image was a kiss on the mouth, the second was Melody being naked, the third was of MC putting his cock inside her and the final image was just Melody's face slapped by the MC. This was the last image of the sex scene but there were several text lines for this specific image. Sorry but when I read the following text lines (which I put at the spoiler below) I would expected more images and not just one image showing just Melody's face slapped by the MC's hand...

P.S. As a side note I would like to mention that the game's story is not a taboo story about brother-sister regardless if you are using the patch or not. Using the patch there are occasionally some references about brother-sister relationship between MC and Alice at the first 1/3 of the game but nothing else and it is not fit well with the story anyway. After the 1/3 of the game story there isn't any reference at all. So I wouldn't recommend to use the patch anyway.

As of v0.28

The game isn't what I'd call completely bad, but has some big problems.

First, the good points:
The renders are decent.
The characters start out pretty cliche, but do get fleshed out well with the progression.

The "whatever"
The writing could be better, some parts are just to long.
No real animations.
Actually a very restricted amount of fetishes covered.
Some minor story inconsistencies here and there.

The bad
Up until chapter 23 the story is solid. It has pacing problems and some obnoxious parts, but on the whole it's decent. After that, the story just takes a deep dive. I actually liked the idea, that I'll have to actually deal with the "yet another problem out of nowhere" and then... the deep dive turns in to a trip to the Mariana trench, setting shop there and then digging to see if it can beat the Soviets for the title - deepest hole on earth. Obvious decisions for the problem are ignored, you get no input on what's happening and then (fun times I tell you) you go to the ending.
One character gets completely ignored, the story arc for another one is just skipped. All development and player input is removed and you can just... pick the ending you like... literally.
I will play the next versions, but I doubt my opinion of the game will change much. Maybe if the harem route (when released and if actually feasible, since the game stomps you on the head about how it isn't, only for some girl to tell you "oh, no, it's perfectly fine, you can do it") would bump it to "playable" in my book.
Currently it's just one of the games that are "wasted potential" and "play only if you have nothing better to do" in my book. Sad, really, it was a really good game up until chapter 23.

Enjoyed this one. Story is very well done, renders are beautiful and its very engaging. Point system seems to work well (would be nice to be able to see a tracker for the points though).

Only downer is the sex scenes, not very well done, many of the girls do the same starfish scene with no attempt at change. No outfits, no change of position, almost all the sex scenes are on a bed, girl is starfished, and some text. How about some variety dev! Differnet scenes, positions, stockings, heels, heck a hat would be something different.

Endings are just being done so only a couple are really fleshed out. LOts of story which is nice, but blah at the ending. One wanting a relationship and a baby...poof lets do a test.. No build up, no fun trying to get preg...nope, just a ending storyline.

All and all, very nice game, epic throughout, kinda underwhelmed at the end and sex scenes really could use some work.

I'd lean only 3 stars since as the game has developed I've lost interest but then they go and do something like unlock the gallery for quick fap access and damn it would be great if more games did that.
If you haven't played it I'd say yeah give it a go, if you have played it but weren't super in to it that probably hasn't changed.
It's not a great game, it's not a bad game, it's an ok game with enough variety and features to warrant a bonus star.

One of my favourite games! Amazing render and character design with interesting story. I have to say I really like all the girls in this game and with all the distinct personalities they have! One of, if not the best fap material.

Guy coming to a school where all females are sex demons and want to fuck him ... boooooooo~ooooring.
Graphics are so so (not that it's important to me) ... I really want to try to say something positve about this game, but ... HEY: it's for free!
Still, maybe the only good thing is that there are even worse games out there. That results in an additional star.

<Boring_personal_story>

There was this new fantasy author in the 80's and I picked up his first book when it came out.

It was... okay. It had all the common tropes of the time, but that's really all it had. It wasn't bad, just not that inspiring. I read the book because I was voracious and I had pretty much read everything else that may have sparked my interest. It helped that it claimed to be the first book in a five book series so I would have more to come, but I didn't expect much.

Well, the next book came out, and the next book, and I got this amazing insight watching a decent writer become... fantastic. Now I'm a huge fan.

The author is David Eddings by the way...

</Boring_personal_story>

This has been my journey with Freeloading Family. It's a near-complete story of 27 chapters (only one of several endings written at the time of this review). This is several hours of content.

WARNING: I make many assumptions about this based upon my impreessions and any facts I get wrong is my own damned fault.

The first couple of chapters are... pretty pedestrian. They hit a bunch of the basic tropes and immediately jump into what can only be described as a "shock jock" style of adult VN concerned more with titilation than story.

So... something I'm generally not interested in. YMMV, but I like immersion above all.

Still, after (many) false starts, I finally just bit the bullet and played through. What I discovered surprised me.

It's a slice-of-life novel, but I don't think that was how it was planned at the beginning... again, this may make or break something for you but I have had good experiences with these. It's not the only plan that seems to have shifted over the course of the story as the actual gameplay and point mechanics seemed to wander all over the place as well.

The thing is, the writing just kept getting better. The version I have let me watch the author really grow and it turns out that this had an unexpected side effect of making this story all the more intriguing.

By the time I got to the end game, I really cared about the characters and genuinely wanted to finish every possible outcome. The one I have was... unexpected. It's a "good" ending, but it plays out true to the character so it doesn't actually feel like it is good until you get the full conclusion. This made it much more satisfying. No more simple tropes of "let's throw in a dozen sex scenes and call it a night" endings.

Of course, I could be totally wrong. Everything may have been written years ago all at once. Maybe I was just too damned jaded at the beginning.

If I am not wrong however, these earlier versions may one day be collectors items if the writer decides to re-edit the beginning chapters to make something like a triple-A game here. I kinda don't know how I feel about that.

Right or wrong, it does suggest that I need to get over my initial hangups with some games, and if anyone else feels as I did about starting this game... just give it a real try.

Now, I eagerly await the release of every path. I wonder if any of the rest can match the bittersweet conclusion of the first.

Writing is off the charts awesome! Seriously, there were times I laughed so hard, I spilled my coffee!
Character development is good, sometimes seemed a bit rushed, but c'est la vie. Rushed thought they may be, they are truly unique individuals, and it's easy to become attached to them as they make you laugh and cry with them (Mel is by far my favorite - her attitude towards life is amazing).
The girls are sexy as hell, too, so there's that.
Overall, one of my favorite games out there.

Really amazing game!

The models and renders in general look really good in this game. The story is solid and that's mainly because of the variety in the characters that you get to know in this game, they all have very unique personalities.

The only thing negative I have to say about this game is the lack of animations, with animations I feel like this game would be up there with the best. 7/10.

story is weak
sex scenes boring asf
graphics are mediocre

i would suggest if you dont have any other game to play.

My scoring was based on this :
Pros :
+ Graphics ( its neutral but i had to find pro )

Cons :
+Story (weak)
+ sex scenes
+ unrealistic characters ( even more unrealistic than average adult game)

Point : 2/5

It builds nice. Theres a lot of text. Other games do better supporting text with images. It has 20 chapters in my opinion that are worth playing. Once everything is settled nothing changes much and theres nothing really new or exciting.
I would say 4 of 5 until the beach event, and 1 of 5 after that, in the current 0.27