VN - Ren'Py - Abandoned - The Intoxicating Flavor [v0.10.6] [PixelsLab]

I am not a big fan of supernatural/fantasy VNs, but this game has one of the most engaging stories out there. Sadly the game is not getting the attention it deserves. Hopefully the dev will be able to continue working on the game and receives more support from us to enable him to do that.

What can I say?

Good story, good animations and art. different body types and personalities.

The choices dont seem to mean much, but that could be due to it being half done.

The copywrited music issue could be addressed with an external link to youtube or something, to get around it being tied to the game.

I cant really review it without spoilers easily

Cant wait for updates. Thanks for sharing your hard work.

Version reviewed: 0.5.6
Mods used: 'Grammar Fix' by Fattrapper

Overall Impression: I'm sorry, I don't do impressions... my training is in psychiatry. No, really. Play this game. Now.

Art: Sets are well done without being over-done. Or under-done. Or over-under. OK, I'll stop now.

The models: They fit their story. That might sound strange or contrived, but the MC is better than a lot that I have seen. He is packing serious heat, but at least he doesn't look like he was cross-bred with a horse.
-Alice is bordering on FBI-involvement territory, but it fits her backstory.
-As a MILF-lover Maria is a personal favorite, but I could never see myself turning down any girl from this game...except Alice...maybe. Excuse me while I look for any unmarked vans parked outside...

Story: I love a good story, and this is a great one. When I play a VN like this, I write a diary-type summary (from the MC's point of view) in a Notepad file. It helps me keep characters, story, and plot points straight. And that helped me a lot here.
-I will try to play this again without the mod to see why it was needed in the first place. There were occasional missing words, and places where changing a few words around would have made a sentence much more clear. However given the sheer volume of exposition and dialogue in this story it was bound to happen.
Save often in this game, especially when given a choice. (good advice in any VN)

Humble suggestions(i.e. things I'm arrogant enough to think I could do better):
1) Have a way to show the love/fetish points each character has. (in the upper corner of the screen or maybe show them at the end of each chapter)
2) I almost want to say better/different sex scenes, but that would mean a major overhaul or much bigger downloads. These scenes are already better than most I have seen.

The game is very interesting. The character models are pretty good and the story between the characters is definitely the game's strong suit. The dialogue is a hit or miss - sometimes it's excellent, sometimes it's strange because of grammatical and spelling choices. Overall, I recommend it.

P.S. Katie is best girl and we all know it.

The MC has some flaws for sure, but I've played with far more annoying MCs than him. So he is not unbearable I think.
Also he is the main reason of story, I mean he could be just a perfect nice guy but we won't have this story at that time, right?
Nice renders, interesting story, good dialogues. Characters are pretty good too. Story flows very well, I didn't hit the TAB button in a game after very long time...
Highly recommended.

This is a great VN, At first when i tried the game many moons back, I didn't understand a word. Now though, and after I installed the grammar fix on the OP it is fine. Still not perfect English but much much better than it was. The renders and models are nice, but the animations are a little basic and I'm not really a fan of the sound effects, they sound a bit cheap to me so i turned them off.. no biggie though, it is still in development after all. The reason i have given this five stars though is that even with it's faults, it is still a great read. The story is great once it gets going, a little confusing at first, but i like that, it makes me keep reading until I'm no longer confused. My Favourite part of the writing though is the characters and the dialogue.. Clever, funny, deep and addictive. Cant wait to see and read more. Keep up good work PixelsLab but maybe get a proof reader so we don't have to rely on Mods to fix things.

The game brings intoxicating flavor in several forms, so the player can choose which character of LIs corresponds to his tastes.

VN has a unique setting. While in the beginning, most things seem normal, the mysterious background of the island where the story takes place gradually comes to the surface. As part of the gradual unraveling of mysteries, we get to know pice by piece the story arc of all the inhabitants of the island (MC and three women).

The renders is very beautiful, as are the characters we meet on the island. The narrative is also engaging.
Sexual content is slow burn. Respectively, it is more of an adult VN with a quality story than just a porn game.

So this is my updated review of this VN. July of 2022
I dropped it from 5 stars to 3.

PROS
Renders are good

CONS
Story has now become stale
Updates are so small that it's not even interesting any more

Overall
I originally gave this VN a 5 star rating because it was really interesting and the renders, models and story were great. My first review was almost 2 years ago, and I see that this VN is still dragging along. Probably has a lot to do with the dev(s) dropping 10 minute updates every couple of months. Which in my opinion have killed this completely for me.
Look, I know that creating VNs is very time consuming and hard work, but after being around for so long it should have been completed.

My thoughts are this.
Give us more than 10 minutes of an update when releasing them.
This story should have been completed forever ago. I reviewed this VN back in August of 2020, and I'm sure I did that after a few updates already in place.
I'm going to have to skip this one from now on. It's just not worth waiting for the updates any longer. They are to short to be worth the download at this point.
I get the idea of quality over quantity, but that is easily solved with pushing the updates to longer time frames to give us the best content when they are finally dropped.

Great Storytelling with amazing sex scenes. Story is rich and amazing. English is slightly broken but is still understandable. Updates are frequent so there is plenty of new bits every now and then. Can't wait for the end. Kudos to the dev

Honestly I really tried to get into this game,but I can't.
I stopped playing at the beginning of chapter 3 (see Cons as to why)

Pros:
1) Story seems intriguing,not the usual cup of tea.
2) Models.Well...all look good except the little girl.
3) Intercourse scenes are acceptable
4) Background images are good


Cons:
1) Quite many misspellings which are a bit irritable to read. ( Ex: "You was" instead of You were )
2) Model:Little girl (default name - Alice). She has the body of a 13 years old girl and the player is forced to see her naked which is a big turnoff.No thanks,not my thing.


It has potential untapped,but so far that's about it.

I love and hate this game at same time. There is a cool story and nice renders but with too much mystery about it (u know almost nothing at 1st and often think wtf is happening there) and lack of sex scenes. It's runs with very slow pace that can be tolerated at 1st but after months or even years of development it feels like some santa barbara soap opera where maybe only your grandchildren will see the final version and I think even developer don't know how it wiil end... Gave 4 stars in advance but for me it's like 3.5 max.

A story that is engrossing, adventurous and amazing. Hot visuals, Hot characters and hot sex scenes. One of those games where the story is better than the sex scenes. The issues that I have with the game are sometimes incorrect text (I know the developer is Russian but to be honest the mistakes in text did not hamper my story experience) and finally the speed of updates (Since this is an underrated game that still need the equal amount of support for this artistic game hence it causes the sole developer to push the updates slower). Please rate this game and pay support to PixelsLab for this amazing game. Be a Patron!

One of the best VN's I've played in quite awhile. The graphics are great and the storyline is one of the better ones I've seen. It would be nice if there were more animations. Hopefully the MC builds more relationships with the 2 sisters. It's refreshing to play a game where you don't get the sex scenes 5 minutes into the game like a lot of VN's out there. Devs use those to suck people into the game and then after playing 20 to 30 minutes you just get bored with the story. I hope that more women come to the island, but not too many. Too many characters makes the storyline confusing a lot of times and can become distracting of the overall picture of the game.

EDIT: After playing the current version I feel I have to lower the rating to a 3.5 star rating. Not because of the overall story of the game because of what seems a lack of effort to fix the grammar and spelling of the dialogue. It's still a huge mess that needs to be addressed by the dev. It's nothing personal against PixelsLab, but it's a major turnoff when playing a VN. Another issue is the lack of decent animations. Most seem just a few seconds loop during intimate situations such as Alice "playing" with herself. They could be so much better that could make this game a 5 star game again.

When MC went to fight i hoped he would be a normal guy but then right from the first conversation with a woman MC shows hes a sub and later he becomes a super sub doing every command like a dog told to bark.

The writing is not thought out, after that the writing always leans with a choice(when you finally get one) but only one choice so if you pick the other it still goes on as if you picked the one choice.

Standard female charaters, sex starved mom, the one who hates MC(but not really) and the shy one, all of which have just been told they have been left on an island with someone else who has been forced to stay and none of them have any worry in the slightest, WTF.

Why have us click on single choices over and over again, the whole chapter 1 clicking on stuff but only one choice(which didnt matter), honestly it seems like half the game is missing, the half where MC is not a total sub.

Dont bother rejecting or not going for a scene with the girls because either way you cant reject them so just assume the only answer to the "choices" is yes as the no's dont matter.

The game runs well no rollback errors, there are a few spelling errors and some name errors but nothing major.

The art is very well done both the charaters and the backrounds.

Sex scenes are good not too long and not too short but have nothing to do with the story.

After awhile the writing does get a little better especially the interaction between the sisters but MC quickly turns into a white knight.

After the katie incident there is no guy that would want to be or willing to risk being around those women ever again, so to have him being intimate with another one the same night and then not only spend time with katie alone the next day but to be friends again and still consider any romance after just a sorry is just the worst writing i have ever seen in a game anywhere.

There is nothing to make this game stand out, standard boring white knight MC, same old type of girls, almost no choices at all, loads and loads of text with very little progression.

Update 0.5.2
Engaging story, I comprehend the firsts reviews raging about the plot, people are used to more direct approachs in this kind of games, and mostly don't have patience to put piece by piece in a big puzzle, we didnt have enough pieces at the begining to get what was coming
I love unwrapping the story, detail after detail, knowing there's something bigger to find out later. Developer really needs to go back and fix the grammar issues at the beggining. It gets a way better later in the latest updates, kudos for that, but in order to get more pledges should take time to go back and fix those.
Renders are really great, one of my top five for sure around the site , videos are good, there's room for improvement thought, sound effects and music adds a lot too.
The Characters are complex and "feels" real with all their flaws. The MC is a "mature kid", with all his douchbagness (is that a word) but seemenly trying to do the right things, whatever his motivations are (yet to find). Got a love/hate feeling with him but kind of can be related with him after we started knowing his background.
Everything have been improving lately, give it another shot if you havent played it lately.
I think this will be a good game, worth the pledge in my opinion.
This game is not for those looking for a fast "release", on the contrary, this game is more for those looking for a complex story with great sexy bonus.
recommended
Looking forward to whats next.

Not gonna talk about sex and woman characters here. I read only for the story. And here this is one of games which i not only not skipping text. I even reread it. I don't know what happens next, can't predict shit.
I just hope that dev will end it.

While I do play adult Ren'Py games for the usual purpose of having a good time physically and mentally, I do like games where characters don't jump at the MC's cock because he has a big one or just for no reason. This game has that animal attraction between characters, but it's based on their interactions and events bringing them together. While I'm sure everyone's delighted with the speculative elements and the depth of the story and the hint of something big brewing up under the surface just desperate to blast out (heh), it's the human elements that set this game apart from most others I have played. The dev seems to have a good plot in mind, and while I know how things can get difficult when you have such an intricate web of events, I hope they can ensure to tie all the hanging threads in the plot so far and give this story the kind of appearance they have in mind, and which we all would LOVE to see!


While the story and the idea of being something other than porn labelled as a game are amazing here, I quite like the renders as well.

I have a tendency to ramble so i'll try keeping short mostly because I haven't played the game from the beginning in quite some time and want to review the story more than any other aspect.

First of (quickly), the renders are very nice, the animations too. Nothing out of the ordinary but very much amongst the better ones. There's plenty of content (not too much fapping material though but who plays explicit VN's for that?)

The last review I wrote (on another post) started with me saying I wanted more content faster which might seem like it has no place in a review (Reviewing Rules <3) but it's meant as a compliment regarding story telling.
v0.5.2 : Now if I remember correctly the game starts of quite unoriginally and though I enjoy mind control especially the way it's presented here, that dies out quickly. (again haven't started over in a long time, i'll play it through again soon)
PixelsLab seems to have changed his plans on the way and before long the story becomes more complex and and more interesting the characters develop much more personality as the story gains traction.
It's the kind of VN where the story telling is pretty well-done and thought out maybe even to too high a degree. Very much to the point of feeling like nothing changes, since it takes forever for the story to advance (devil being in the details, which I love don't misunderstand).
But VN's written this way often finish abruptly because the effort and time spent by the developer become too much for them.
Alright this got longer and darker than I wanted... It really is a great game, noteveryone will love it but I do!

This game gets two stars for the remarkably well done renders and zero for everything else. The entire game is overly complex in an attempt to be profound or clever. It is neither of those things. If the developer had stuck with what they had in the first chapter and let that evolve I would have been excited. The idea of a MC who is on an empty island and then 3 women showing up, how they interact, the secrets they share, the mystery behind it all - that would have kept my attention. Unfortunately that is more or less abandoned for dream sequences, flashbacks, and more. I got through 2 chapters and didn't give a fuck to read more of the "engrish" profundity.

Pros: Well done renders, first chapter is very promising

Cons: Engrish, boring and overly convoluted plot, unlikable characters.

**NOT QUITE SURE WHAT I JUST PLAYED...BUT IT WASN'T "GOOD"**

So I actually must of had this game on my que list for maybe idk..almost 2 years now maybe? You know, one of those games you notice pop up on the update list that has solid screenshots, tags you like, and a bunch of glowing reviews to stick out. So you bookmark it, and then just continually pick something else out of the that que everytime you decide on a download.

Well, today was the day it finally came out a que winner, and it seemed my subconcious telling me to keep passing it over was right the entire time.

For starters, for all glowing reviews about what a great story this is, I found it a complicated train wreck. Too much going on in the attempt to be "mysterious", and which for me ultimately just played out to lose my interest since it was hard to follow what exactly was going on a large chunk of the time scenes were jumping around. Somebody in an earlier glowing review likened it to a Steven King book where you never really know what is going on until the end, and while i would generally agree that seems to be the attempted approach here, I don't give that anywhere near the same thumbs up in much less depthful VN I downloaded with the intent to play in a single sitdown and hopefully get a fap out of it.

So hours into trudging through the muck of figuring out who is real, who is not, what is a dream, what is not a dream, and a whole lot of WTF is going on moments....I finally just got to the point where i started spam clicking ahead while barely reading anything just to see what sexy time scenes i might be missing before i throw in the towel. Which left me clicking, and clicking, and clicking...

Beyond the story i found it to have average at best sexy time moments. As a guy who always reads people complaining about not liking the MC and completely shrugging that aspect off in my decision I will also say this. The one clear takeaway i did get from the couple hours i did attempt to follow along with the story is that this is the first game where I actually found that off putting. He's a real d-bag.

Long story short the game looks great, and for that alone i'll give it 2 stars. But i'm honestly left guessing a large chunk of the glowing reviews this game is getting is actually due to it catering to one story disguised extreme fetish, surrounding one specific character, and then with a whole lot of re-directing of their praise for that effort on something else that certainly doesn't deserve it. Or at least that is my theory after actually playing this.

Hard pass as a recommendation from me.