Sorry spoiler:
Bianca:"oh my god! You are fucking the mayor!?"
You:"She loves it!"
Bianca transformed into a cow girl "Ím a cow-power-ranger!"
Mayor:"WTF she ... transmute?" jaw drops "why are you not freaking out?"
You:"well ... I´m already kind of used to it ...
There´s a goddess walking through the walls of my house, my vegetables grow overnight and she turns into a cow." shrugs
And this, in short, tells you everything you need to know about the game! I love this game! The story, the way it’s written, the dialogues, the craziness, and all the insane stuff that hits you—it’s just divinely hilarious! I think I’ve laughed more in the last five days (that’s how long it took me to reach the absolute end of Patch 0.1.3) than I did in the previous four weeks combined. You can take that as a fair warning: if you don’t find yourself smirking within the first five minutes (even if the start doesn’t seem to give much reason to), you might as well just quit right there.
It’s a festival of references to various anime tropes and clichés—especially the sexually charged, cheeky kind—that you really have to take with humor. If you can’t do that, this game is absolutely not for you. Between all the incestuous sex, the game builds such a brilliant bridge of humor that I just have to give it credit. I was laughing to tears more than once!
The story itself takes a while to really get going because the creators took their time to build and explain a wild but surprisingly believable setup. It can take anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour before you truly start to see where the whole thing might be heading.
On top of that, I find the story’s mix of goddess lore and mystery elements extremely well done. The game lets you piece things together yourself—you’re given just enough, or sometimes just barely enough, information to really have to think, which I love. It challenges the reader a bit, but just skimming and laughing your way through won’t cut it if you actually want to enjoy it! If there’s anything to nitpick, it might be some (still) unused details that could have been skipped—they serve world-building but occasionally create a few redundancies that weren’t strictly necessary. But they’re rare enough not to be annoying or distracting!!!
Now, after all that praise, a few mixed thoughts and maybe some constructive criticism: while the mechanics are all kept pretty simple and you basically can’t do anything wrong in the game, I find the UI somewhat clunky in places. Take the milk planner, for example: I see what the intention was—organizing different people and days in a clear way—but why not just use simple color coding? Click on Bianca → Monday gets highlighted in the color matching the assigned task: free, milking, fighting, laying eggs—whatever. You’d only need a small color legend and could just click the day until the color fits—done! This back-and-forth between assigning a person to a day and fiddling with submenus is exactly where it becomes needlessly tedious (no offense!).
The same goes for the quest system and several other things that are solid and well-structured at their core, but feel a bit cumbersome and somewhat buggy in execution.
I think the balancing still needs a bit of fine-tuning. While the early game feels pretty drawn-out when it comes to making money and pulling your weight around the household — putting in all that work in the fields and so on — it later becomes way too easy, especially once milk production kicks in.
On the other hand, upgrading crops is an extreme grind that takes far too much time! And again, it’s more about the UI and the overall design that causes problems than the grind itself. It’s the mindless repetition — sacrificing vegetables and eating cakes — that really gets on your nerves and turns into tedious click work that quickly becomes annoying as hell. A slightly more complex menu that lets you choose how much energy and which veggies you want to invest — with sliders or dropdowns — and then just confirm, would already fix that. The whole energy recharging through pumpkin pie is also a pain if you actually want to use it for that purpose. Having to eat cake 20 times in a row gets old fast. Here, the real issues lie in the game mechanics and the UI — not in writing or in creating good graphics and animations!
Some of the pregnancy and other animations also aren’t implemented cleanly; they keep requiring clicks that either don’t do anything or where the UI shows up too late.
Now for the things that are really bad and downright irritating: while I actually think the story itself is really well written and put together — especially considering the characters, the themes of the goddesses, and all that stuff that’s been neatly tied together — the backend fails again. First off, it’s genuinely annoying that every scene transition has a fade-out and then a fade-in — especially ones that take this long! (I hope you’re at least using one single backend function for that so you can adjust it globally or even make it a menu option.) Because while the fades might feel nice at first, by the third in-game day they just drive you crazy, and you end up spamming clicks just to get that damn fade out of the way so you can move on to the next screen/text/scene. (They’re just too long — 0.2 seconds would be plenty to create a smooth effect without eye strain or flashing!)
Now, the quest system: while I understand you’re probably trying to give the player more freedom (which this game doesn’t really need) and allow multiple events to be available at once so players can make their own choices, I’d say — as it stands — it’s a complete double disaster.
With so many locations, NPCs, and quests that can appear — most of which can only be triggered early in the morning — we end up with a very linear storytelling flow (which in itself isn’t bad).
But every single time, I have to search my list for the next place and character the game allows me to visit! By the end — and even quite often midway through — I could only trigger events in the morning unless they were marked as “evening” (and even then, sometimes that didn’t work right). So I kept switching from place to place, from character to character, until I finally found the next quest that would progress — because the others were either blocked or only allowed one event per day. That easily ate up 20–30% of my total playtime just searching! And with such a long story and so much content, that’s just bullshit (sorry, but seriously — it was hell at times!). Only the good, cheeky jokes kept me going!
Do yourself and the game a favor: either make it properly complex — with breakpoints that let you go through quests throughout the day until a chapter shift happens in the backend — or make it strictly linear and only show the next available quest location! Because as it stands, having access to every place and every character while the quest system is more or less useless just makes you run around like an idiot — and it’s a total waste of time!
The game itself is a jumble of awesome mystery with goddesses who revolve around you, your family, then a city—and seemingly the world, maybe even the whole cosmos. On top of that, there are plenty of humorous elements that caught me so off guard that I had at least five full-on laughing fits, each lasting about a minute! I would absolutely keep playing it (and really want to!). Like everyone else, I’m eagerly waiting for the next update.
It definitely still needs a bit of polish in the UI, and it might be a good idea to take a step back and rethink the backend—and spend a few hours (if not days) actually playing it yourself, to better get a feel for where its weak spots are and understand what could or should be improved. Because personally, I think the story is top-notch—the game and the creator don’t take themselves too seriously. That’s why each new crazy twist doesn’t feel like something the developer/author is forcing, but rather slips in naturally as just the next insane element in this completely bonkers world. Please keep up the great work!
Visually, sure, there are fancier games—but this one is clean and solidly done! So there’s really nothing to complain about; if anything, I’d just point out that it’s obvious a lot of effort went into making it look neat. And personally, I really like this anime style.
Spoiler ahead: I personally can’t deal with incest at all, and I also think that the translation and renaming to “Roommate” or “Landlady” only partially work within the story context and text. It becomes clear that the two girls (Bianca and Isabelle) are his sisters, and that Sophia is probably more than just his stepmother. I think it becomes apparent—at the latest when interacting with Marian—that somehow, you seem to share at least one parent with half the town! Which I don’t really mind; I can personally look past it. But the texts—especially in the sex scenes—keep nudging you in that direction, because they are less based on names or nicknames and more on the underlying context, where the roles of “sister” or “mother” are clearly felt, even if not explicitly stated.
Especially in the VN genre, I can never quite understand why developers feel the need to withhold information from the player and turn it into some kind of secret—like, for example, the “Good Boy / Bad Boy” points (I read about that on your Discord!), or other things hidden in the backend—especially when they actively influence gameplay and can unlock or block certain actions!
Your VN took me five days to finish (around 12 hours per day), and from what I understand, that’s only about 50% of what you plan to release. So ask yourself honestly: would you have that much free time to play such a game—one that demands you to think and pay attention—and would you really want to replay it multiple times to discover every possible path, given that amount of time?
I’d play it once! And if you put too many secrets in my way—ones I can’t immediately recognize as such—or too many obstacles that keep me from seeing a second path, then that path will stay hidden for me forever. Because I’m not going to waste my life replaying a game a hundred times just to unlock one more scene! Even if skipping speeds things up, it still takes time—and I can only hope there’s actually another scene waiting behind it.
The magic word here is clearly communication (through the UI, that is!). Mixing puzzle mechanics into a long story-driven game isn’t a great concept! In the absence of clear information, it would be nice to have things like a time display or similar indicators.
From what I’ve understood about the gameplay, there are three time segments: morning (when most quests and conversations can be triggered), a broad daytime where you can do various things, and an evening that automatically begins once your energy runs out. The issue is that energy is variable, and sometimes you still need some in the evening for certain quests. Which means you sometimes have to deliberately fast-forward time until evening just so you still have enough energy left for nighttime quest/activities.
One thing I think I also read in the comments, and would also criticize, is the inconsistent game progression with things you should actually be able to unlock actively, but are instead blocked for ages by quests. Whether it’s new ladies as cows, or a sex scene with a lady announced for the next day (or even the same day XD), and much, much more—everything is pretty linear and runs far too rigidly and strictly for the current gameplay approach, delivering the desired benefits way too late.
Among other things, I was constantly confused by Bastet’s “Bless my Farm” option, where I never really understood the “Overgrowth”! It says something about “x turns left,” but I never fully got what that meant. That it refers to the ongoing costs for the farm, and that you always need at least 50 energy in Bastet’s account for things on the farm to keep growing… well, somehow that information got lost on me after all the text and five days of gameplay. Especially since it looks like a clickable option.
No direct criticism, since the game is far from finished:
Many things still seem very much up in the air in terms of game mechanics! From the beginning, the state of the house is criticized—only one window, cracks in the walls, far too little space, and a bathroom outside. There was talk of remodeling, expansions, and improvements—but in my playthrough, nothing happened. Also, the money system seems pretty rudimentary and unfinished, and I don’t really understand what I’m supposed to do with it. Even though there are possibilities for spending—and they were mentioned (“TV, game console, house expansion, remodeling, sex toys for the temple,” etc.)—none of that has been implemented yet, and the money just accumulates without any benefit… except if you invest it in pumpkin pies and condoms, which thankfully aren’t expensive.
Even an alternative house construction in Bastet’s sanctuary was mentioned, but it was understandably not pursued further due to energy consumption. Basically, I see a lot of ideas and suggestions that went into the project, the world, and the game management, which were briefly mentioned but then abandoned, not consistently followed up, or at least not properly worked out.
A restaurant with only two dishes on the menu? Why even have energy? (Not Bastet’s, but energy for working and especially for interacting during quests!?) And many other things that, while nice ideas, overload the game and feel somewhat half-baked. Definitely unfinished!
The sex scenes are quite entertaining and also varied. The ladies all have wonderfully different characters and designs, even if some of them are very focused on anime clichés (which isn’t a problem, as long as you like that!). The main issue, however, is with character depiction. On one hand, I understand why most characters were drawn with large to overwhelmingly huge breasts (because you can use them as cows XD). On the other hand, there’s a lack of variety in breast size. No one has small breasts—only large, oversized, overwhelmingly huge, and “Holy shit, how does this woman walk or stand without tipping forward? Who messed with gravity here?”
To conclude, I’d like to leave a tip for the developer(s)! The promotion and short description of the game do not at all reflect what one can actually expect! I don’t know if there’s already been advertising somewhere—I haven’t looked into that! In my opinion, besides the cute girls with huge boobs, the game’s real strength lies in the humor that hits you so unexpectedly that it knocks you down laughing. And that is not visible at all in the Itch.io description!
My tip: Use the lines I quoted above from the game (even though I slightly reworded them) and create a small mini-trailer with the corresponding images! The scene is yours, and feel free to use my rewording of the dialogues as well—I make no claim to them! Make it into a short teaser or trailer, censor if needed, add voice-over if possible, and support it with music. Make a short 15–20 second video highlighting the game: “Farm. Flirt. F_ck. Freak out.” Patreon, Itch.io, Steam—whatever—and then put the links in the YouTube description, etc. You’ll surely find someone to do the voices if you’re too shy to do it yourself, or someone to polish the video cheaply. In my view, that would be the ideal and fitting promotion for your project.
I really enjoyed playing it and would like to see it as what it is: “A small, rough gem that could really shine one day!” I can’t support you financially, so I poured as much as I could into this review as recognition and tried to be honest but also objective ;) Cheers