Halfway House

In this steamy visual novel, you control the fate of a 19 year old fresh out of juvie. You are sent to a halfway house to try and get your life together and start anew. Halfway House features a number of different girls you can end up with, and a limited selection of sexy scenes to help spice it up.

Cliché Characters Slowly Develop

When the game first begins, you are introduced to a selection of extremely cliché characters. There’s your parole officer who worries about your future and is there to help you, a lovable bro who works nights, and some sexy girls like the housemade and some roommates. Each of these characters follow very typical tropes, but the good news is the author takes it from there to try and flesh things out and give them their own unique stories.

Develops slowly in other ways too

If you like erotic novels to see sexy scenes quickly, you’ll be disappointed with Halfway House. Each relationship takes a long time to develop, and while the sexy scenes do eventually come, they take awhile to get there. This visual novel is also still in production, with the novel stopping and starting as the developer has time to complete it. It’s unknown how long it will take for the novel to be fully complete, but with each scene seeming to represent a few days of time, it could be as many as 200 episodes. If you prefer to see the storyline and characters develop first, this visual novel may be right up your alley.

Visuals are fairly nice

Halfway House uses rendered models for the characters, which are fairly well done. The renders are new, which is refreshing considering how often public models tend to be reused. While the visuals are nothing spectacular compared to truly awe-inspiring graphics such as those from the anime style graphics of The Fruit of Grisaia, but they are still very nice.

Not a lot of choice

One major flaw with the game is that your decisions are not actually your own. There are very few choices that allow you to shape the course of the game. In one example, if you refuse to apologize to a girl for your behavior in a dialogue choice, the character later comes up with some reason to apologize regardless. This would be fine if the game was purely a visual novel, but having choices and then ignoring them seems deceptive.

Pros:

• Slow burn visual novel
• Cliché characters develop from there

Cons:

• Choices aren’t real