Shale Hill Secrets is an interesting 3D visual novel with a detective theme and a spicy touch, where the protagonist is a mute IT engineer who discovers an application on his computer that allows him to view personal files such as photos, emails, searches, contacts, etc. from other people's electronic devices such as their computers or smartphones. At first, he will use the application to his advantage to obtain hot pictures of attractive women, but later he will use it for a more altruistic purpose, such as helping his acquaintances in searches or even in investigations of criminal gangs.
This game, in addition to its extensive and well-written story, has an abundance of sexual content (although it takes some time to arrive, approximately after chapter 4), with a variety of animated sex scenes with the large cast of female characters, which have an attractive design and realistic proportions (without breasts or extremely huge butts), although they are not entirely original, because if you are a connoisseur of visual novels, some of the girls will seem familiar to you.
Unfortunately, this visual novel has no voice acting, but it has decent sound effects and background music to make up for it, giving you a decent immersion.

The story of this title is quite but quite extensive, with a total of 17 chapters, where these can take you an hour of reading each. The plot of this story begins in a simple way, with the protagonist discovering this application that allows him to spy on the files of the people around him, believing that it could be a bug in a program, and using it freely to obtain intimate photos of the girls around him, to provide him with nightly onanistic material. A plot that might not be very complex, but could work for a visual novel for adults, where the purpose is usually to offer erotic material, but luckily for those who love reading, this plot does not only stay there, because while using the application he learns secrets of the people around him, as one of their friends who is an informer, A girl who is harassed, among other subplots of the love interests of the protagonist, but also with a main one that has to do with conspiracies, criminal groups and such situations that you would see in a television series, plot that ends up being quite interesting and keeps you entertained while reading.

There really isn't much gameplay in this title, since it's not a sandbox visual novel, but rather a partially linear one.
This is because as you play, you can "explore" certain parts of the city to make some investigations or have encounters with some girl to advance in the plot, but although this may give a sense of freedom of choice, you really have to choose all the options of places (and times of day) to forcibly advance the story, so at the end of the day it is a linear path where you can change the order of events, but with the same ending.
Although on the other hand regarding the romantic routes / sexual encounters, there is some extra gameplay, having the opportunity to choose different answers in dialogues with the girls, which may or may not cause you to see a sexual scene.

As I said at the beginning, this game has an abundant amount of sexual scenes, with a total of 50 with up to 9 different girls as co-stars.
In general, the quality of these is more than decent, even more when you consider that the game has been in development for several years, so their renders are not the most current possible, but still offer an enjoyable experience. All the scenes have a long duration, from foreplay to penetration. Besides the important moments, there are animations that are repeated in a loop until you advance, in addition to this are added some sound effects, such as moans, watery sounds, etc.. This makes the scenes even more erotic.
As for the "content" you can see in these scenes, it is mostly vanilla, with sex, oral, boobjobs, handjobs, assjobs and of course vaginal or anal penetration, the fetishes present are more a complement than the central axis of the scenes, as there is some light BDSM, public sex, threesomes and peeping. So overall it is content that can be enjoyed by all types of players.
Where there are more differences to suit different personal tastes is in the girls or romantic interests of the protagonist, having redheads, Asians, women of color, blondes and mature women, so it is easy to find one you like.
Finally, I would like to point out that this game has a gallery of scenes, available from the menu (with cheat option to unlock it from the beginning), but what I find interesting about this is that besides letting you see what chapter each scene is, making it easier to know which to play if you have missed a sex scene, is that during the scenes you can choose whether to go to see the entire conversation before intercourse, or if it sends you straight to the action.

All in all, Shale Hill Secrets is a very good Visual Novel, besides offering the basics of an AVN, such as a large cast of female characters, a variety of sexual scenes, extensive scenes, etc., it also gives you an impressive, interesting and, above all, long story, which, together with the NSFW content, will satisfy you in the end.
The only negative points I see in this game have to do with the graphics and the design of the characters, as the years are noticeable, especially in the detail of the skin/textures of the characters, in addition to the use of pre-made characters with slight modifications you feel in a way that you're playing a cheap copy of some other title.
However, if you put those prejudices aside, you will really be amazed. So I definitely recommend this game, especially to those who are looking for a richer narrative experience and do not have problems with the design of the girls with slightly disproportionate heads.

Welcome to the rollercoaster of mysteries, humor and romance, gonna be a long ride. It was a great adventure. Also, nice music. Some characters are not interesting for me though, so skipping was handy.

I first found this game on another site, but with typical AVNs I wait until its on steam. BUT once I did, I bought it in the first hour of its release.

Its more story than lewd, but enough lewd to make it worth it. Character building, plot roll-out, and enough humor to make Monty Python consider reopening the circus.

It also doesn't use the typical models, which is MUCH NEEDED in the modern steam copy/paste/AI-generate-2-games-a-week. So if you're looking for something different, don't want to scratch your head on "is this a cameo or a rotated asset" on a unique story that isn't overdone(well, ok college...but that isn't the focal point) then this is the game for you.