- Renders: decent female characters, the rest not so much.
- Animations: very basic, AI assisted, not that good.
- Story: weak, and predictable.
- Choices: quite a few, they mainly opt you in or out of NSFW scenes, no change in the story.
- Length: 2 hours.
- Gallery: available, but bugged, patreon members can get an unlock key.
- Soundtracks: available.
- Achievements: available, but bugged.

The story revolves around Laura, a woman who didn't want to return to her small hometown, but for some reason decided to come back. As a journalist, she is tasked to cover the series of murders taking place, and the victims are all her highschool friends.
Laura is haunted by an event in her past, so much so that she won't let us forget it for a moment, and we won't know what it is until the end game cinematic. There's also an ex-husband who sleeps with quite a few women but wants to be with Laura, her estranged mother, and a Fred Flinstones freaky look-alike boss at the workplace, along with a few irrelevant side characters, who don't really matter.

The gameplay tries to combine your basic Ren'Py choice-driven gameplay with sandbox elements, however it is all an illusion and this is basically a kinetic novel. There are choices to make, and in a sense no matter what you pick, the story continues in the same way, thus the choices only give you the option to view NSFW scenes or skip them. As for the "sandbox" element, or the "fake-freeroam", it is bare bones, characters talk, you make a choice, then you're in a free-roam mode with very limited options, mostly it's click the map, click on location to continue story, no real exploration, everything is locked unless you're told to go there by the game progress.
All of this supposed "gameplay" gets cut short at the end with an AI cinematic, which is totally unnecessary, with flashing words and a voice over that's just creepy. Feels like an old film reel documentary rather than anything else.
Now onto the 15 NSFW scenes which will hopefully unlock in the gallery eventually, most of them are optional and are AI assisted, not in a good way though. They're nothing really to write home about, except the scene with the bartender behind the bar, that one was beyond terrifying. Aside from a very random scene of Laura's boss, banging her co-worker Nina and her husband turning into a cuck, everything is vanilla and simple. Just make sure to save, because the gallery doesn't unlock all the scenes, currently bugged on release.

The conclusion makes me feel as though the developer wanted to tell a certain story, but was afraid steam would not approve it, and thus was forced to literally gut his work, cutting out chunks and releasing this weird incoherent mesh of a project.
There are ample grammar mistakes, with words like "are" written as "ar" or "bac" instead of "back", and more. Telling the time frame is impossible, there are just random 1 year ago, 7 years ago, 20 years ago time drops that make no sense. Characters are introduced and sidelined or murdered just as fast, no one gets any real time to be an actual person, just a timestamp to progress the story.
It is also sad that the gallery is bugged, but if you are a patreon member you can use a cheat code to unlock it.
Overall this was a decent attempt at your run of the mill drama and suspense that really didn't go anywhere. Hey at least there are 15 NSFW scenes to enjoy (when fixed) and a short run time. So why am I recommending it with such a low rating and bugs? Aside from warning people of what to expect, I want to give the developer credit for trying despite how steam views the topic he tried to cover, so wait for the hotfixes and a decent sale if you're interested in this short story.

Rating:

5.5/10

★ ★ ★

I give a 3 out of 5 Stars ★ for Between Us: Reckoning

An ok but still lame Adult Visual Novel playing a Bimbo Main Character With Mar-A-Lago looks

Technical review : -

CPU & GPU Utility max at 12% and Power usaage is below 70W

Conclusion : SAFE TO PLAY ON HIGH END CARDS

Game Review :

* You play a Bimbo who looks fantastic in some angles and plastic zombie Angelina Jolie in others
* The story was ok but nothing emotional and there is no Character development
* You feel nothing for Laura as she look like and is a Slut and her ex cop husband is another adulterer
* The female models in this game look well made especially Nina who could easily be the lead
* Sex Scenes are short and will be disappointing for men
* A forgettable short story so its pretty much a quickie
* 100% Steam achievements are easy to get

Overall Between Us: Reckoning is only a mediocre short game with not much story or character development. the sex scenes are short and average. SomeAi enhanced imagery looks good but nothing more. 100% Steam achievements are a +

Cheers! Have Fun!

Good AVN with a surprisingly deep message & dark story.
First things first, the game is rendered very well, high quality stills, and very attractively animated lewd scenes; some of the character models look gorgeous as well (MC reminds me of a young Angelina Jolie😍). There are 15 lewd scenes total according to the gallery but for some reason only half of them unlocked for me even though I definitely viewed them all. There is a "cheat" button that allows you to unlock the whole gallery, but I think that's supposed to be for if you haven't unlocked them during the story, it's not supposed to hide the gallery behind a paywall (since I was able to unlock half of them through progression alone), so it's most likely a bug that needs to be worked out.

As for the story, the tone definitely surprised me. Going off the upbeat menu music and the colorful title font I was expecting a fun, lighthearted romp of a detective story but that's not what the creators were aiming for it seems. It was a nice surprise though. The story dealt with trauma, death and some pretty serious topics that I won't get into to avoid spoilers, but the writing did justice to the subject matter. That doesn't mean the writing was all good, there were some clear typos and weird phrasing at times and the dirty talk during the lewd scenes was... interesting.... at times... ("I want to be filled with hectoliters of your sp3rm!") But judging the whole, it was honestly pretty good. Surprisingly impactful too. Nothing life changing, but going in expecting one thing and getting something completely different, yet enjoying it for what it is can be a nice surprise if it's done well.

• The renders were beautiful. I literally made several different screen shots of the MC my screensaver... Nuff said.
  
• The animations were also well done. I feel there were just enough considering the price and length (11$, 3-4 hrs for 1 playthrough, 15 scenes), multiple perspectives were shown of each position, & they looked very sexy. They kinda bounced around with the kinks, some exhibitionist, sharing, cucking, vanilla, cheating, etc. Not normally my flavor, but so many AVN's have gone that route, I'm used to it at this point, and this game focuses more on the character and story aspect of the encounter more than the kink itself. Also, the climaxes were shown & looked great. Some were even animated using AI, but the use of AI in this game was some of the better I've seen.
  
• Story was good as was the writing. They teased this traumatic event the entire game which did start to drag after a while, just wanted them to get on with it and introduce something else to carry suspense; but the characters were enjoyable and the story kept up the mystery pretty well. It's no M Night Shyamalan twist, I did see the end coming, but it was still entertaining all the same.
  
• Some of the character models looked stunning! They also actually look unique compared to other AVN's. Seemed derivative of real life people (IMO) instead of from other AVN's, which is a nice change of pace. The main protag looks like a young, dolled up Angelina Jolie (very sexy, I made her my screensaver😝), one of the characters husbands looks like a young Pedro Pascal, the sister looks like a cross between Emilia Clarke and Brie Larson, and the boss at the news office looks like a neanderthal straight out of the Geico commercials. It's an inventive way to go about making character models, and the women look hot so it worked (of course this could just all be in my head and I'm out of my mind, wouldn't put it past me.)
  
• They jumped around perspectives several times pretty much just to facilitate showing us more varied lewd scenes so we wouldn't only be bound to seeing ones that involved the MC. I appreciated that bit of creative license with the storytelling.
  
• Music was pretty good, and the ending montage was an interesting way to wrap things up.

• The gallery is bugged atm. I most definitely viewed lewd scenes that the gallery didn't unlock. I can tell by the blurred preview image that it's the same scene I just viewed and yet only half the ones I accessed through the story are unlocked. Makes it all the more frustrating that there is an option to put in a code you get can from their Patreon to unlock all the scenes... Rubs me the wrong way a bit...
  
• While the animations themselves are very good, the positions can be kinda tame a lot of the time. Also there were several times when it looked like they were setting up for a BJ and then they went to some other vanilla position. That's not to say they were all basic and uninteresting because that's not true. There were some threesomes that were fire and several other scenes that went above and beyond, but generally speaking, there were a good amount of scenes where I wasn't that impressed with the content of the animations.
  
• As mentioned above, they let the traumatic past event linger a little past it's welcome IMO, so the story felt like it started to stagnate just before the end. They did a good job distracting us with that final scene tho, so I'll give them props for that.

All told, it was a fun game. Story gripped me, characters held my interest and I felt attached to the MC. The renders looked great & the animations were sexy (with multiple perspectives) as were the character models. They actually had a message they wanted to tell with the story and I felt it came across well; the story was a bit dark but not overly so. Worth playing.

Check out my curator page for more warnings and recs
Sketchy AVN Enthusiast Curator page