Ren'Py - Academy: Live! [v0.09 Alpha] [passhonQ]

[v0.09 Alpha]


Writing:
⠀⠀⠀Writing is overall really good, looks like the author is a fairly fluent speaker, so that's great already, but there are things that stand out like a sore thumb.
⠀⠀⠀The story's premise is that our protagonist, a school teacher got busted having sexual relations with a student on the premises and gets fired. Not only that, but the school's principal is dead set on suing our man and make his life as miserable as possible in other ways, and it's not yet revealed why she's so obsessed with him. Anyways, he gets invited to be a principal of a special school, which is secretly an erotic reality show for rich people, but the participants are oblivious to that fact. Now in exchange for a stable income and legal protection our MC has to make some spicy content for a bunch of anonymous perverts while keeping it lowkey. Overall, premise is interesting and there is potential to how all these variables will unfold in future events.
⠀⠀⠀The organizers seem to have hand-picked our protagonist for a principal position in the school full of unruly kids, but this guy is a total pushover, that folds under the slightest bit of pressure, that is in addition to being a dumbass that can't keep his mouth shut and his priorities straight. The way MC instantly loses his head over an office lady with a garter belt or a bunch of female students in tight sports uniform just doesn't make sense given his established personality and background. Which is only an issue for the intro part of the game, because from a certain point in time he is mostly in his 'confident charisma'-mode and is actually a pretty cool bloke, it's just he doesn't act the part in front of his students for some reason. Like, they address him as "bro", "dude" and "my guy", wtf with this familiarity? He is your principal! We as readers know that he isn't anyone important, but to students he's supposed to be some sort of authority, no?
⠀⠀⠀As to other characters, there are 4 main girls all of whom are somewhat cliched but are nuanced enough to be invested in them. Haruka is a clear highlight of the game with superb presentation. There is a possibility that some of the background characters will become a part of the main cast at some point, but not yet. There are also side girls, a couple of antagonists to keep things spicy and a lot of miscellaneous characters but none of them are particularly interesting or note-worthy.

Gameplay:
⠀⠀⠀The game is a VN/management hybrid. Most of the management mechanics are underdeveloped or are straight up placeholder. For now you juggle between 'Board satisfaction', 'Student's trust', 'Academic performance' and your personal affection with the characters, trying to strike a perfect balance between all these stats. You do this with choices during VN sections as well as by tweaking exam difficulty and academic policies. You can call students into your office to punish them or to strike a deal with them regarding their scores. There are random side quests in a form of "bounties", which I'm not sure how to complete most of without new events. Because when you call a student into your office you can only ask for panties or spank them. Either it's a placeholder or I'm missing something, but most likely the former. Most story events are triggered automatically, but some you have to initiate through camera feed or by going on weekend dates. Pro tip: you don't have to feel bad about choices that disappoint The Board, since their "satisfaction" stat can be easily raised by farming panties, just set the test difficulty to 'hard' and spend every free afternoon extorting panties from bad students. Also there are cheats that are locked behind a backer code, but you don't need them as the game's not grindy at all.

Suggestion: an additional ever-present UI element with the list of all characters would be useful, since there are a lot of them introduced and you can't memorize everyone so quickly.

Erotic content:
⠀⠀⠀Nice animations, facial expressions are spot on, dynamic camera, multiple angles too, multiple poses, build-up, foreplay, sexy talk, decent BGM tho very little sfx, there are some like clothes rustling, gulping and slurping but rarely during animations (edit: this is no longer the case for recent patches as new scenes do feature animation sfx). I also appreciate a bunch of small details like drool and alike. All in all porn in this game is superb, I'd wish dev revisited some earlier scenes with more sound effects though. btw HOW DARE YOU CENSOR HANHOLDING during the Emiko scene, you monster!
⠀⠀⠀Netorare: you can "pimp out" the girls for certain points and favors, or ...... you can literally just punch the mothafucka who suggests it in the face, which disables prostitution (based). One of the side characters gives a blowie to a teacher, BEFORE she becomes love interest (unavoidable, but skippable). You have an option to encourage one the main LIs to participate in a provocative photo-shoot with 2 half-naked guys (things get a little heated) or you can persuade Haruka to have sex with someone else, etc. All these choices are clearly marked as "(NTR)" so you won't accidentally trigger such content. This is a game with strong sharing/pimping flavor, but vanilla content is good enough that you don't feel bad about opting out and keeping the dick count to a minimum.

Misc:
The game looks really good, definitely way above average all the KK slop, and the music is some of the best out of any lewd game that I've played, dev clearly got some taste.


In conclusion - I'm impressed. This might be a 5/5 kind of game once it gets more content in the future.

TL;DR = superb corruption game. A lot of nice girls.

Story: 5/5
Pros:
+ You are the principal of the academy and you can use your influence to corrupt students.
+ Great thing about the game, is the fact, that you have a choice. You can push girls into being your personal harem. Or you can turn them into full sluts, that will spread legs for anyone. Nice.
+ There is a lot of interesting sub plotlines. Like mystery behind the academy. Or backstories of certain girls are really captivating.
+ Characters of some girls are very well written. Very believable.
+ The plot here is really good.
Cons:
- I cant think of anything.

Art and sex stuff: 5/5
Pros:
+ Renders are good.
+ Girls are sexy.
+ Sex scenes are hot.
+ The game has nice sex animations.
Cons:
- I cant think of anything.

Gameplay: 5/5
Pros:
+ The game is sort of VN with choices.
+ Choices have an impact on the gameplay and they will influence what scenes you will.
+ English is decent.
+ The game has pretty good soundtrack.
+ The game has some sex sounds. It is nothing extraordinary, but better than nothing.
Cons:
- There isnt big number of locations, where you can interact with girls. Absolute majority of content happens at principal's office, gym, gym shower and a classroom. There could be bigger variety.

______________________________________________
To sum it up:
This game is good. You should definitely play it.

Most of the characters in the game are well written. The erotic scenes were really good, especially the BDSM ones. The story, for me, is decent enough. I really liked the overall design and visuals of the game. I’m definitely looking forward to the upcoming updates.

Fun mechanics with a fap-heavy plot keeps this gamer satisfied.

I have to say, I was extremely worried that the management heavy mechanics may interfere with my PTFP (Plot to Fap Pace), but the dev has done a wonderful job maintaining a balancing act of keeping you engaged with an interesting plot thread (A stealth academy made for you to fuck all the students) and amazing graphics to boot. The sex scenes are done really well, especially with the camera shaking that adds a bit of flare to the intensity of th scenes.

The choices we're given in many scenarios also enhances gameplay with opputunities to ply out many flavors. This is a highly polished game that I eagerly await completion and it has my deepest recs for those who hail from the school of ero-minded games.

Easily the top 5 games i tried this year on the site. Amazing scenes, Great characters and sometimes pretty funny too, Like you can tell the dev spent a good amount of time as i never encountered any of those weird crashes that games with this artstyle have so another point for that.

Pros:
Great scenes with multiple POVs which is rare
Decent storyline
Amazing design for the girls
Optional sharing/swinging content that is easily avoidable

Cons:
Later in the game theres a fewer events although the dev mentioned more will be added
The weekend needs repeatable dates with slight variations as it would be perfect for it

The music choice is also okay like i felt i have heard it before, The Mc is also pretty well made better than those wimpy loser Mcs you usually see in such games. Overall 10/10 game and pretty fun. I recommended it to anyone looking to play a great game for enjoyment or fap as this will cover both.

Amazing game with amazing characters!

Pros:

+ Distinct and unique characters
+ The H-scenes are top notch and there are well made kinkier content available like NTS, BDSM, Rough play, etc.
+Good amount of content for the development time
+ More focus on the main characters ; Does not let side characters take all the screen time away. This is so important because it tells us who to care about and know who will have the most content. So many games fall into the trap of making so many complicated side characters, it takes up all of their development time. This is fortunately not one of them.

Can't think of any cons for now. The story is nothing special but it's always great to see games like this that are not afraid to cater to the kinkier audience. It's honestly becoming one of my favorite games in the site.

[v0.09] Rating: 9.5/10

Hope to see more content soon, and kudos to the Dev!

4,5/5
Possibly top 20 best games here on F95.

Gameplay
Honest try of different kind of the typical school setting. Which works in some sences better then the normal sandbox. 4/5

Girls
Beutiful models. Very nice animations. 5/5 in this regard. And there is a lot of scenes.

Cons
No easy way to see progress in game (only in main menu in replays). And it is not obvious what to do to move the story forward and to unlock all scenarios. Its kinda of a "blind" play. 3/5

Huge potential. Amazing piece of game. Wishing the dev all the best

Pretty dang good, such a well-executed premise and pretty good scenes, definitely looking forward to more, story pretty good too. Love how different some of the scenes are depending on what choices you want to make as well.

Similar to the headmaster or other academy games. This one is up there with the headmaster in terms of quality.. its super good. I really like the characters and everyone seems to have their own things going on.

My only complaint is there seems to be no exploration. You cant go down hallways or anything its all just scripted events. maybe that will change in the future.

Definitely a lot of potential with great execution thus far.

Storyline is realistic, Gameplay structure is there, and the girls have distinct personalities.

Only downside I can see this project taking awhile to fully flesh out the less important students.

Version 0.08.1 Alpha

This definitely went much better than I expected. Academy Live boasts adequate storytelling, interesting characters, comedy and dialogue as well as a nice gameplay experience that balances resource management and choices without getting too convoluted.

Although it is not as famous or well-rated as the other two similar "MC runs schools to corrupt girls" counterparts, I personally felt Live is just as good, if not slightly better.

Story
After getting fired from his teaching job, MC was offered the role of a Chief Academic Officer for a private academy for working adults. Turns out said academy is simply a front to run a reality TV show with hidden cameras for elite subscribers to satisfy their voyeurism on female students.

Thus begins MC's role to facilitate scenarios to corrupt and have sex with the girls in school to pander to the viewing audience. Four students are identified as popular enough to be appointed as main targets and they are basically your main LIs for this game.

A notable observation is this developer is very good at posing and using sound effects to drive home humour and WTF moments. A lot of subtle changes in facial expressions match the dialogue and makes what is essentially a corruption driven story funny and endearing at the same time.

Game Mechanics
It's a creatively blended setup that borrows elements from visual novel choices and resource management without descending into the usual sandbox grind. You mainly juggle between various points like board satisfaction, student trust, perversion, viewership, academy results etc. using a combination of policy setting and in game VN choices.

Many of these choices are similar to the ones found in VN like allowing you to reject side girls, avoid NTR, increase corruption or love elements with the LIs etc. The catch is these choices all come with costs - a lot of times they will result in changes to some points which you will have to in turn find some other way to balance them back.

For e.g. if you choose to reject certain acts with a LI, this will lead to a drop in board satisfaction and viewership which you then have to be more spontaneous on other fronts to compensate and bring these points up to avoid a game over.

Background / Character Renders
Although made with Koikatsu, the character renders are actually quite different from the usual fare made with a similar engine. The character designs are much more intricate and "solid" with an end result that looks like a halfway house between standard Koikatsu assets and conventional anime.

For someone like me who doesn't like Koikatsu, this is a great plus.

Character Development
I wasn't expecting much given the premise of this genre, but am pleased to report the characters are actually very well modelled and multi-dimensional. For a start, MC is surprisingly not a total jerk. Most of the time he does what he needs to do to corrupt the girls and placate the board, but within that he seems to also care about the LIs.

LIs like Emie and Mai are somewhat tropey playing the archetype of the innocent virgin and bimbo respectively, but it's well-executed even for a trope. It doesn't come across as cringey and makes you go "not again".

My initial impression of Izumi is that of the typical nympho nerd you see in AVNs, but turns out the developer assigned this trope to a minor character Yoko instead. Izumi is more of a smart girl who has quite bit of emotional back story and also some perverted kinks which MC gets to unravel as he interacts more with her.

Haruka is a pleasant surprise and highlight of the whole game. She started off playing the usual slut role, the kind writers use to introduce sex scenes early in the game while other LIs are still warming up. But it turns out she has a very robust character build up - funny, quirky, pals with the MC, kinky during sex and even ends up being his co-conspirator in the academy. Most of the comedic moments come from her.

Sex Scene
Impressive for a Koikatsu game - all of them come up adequate sexual tension build up by dialogue, BGM and sound effects. The animations are superb with good camera angles (many scenes have multiple angles you can switch at anytime you want) and the attention to detail especially facial expressions is not something you see often in Koikatsu.

Some of the notable scenes like Emie's deflowering (one of the best virgin scenes I have seen to date), kinky high energy scene with Haruka at home, Izumi's masturbation in the toilet listening to audio erotica and also the domination of Natsuha were fun.

BGM and Sound Effects
There are enough BGMs to fit the mood from serious to funny to kinky. Sound effects are mainly used to drive home certain dramatic scenarios and also sometimes during lewd scenes.

Conclusion
Academy Live is a pretty innovative all-rounder game which you can't tell from the way it's marketed. It features a system that amalgamates macro attributes management with visual novel flow without the nitty gritty micro decisions.

The renders are different from the usual Koikatsu types and should appeal to players who prefer conventional anime. The story is standard for the school management cum corruption genre, but the commonality is more than compensated by good humor, interesting characters and nicely done NSFW scenes.

Great game so far. Not gonna criticize any of the gameplay elements, since they're not developed yet, and i hope that the dev doesn't get lost in the sauce trying to add too many features in that regard. But the story and the girls are A+ material, and subverted some expectations in that regard. Was actually disappointed when i reached the end of current content, and will be watching future development with interest!

The positive point of this game is that it has a good and different story, now the negative is that the entire gameplay and map of it is very boring and frustrating since the game is made to end on a certain day of the week, that is, it doesn't matter if you saw a certain event or not, when that day comes the game simply ends and you can't do anything, you can't continue playing or unlocking scenes that are still in the gallery, so you have to wait for the next update to see a certain scene, this shouldn't happen when all the current content is finished, the game should send us back to the map to continue playing, I can't have a good game precisely because I have to keep worrying about what day the game will end, man, this is too boring, if it was going to be like this, why not make a normal game? Without a map, just with the story? It would definitely be much better than the way the game is now

Had a ton of fun with this game. Graphics are done well. I enjoy the sound effects. Spanking scenes are top tier. Choices have a lot of meaning. The management system has a very good base as well. I can tell this is going to be one of the greats on this site!

Excellent take on the popular setting where the main character is the principal (or has a similar role of authority) in a school that has some perverted secret goal. As is typical for this genre, it is in the form of a sandbox. The sandbox format is often problematic, but here it works quite well. There are some inefficiencies in the sandbox interface that seem related to future expansions.
There is a very good plot that draws you in and keeps coming up with surprises. It is also quite funny.
The game features excellent Koikatsu graphics. Towards the end of the current content (as of version 0.07.3), there is a very sensual defloration scene. At the most critical moment, part of the scene may be pixelized, depending on how your choices. But instead of being annoying censorship, this is actually a hilarious visual joke. (We are not missing anything important.)

good game so far the animations are very well done. the character models are great and the story is a very interesting concept that is executed well. i also very much like the ability to change the story depending on your chooses. i also think the school management is so far well implemented. im interested to see where this game will be when the final update comes out .

Fascinating, can't wait for more content. The swinging doesn't feel too force and the urge to fall and dominate the main targets it's great. Also, needs more services on npcs and main protagonist but it's ok, as I said, can't wait for more

[v0.06.2]

Despite all prerequisites for success it manages to miss an opportunity and focus on boring stuff. Its in early stages of development, and maybe there is more content planned for daily activities. But right now its not even good for quick fap, because of all the text I have to read to get to next scene.

Pros:
+ Nice models with distinct look and realistic proportions
+ All sex scenes are animated
+ Every girl has some kink
+ Good premise for a sandbox game
+ No grind, except reading overblown dialogs

Cons:
- You cant walk around. You could look at the hidden cameras, but there is only 1 event at a time, if anything happens at all.
- There is too much dialog to read and just a few actions to choose from.
- MC is passive, everything happens to him in a strictly scripted order.
- Sex scenes have too much empty dialogs to skip.
- Transitions are annoying. Even if you turn them off in options menu, there are still frames without text that stick for a second before moving forward.
- Girls dont act according to their stats, they jump on you even with zero corruption stat.
- The 'Board' requests predict what 'spontaneous' events wil happen during the week.
- Annoying male characters. A bunch of criminals and nerds, that I'd like to expel from the academy but have to deal with.

The direction and production are excellent. The frame & camera angle is very well done. The appearance of the characters, their type corresponds — very well + with their actions and erotic scenes. All characters are interesting, there are no empty ones. The humor is top-notch. The sex is varied, not typical, thoughtful. The animations are very decent. This game is an example to follow in its setting, especially considering the plot basis, which fits perfectly into the local logic of the world.

I liked the game very much, and the very concept and implementation and design, everything was done "perfectly", although it would be nice to add the tolerance that is so fashionable now and more random factors. I would really like to see pretty boys in the role of "traps" and gender diversity itself in general, as well as even more coercion, as in the case of Ayumi and Soushi. I will be happy to buy the game, but I can only do it on Steam.