Ren'Py - College Craze [v0.7] [Pretty Ink]

College Craze [v0.3] - 4 / 5
Date of review: May 15th, 2022

The Good
College Craze really surprised me. I went into this game looking for something with a character customization feature and while that aspect ended up lacking, I still really enjoyed the game.
With so many male protag games out there, finding a good fem protag game can sometimes feel impossible. Pretty Ink however seems like they might have something on their hands.
The current version, v0.3, has only a few sex scenes, but the story carried this game for me. (Note: I only pursued characters I was interested in so there are probably more scenes out there than what I saw in my playthrough. Your mileage may vary). I'd go as far as to say that this is one of the best games story wise that I've played in a long time.
I won't get into spoilers here but the plot really caught my attention. It's nothing ground breaking, but it's still something you can shut your mind off for a little while and fall into while you play, with a couple twists and turns in there too for good measure (twists that caught me by surprise). It's not a life changing story by any stretch but as far as porn games go, it's pretty good. I'm very curious to see where the story will go from here.

The Bad
First there's the lack of sex scenes that I already mentioned. Didn't bother me, but this part of the review is for the bad so I might as well repeat it. Idk if there's any room in the story for the devs to shove more sex scenes into so it's just going to be a matter of waiting for future updates to get more. If a lack of sex scenes is an issue for you, wait for future updates before starting this game.
Second the art style is a little weird. I could be wrong but it looks like many if not all the art from this game is traced (and some pieces are traced/colored better than others). It looks fine for the most part but some scenes look a bit off. For me the story was good enough that this wasn't too much of issue for me but still it stops this game from being even better than it could be.
Last is the character creator. Saying this game has "a customizable female protagonist" is technically true I guess but it feels like a stretch. What you really get is an option to change your character's race, hair style, and hair color. With the race options, you have three choices: white, black, or an in between color. To me the black skin option particularly doesn't look great (at least on the character creator itself). Choosing the black skin color with any of the hair choices just results in a character that looks a bit... off. None of the hair choices seem to work with the skin color imo at least. There seems to be an obvious focus on the white and between skin colors over this one which is par for the course as far as porn games go. If I were a dev on this game, I'd either remove the black skin option and leave the white + in between ones or I'd add an extra hair style (hint: the devs should do this second one). Something like a buzz cut could work, both as something that the other two races could also wear but also as something that would look good with the darker skin color (as a bonus, it also could pass as being a natural hair style [kinda] of which there are currently none in the game). That all being said though, idk what the art workflow on this game looks like so maybe both of those options are not practical.
In short, there is a character customizer but it's very limited and it has some options that don't look that great (limiting further and already limited aspect of this game).

In Conclusion:
Into story heavy fem protag games? Play it.
Just looking for a quick fap? Maybe skip this (for now at least).
Nothing mind blowing but above average. I'm not chomping at the bit waiting for the next update to drop but maybe I'll play it when it comes out (maybe I'll even update this review when it does!)

College Craze is a well written college life 2D VN with interesting and rather complex characters, the branching and routes in this game are plentiful and unique and I would recommend you to try and discover different routes, because you learn more about different characters and their possible motives. My recommended improvements to this game would be the art, because I think it is a bit rough around the edges especially in lewd scenes, and also the textbox for the dialogue is pretty distracting and covers up too much of the screen, overall this game has potential and I just hope that the development time is sped up a bit because 8 months is far too long to wait for one update.

Gives me a lot of Good Girl Gone Bad vibes. Engaging first chapter that has a of plot and mystery. Definitely with greater depth then a lot of other games on F95. Plenty of suitors for the female main character.

The only critique is that it is hard to monitor what choices you have made. A scapebook or journal feature would not be missed.

Fucking review system where if you click out of the windows you loose all !
wake up admins ! it's been years that everyone here complain about this shit, do something please !
what if I'm going to come in your home, wait for you to write a fucking entire book and cut the power just before you save , you will see if it's "not a priority to fix"
so since I'm not gonna write the entire book again, here the shorter version :

A really good game, still early version but already enough content to enjoy it for some time

- The art of good, it's 2D CG's pretty close to what Good Girl Gone Bad has to offer, but with more customization, since you can choose 3 different hair type, hair colors and skin colors
also remember because of that, the dev have a lot more work for each scene, so stay nice even if updates take time

- The story seem good for now, lot of foreshadowing future content, can't wait to see where it go
it's just to bad that I heard about some content that have been removed because ... stupid patreon rule of course... what else ?...
too bad, there is a big setup for "non con" content and more ambiguous stuff with the "street gang zone", or some blackmail from her teacher...
maybe a patch could be a good idea ? as long you don't put any direct link to it on patreon, you can do whatever you want, I've seen devs create game with loli content all hidden behind a patch

- The gameplay, it's all good old renpy VN, lot of choice that influence variable for futur content, no useless dialogue about weather, no grind, no annoying mini games ... only good story and good sex
Read, Choose, Fap, Enjoy ...

- The sex scenes are pretty good, maybe a bit short and lack some pictures variation but it's just the beginning, let's see where it go


- Now for the -1 star : The UI
( look at the sample pics )

You can see the dev wanted to make something unique, but in the end it's a little fail
textbox with white opaque background, the textbox position is 3cm ( or 1 inch for uncivilized people ) up on the screen so it hide a lot of stuff
same for stats displayed, they have a big white rectangle as background and it's hard to not fix your eyes on it
and the worst, sometime during sex scene, the textbox change to become a white square on the right of the screen
so that mean shorter size line of text, and a big white square on top of a sexy picture that sometime act like a censorship ( the scene between the MC and Chad, this textbox is literally hiding the "action" )
and unfortunately, the clasic UI renpy Mod won't work here because it's not just the textbox aspect, it's the text position the problem, and this mod can't do anything about text position
A transparency slider could already solve 90% of the problem, so maybe it's a good idea to add one

Don't worry it don't make the game unplayable, in fact you don't even think about it when you start to enjoy the game, but still, it can be improved

Also while I'm at it, there is a other little annoying stuff, it's the animation when choice appear, it take a little time for the choice to show up because of a "fade in" animation
so what's the problem ? well if you try to rollback, in every other game you will see the choice when you rollback because they are displayed instantly
but here they are not, so when you rollback you don't see the choice, they don't have time to play the "fade in" animation, so what happen a lot is that you rollback too far searching for the previous choice..
I know it's not a big deal, but : if something can be improved, it need to be improved

So overall a good start of game with a great future ahead of him
If the dev can make a living out of his patreon and don't loose his motivation , I can clearly see this game become something great

Good writing, good branches and you have good control of the pace of your MC's corruption, relationship, or lack thereof so far. The art can be a little up and down with portraits of characters (with changing facial expressions) being quite good, but sex scenes look a little rudimentary. It doesn't really detract from the sexiness of the game though. Looks a really really promising game.

Version 2.0 is pretty good. A lot of very believable characters. and interesting lines. Though I don't like the art too much, sometimes it's awful but overall quality of the game is very high. Sometimes it reminds GGGG and I hope that developer can reach that level. Especially in terms of regularity of updates

Review of 0.2

Wow. What a game, what a huge update. There is a lot to love so I don't quite know where to start.

Diversity: this was the first thing that jumped out to me. The race of the MC is customizable, and the cast of supporting characters is incredibly varied in race, gender, age, and body type, all while avoiding and even bucking conventional and harmful stereotypes. It is incredibly refreshing in the monochromatic world of lewd games, and gives the story a great sense of depth and believability.

Branching: So far there are four distinct routes based on your extracurricular activities all with a dedicated night time party and a solid amount of art and dialogue to go along with. Additionally, your personal relationships with the cast of 5-10 primary side characters has already spawned different scenes and routes. It is ambitious and quite impressive for a second release. I have multiple playthroughs going and spent probably 4-5 hours total exploring different options and trying to find hidden or different scenes. At this rate a finished product will have crazy crazy replayability.

Art: quite unique and sexy. It might not be for everyone but I love it and think it adds to the charm. There is also a crazy number of CGs but the characters' appearances remain constant throughout, I haven't had an instance where I thought my MC looks weird or unfamiliar. I also appreciate the facial expressions and signs of inebriation, a must for a college game.

Writing: per the dev's posts, the game already has 300,000 words, which dwarfs your average novel. More important than the quantity however is the quality, which is also very high. The sex dialogue is intensely descriptive and really adds to the scenes. Character conversations are nuanced and believable, and the writing does a good job of capturing natural reactions to the different conflicts and events. Really makes me think the dev has some background or education in writing fiction. Finally, bugs and typos are few and far between.

Gameplay: It is a choose your story VN so there isn't much to speak of, however it nails the frequency of user input. There are no walls of text to skip through to get to the good stuff, and while the story is very engaging, once my tiny attention span begins to wane when reading the text, the game prompts a user input and brings me right back in.

This game skyrocketed to the top of my favorite projects in development. It is also always great to see a female dev creating a believable female protagonist. I can't wait for more!

This game just received an update that comes has a welcomed and pleasant surprise. 0.2 has a crazy amount of content and is overall a definite upgrate in regards to 0.1. It maintained the character costumization option that is something I'd love more games implemented, and fixed its biggest flaw, which was in my opinion, the fact that a great deal of characters seemed to fit in the sleazeball archtype. This version came with a more varied set of characters and preserved one of 0.1's greatests strengths, which was the character agency and how well it synergized with the choices. Nothing untill now feels forced or out of place and the story itself seems polished, planned and cared for.




I have great hopes for this game and I wish the dev the best.

This definitely shows promise!

Confident story-telling, + hints and promises of lots of sluttiness + a woman in charge (or perhaps she will let herself be dominated by the men around town?)

Decent implementation, good and unique art - I definitely see why it's compared to Good Girl Gone Bad!

Will definitely check out the next release = high praise indeed

A good start . Intriguing. A bit rough drawing, but generally bearable. But the faces have their own uniqueness. There is no puppetry and similarity. I liked the plot, although it is not yet clear where it leads.

Looking good so far. If you like GGGB or Red Strings they may be right up your alley. I like we have some character creation here before starting the story. Hopefully that gets expanded on in future updates. Cant tell from the demo but this looks like we will have some sandbox options which I'm a fan of as well.

Just a demo atm but what's here the dev has done really well. The writing is good so far. I especially like that everyone seems to have a brain which is not always a given with a female MC game. The MC also doesn't seem particularly prudish or sex mad so this might actually be a female protag game that doesn't treat fucking like heroin; as a path to a complete life and personality shift. The art is mostly well drawn or traced, the majority of characters are also good looking no one popped up that immediately made me want to avoid content with them forever.

The two scenes in the game are good. It's too early to judge what the scenes will be like tbh as for there's no changes in position, choices etc but it's a good start. They're better written than a lot on here. It also looks like your grades and social media followers go up or down which implies choices in how you go through the story. The char is also customizable which is always a nice touch.

So overall a very good start. There's not a lot here because it's a demo but what is here gives me hope this might be one of those that's one of the better games on the site in a year or two if it gets developed.